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PhD @ SIU · GRACE Downscaling · NISAR InSAR · Cloud-Native Geospatial · Host, Geospatially Africa

Iniobong

Building AI systems that monitor water and land from space.

I'm Iniobong Benson, a geospatial analyst and earth observation specialist pursuing a PhD at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. I build GeoAI and earth-observation products, working mainly in remote sensing and hydrological modelling. I also founded and host Geospatially Africa, a podcast about geospatial work across the continent.

View Projects → Geospatially Africa Podcast ↗

Tools & Expertise

01

Earth Observation

Sentinel-1/2NISARInSARGRACELandsatMODIS

02

GeoAI & Cloud

PyTorchxarrayDaskSTACAWSDocker

03

Programming

PythonRGeoPandasDjango

04

GIS & Modelling

QGISArcGISDelft3D FMSNAP

05

Hydro & Climate

Drought IndicesCopula ModelsFEWS NETSPI

News

2026 Began my PhD in Environmental Resources & Policy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
2025 Completed the GEM Erasmus+ MSc; thesis introduced the GHDI multivariate drought index for the Greater Horn of Africa.
2024 Research internship at Deltares (Delft) — a validation framework for Delft3D FM ocean models.
2021 Founded and began hosting the Geospatially Africa podcast.

Featured Projects

All projects →

Nigeria Drone Airspace Restriction Map

Nigeria Drone Airspace Restriction Map ↗

Interactive map of NCAA/NAMA-style airspace restriction zones for drone operators in Nigeria. Leaflet/GeoJSON frontend built with a data-provider architecture designed for a future FastAPI + PostGIS backend.

TypeScriptLeafletTurf.jsGeoJSONFastAPI (planned)PostGIS (planned)

Geospatially Africa Podcast

Active - 2021-Present

Geospatially Africa Podcast ↗

Founded and host a podcast platform showcasing African and global geospatial innovations. Built and maintained the website using Django, HTML, CSS, and PostgreSQL.

DjangoPostgreSQLHTML/CSSScience Comm

TourUyo: Web-based GIS Tourism System for Uyo City

BSc Thesis - 2019

TourUyo: Web-based GIS Tourism System for Uyo City ↗

Designed a web-based tourism information system for Uyo Metropolis using QGIS and Leaflet. Demonstrates spatial data integration for urban tourism planning.

QGISLeafletJavaScriptHTML

Selected Publications

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MSc Thesis · 2025

A Novel Multi-Variate Drought Index Based on GRACE TWS, Precipitation, Evapotranspiration, and Soil Moisture for Drought Monitoring in the Greater Horn of Africa

University of Twente / ITC - GEM Erasmus+ MSc Thesis, 2025

Preprint · 2021

Flood Susceptibility Mapping of Internally Displaced Person Camps in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria

Research Square - Preprint, 2021

Geospatially Africa

Latest Episodes

All episodes →

OpenAerialMap: Building a Global Hub for Free Aerial Imagery

Accelerating New Space With Affordable Satellite Systems - A Satellogic Story

The Intersection of GIS and SQL: How Spatial SQL is Changing the Game

From the Blog

GISPythonQGISSoftware & Tools

To Kart or not to Kart? - That is the Question

Kart is an open-source software project for data version control for geospatial data. The purpose of Kart is to make it easy to store your spatial data so that you can make changes to it, see those changes and push and pull those changes to other people so they can have it on their data as well.

7 min readRead →

DroughtRemote SensingResearch

What GRACE Gravity Data Can Tell Us About Drought in the Horn of Africa

How measuring tiny changes in Earth's gravitational field from space gives us one of the best tools for monitoring terrestrial water storage - and drought - at continental scale.

9 min readRead →

HydrodynamicsPythonEarth Observation

Validating Ocean Models with In Situ Data: Lessons from My Deltares Internship

How you actually check whether a state-of-the-art hydrodynamic model is telling the truth - and what I learned building a validation framework at Deltares.

7 min readRead →