Geospatial and Earth-Observation Intern

Organizational Context

The Environment and Development Division of the UN Secretariat's Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) is seeking an intern to support its programme of satellite-based environmental analytics for cities in Asia and the Pacific. This UNPAID, full-time internship can be home-based or located in Bangkok, Thailand, for 4-6 months.

Job Purpose

This internship aims to support the Environment and Development Division's initiative in analyzing urban environmental conditions across Asia and the Pacific using satellite data. The intern will contribute to critical research on urban heat, land subsidence, and air quality by processing and analyzing open Earth-observation data. The role emphasizes reproducibility and validation against scientific literature, contributing valuable insights for sustainable urban development. The intern will gain hands-on experience in advanced geospatial analysis, data preparation, and cartographic quality assurance, directly supporting ongoing environmental analytics projects and enhancing the division's capacity to monitor and address urban environmental challenges in the region.

Responsibilities

The intern will be responsible for assembling and quality-assuring satellite and geospatial inputs, including building download manifests, verifying spatial/temporal coverage, and screening for data quality flags. They will support the onboarding of new cities into data pipelines by sourcing boundary and exposure layers, authoring configurations, and running screening analyses. A key duty involves conducting validation and reality-check work, comparing derived values with literature, compiling ground-truth data, and preparing comparison notes. Additionally, the intern may support InSAR analysis for land subsidence, including coherence diagnosis and GNSS tie research, and prepare supporting figures and maps to UN cartographic standards.

Work Experience

Proficiency in Python for geospatial work (e.g., rasterio, geopandas, GDAL) is required. Working knowledge of GIS platforms (QGIS/ArcGIS) and remote-sensing fundamentals (optical/radar) is necessary. Familiarity with Earth-observation data platforms and InSAR processing is a strong asset. Experience in cartographic production and map quality assurance is desirable.

Skills

Python for geospatial work, GIS platforms (QGIS/ArcGIS), Remote-sensing fundamentals (optical/radar), Earth-observation data platforms, InSAR processing, Cartographic production, Map quality assurance, Reproducibility, Data provenance, Documentation.

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