As part of this year's series of LDE Thesis Lab final events, students in Earth Observation for the Dutch Caribbean closed their programme a few weeks ago with a presentation of their research and recommendations.
Earth Observation data is used to understand how our environment and societies change over time, supporting applications across environmental protection, agriculture, urban planning, and climate policy. It can be thought of as an additional way of monitoring our surroundings, from detecting plant disease early to identifying opportunities for solar panels on rooftops. Since December 2023, high-resolution Earth Observation data has also been available for the Caribbean Netherlands: Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius, extending a resource that was previously limited to the European Netherlands.
This lab, part of the LDE Space programme "Space for Science and Society," was organized together with the Netherlands Space Office (NSO), which hosts the national Satellite Data Portal, and in collaboration with the Learning Community Sustainable Environments Curaçao. Over the past six months, master students from Leiden University, TU Delft, and Erasmus University worked on individual thesis assignments organized around four themes: the social impact of Earth Observation data and how it can be integrated into local decision-making; business opportunities for Earth Observation-driven entrepreneurship in the region; the legal and policy frameworks surrounding its use, including international space treaties; and applied case studies using Earth Observation to strengthen ecological monitoring, public health, flood monitoring, and water quality assessment across the Dutch Caribbean.
As part of the programme, students also presented their research as posters at the CMEMS coastal monitoring meeting, sharing their findings with a wider group of scientists and practitioners working on ocean and coastal monitoring. This gave students the opportunity to test their conclusions against the perspectives of researchers and professionals working on similar questions elsewhere.
The outcomes and recommendations of the lab are collected in this booklet.
Read more about the lab here.
