Jeasurk Yang
Dr. Jeasurk Yang is a post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP), having joined in September 2024. He completed his Ph.D. in Geography at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in May 2024. His research centers on urban poverty and slum dynamics in developing countries, combining on-the-ground fieldwork—such as his four-months field trip in Kapuk, West Jakarta, Indonesia—with the application of advanced computer vision algorithms. These algorithms are used to detect slum boundaries and predict socio-economic indicators from satellite imagery. Currently, he is leading the SegSlum project with colleagues from NUS and KAIST, which monitors slum populations across nine countries to support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.
Main Focus
- Development geography, slums, satellite imagery, urban poverty
Selected Publications
- Yang, J. et al. (2024) Assessing climate risks from satellite imagery with machine learning: A case study of flood risks in Jakarta, Climate Risk Management, 100651, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2024.100651
- Yang, J. (2024) Waste accumulation in Jakarta's slums: Neoliberal flows of waste distribution, Geoforum, 150, 103994, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.103994
- Ahn, D., Yang, J. (joint first-author) et al. (2023) A human-machine collaborative model measures economic development using satellite imagery, Nature Communications, 14, 6811, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42122-8