profile picture

Wietze Suijker

Product Architect

Education

MSc in Geo-information management & applications

Wageningen University & Research, Delft University of Technology, Utrecht University, University of Twente (ITC)
2014 - 2016
Thesis: Characterising Forest Gain and Related Carbon Sequestration

BSc in Human Geography

Utrecht University
2011 - 2014
Specializations: GIS & sustainable development

Languages

  • Dutch (Native)
  • English (Professional)
  • German (Intermediate (pre-university education))
  • French (Intermediate (pre-university education))
  • Spanish (Basic)

Interests

Career Profile

I develop machine learning workflows and innovative IT solutions to provide satellite data products at scale. I am passionate about geospatial technology, and aim to continuously improve my data engineering skills, be a trustworthy colleague and deliver sustainable results.

Experience

Data Engineer

2023 - Now
Space Intelligence, Edinburgh

Wietze is the scrum master of the engineering team that maintains Space Intelligence’s data platform. The data platform builds on the Pangeo stack and uses machine learning workflows to provide satellite data products at scale.

Product Architect

2021 - Now
Space Intelligence, Edinburgh

In 2023, Wietze got the opportunity to visit Apple’s HQ in Cupertino, CA and present CarbonMapper at an ML conference.

Analyst

2020 - 2021
Space Intelligence, Edinburgh

Delivered various CarbonMapper and HabitatMapper projects, predominantly in the tropics. Developed an interactive weighting app to create opportunity maps for natural capital.

GIS Specialist

2016 - 2020
Nelen & Schuurmans, Utrecht

Led satellite data projects for farming insights, mainly in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam. Founded a team enabling consultants to create open-source IT tools following standard developer practices.

Projects & Roles

Apple Restore Fund (2022-Now) - Deliver carbon maps for the Apple Restore Fund.
CarbonMapper (2020-Now) - Technical lead productizing, developing and delivering CarbonMapper, predominantly in the tropics.
HabitatMapper (2020-Now) - Technical lead productizing, developing and delivering HabitatMapper, predominantly in the tropics.
Heat stress mapping & interactive tool (2019-2020) - Implement back-end geodata model for online spatial planning tool, e.g. planting trees.
Reed bank monitoring (2019-2020) - Apply machine learning & deep learning image segmentation to remote sensing data.
G4AW - Sat4Rice Vietnam (2016-2018), IDSS Bangladesh (2016-2019), SmartSeeds Indonesia (2017-2020) - Provide a data integration platform enhancing decision support for vegetable farmers on climate-smart agriculture.
Impact-based forecasting for the Red Cross (2019) - Connect flood forecasts to dashboard for humanitarian aid in Zambia.

Skills & Proficiency

Geospatial data engineering

Machine learning

Infrastructure as code (Terraform)

Cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP)

Map platforms & APIs

QGIS & ArcGIS

IT Packages

  • mapper-project-template (2020-Now)
    • S. Viaene, S. Gajulapalle, A. Mackie, N. Huber, K. Bodolai, W. Suijker
    Template for internal science team to execute CarbonMapper and HabitatMapper projects.
  • space-intelligence (2020-Now)
    • K. Bodolai, S. Viaene, S. Gajulapalle, A. Mackie, K. Desai, N. Rajeev Saritha, W. Suijker
    Space Intelligence library for satellite data processing in distributed computing environments.
  • dask-geomodeling (2020) - Github
    • C. van der Wel, A. Verkerk, J.M. Vazquez Jimenez, R. van Rees & W. Suijker
    On-the-fly operations on geographical maps.

    Publications

  • Temporal and spatial aggregation of NDVI to predict rice yields (2018)
    • W. Suijker & E. Aparicio Medrano
    SPIE 10783, Remote Sensing for Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Hydrology.
  • Sat4Rice feeds Vietnam with geo-information (2018)
    • W. Suijker & A. Hoff
    Geo-informatie Nederland 2018-4, pp. 56-59 (in Dutch).