The jury commended his interdisciplinary approach, which bridges the gap between geoscientific Earth observation data and socio-economic data from social media channels and the internet. Specifically, in his work, Mast investigated how social aspects of migration can be captured using public text data from social media and news articles. By linking location and mobility information to the content of posts, he has succeeded in placing physical changes to the Earth’s surface within a socio-economic context. For example, in many African cities, it is evident that the density of tweets in newly developed neighbourhoods is significantly lower than in established centres – an indication of digital inequalities in urban transformation processes.
The figure illustrates the data used
– ranging from multi-temporal urban growth derived from remote sensing data and geolocated social media data – to analysed urban structural types and migration patterns.
The DFG has awarded the Bernd Rendel Prize annually since 2002 to graduates in the geosciences who have not yet completed their doctorates. The foundation was established by the family of Bernd Rendel, a geology student who died young, in his memory.
