About

Geospatial Information Expert – consultant, civil servant, Scientific Councillor, lecturer and supervisor (PhD, MSc, BSc), recently a Sustainable Development Officer with 25+ years of experience in the areas of geospatial, environmental, natural and social sciences/fields, Earth observation, hazard and risk management, project/programmes evaluation, etc. at 14 academic, governmental, NGO, IGO (UN) and consulting organizations in 9 countries. Simplifier and constructor of new algorithms. Able to build every aspect of digital, from the front end to the back end and everything in between. Career highlights include strong leadership (head of the dept., chief GIS). Fieldwork in ecological, archaeological, anthropological and geomorphological mapping, geodetic survey and humanitarian, in resource-limited settings. Designed and delivered courses in GIS/RS, cartography, spatial data and information quality, and digital terrain modelling. Documented innovative methods and technical solutions: [1] spatial data integration/conflation with semantic enrichment to reduce the cost of digital elevation model (DEM) up to 25-times, realized for the National DEM and implemented into the EU and Google Earth models; [2] geomorphometry based index for feature detection and recognition, visualization and photography enhancement, used in the Esri World Topographic Map; [3] methodology to pre-process any geospatial data with special tools to make them ‘analytics ready’, realized for the ESCWA Spatial Data Infrastructure and will be realized with ESA (€150m). Awarded with over 25 competitive grants including Skolkovo Innovation Center and Fulbright.

Skills

  • GEOSPATIAL

Experience

Tomaž Podobnikar

Work experience
  • Directly assist in the management of professional tasks within the scope of the work of the ministry and internal organizational unit. Participation and execution of tasks within the Recovery and Resilience Plan “Green Slovenian Location Framework”. Leading project teams, developing systemic solutions and complex documents, handling demanding tasks, and leading top project teams.

Tomaž Podobnikar

Work experience
  • Sustainable Development Officer, Chief GIS, Geospatial Information Officer at   United Nations
  • ESCWA, Lebanon: Worked for [1] Information Communication Technology Section (ICTS); [2] Statistics, Information Society and Technology dept., and [3] Climate Change and Natural Resource (Arab Centre for Climate Change Policies) dept. Proposed conceptual frameworks for humanitarian risk models, and spatial data infrastructure. Developed optimized solutions for several projects aimed at providing state-of-the-art enterprise geospatial information systems solutions. Provided technical solutions for organizational GIS and remote sensing software. Prepared and delivered training, lectures, and consultancy on numerous geospatial topics, from the roots of GIS to cartography, geodesy, photogrammetry, remote sensing, image processing, database development, spatial analysis, visual analytics, geovisualization, etc. Promotion of interdisciplinarity and cross-lateral solutions and systematic “geospatial reasoning”. Collaboration with UN-GGIM – Arab States and many other UN agencies, especially in Lebanon in the fields of GIS, EO, cartography and geodesy.
  • MINUSMA, Mali: Leadership and HR Management. As head of the GIS Unit, the FTS (Field Technology Section) took on the responsibility for the integrating gender perspectives into our work. Collaborated across disciplines with MINUSMA colleagues to achieve organizational goals, valued the ideas and expertise of others by actively soliciting input. Supported organizational decisions and shared credit for team accomplishments, while also accepting shared responsibility for team shortcomings. Technological Awareness: Employed an in-depth knowledge of the latest technological developments in enterprise GIS, image processing, the Internet of Things (IoT), GNSS, and web applications. Understand the applicability and limitations of technology in office work and keep abreast of available technology, and proactively seek to apply it to appropriate tasks.
  • Global Service Centre (UNGSC), Italy: Managed geospatial databases and provided enterprise geospatial platforms, solutions and services to clients. Outreach, business partnerships and partnership with field missions and UNHQ. Supported NYHQ goals for the “Cloud-first” initiative and managed cloud instances as per guidance from NYHQ and SGITT. Provided efficient project and service management. Complied with organizational security policies. Strengthened the institutionalization of FTS project/program management and associated governance processes.

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