Dr Laurent Durieux is a researcher at the French National Institute of Research for Sustainable Development (IRD) and Head of international cooperation at Data Terra. He spent most of his career coordinating research and scientific infrastructure programs dedicated to improve the access of developing countries to EO capacities for sustainable issues with a strong focus on tropical wetlands. He is a geographer and remote sensing expert specialized in transdisciplinary sustainable science using artificial intelligence applied to big Earth data. As SDG coordinator at the GEO Secretariat between 2021 and 2023 he managed and coordinated the GEO Wetlands Initiative which overarching vision is to deliver sustained information from Earth Observation to support the conservation, management, restoration and wise use of wetlands worldwide, as a contribution to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. He is continuing as a participant of this initiative. He is also the Science and Research trustee at the Weforest NGO supporting scientific impact monitoring on climate and biodiversity of mangrove restoration programs.
