Abena Boatemaa Asare-Ansah

Abena Boatemaa Asare-Ansah is a Geospatial Humanitarian Researcher and Doctoral Student in the XylemLab research group within the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland. Her work is dedicated to applying advanced Earth Observation (EO) and machine learning techniques to pressing global challenges and social good, with a core focus on food security in displacement-affected landscapes.

Ms. Asare-Ansah’s current doctoral research covers machine learning, AI foundation models, and food security, concentrating on mapping complex agricultural dynamics in Uganda. She is driven by the challenge of "statistical invisibility," recognizing that global models, often trained on Western, large-scale farming systems, fail to accurately capture the heterogeneous, small, and intercropped plots vital for refugee and smallholder survival. By developing innovative approaches to refine these geospatial techniques, her work aims to close a critical data gap by providing reliable evidence on who is farming and where crops are failing in fragile contexts. This ensures that humanitarian aid is effectively directed and that geospatial science serves as a tool for empowerment rather than exclusion. Her broader research interests include land use land cover analysis and the assessment of urban forests.

Prior to her doctoral studies, Ms. Asare-Ansah held significant roles as a Remote Sensing specialist at CERSGIS and a Faculty Assistant at NASA Harvest. In these positions, she was instrumental in developing land-cover products and creating AI-driven cropland maps across Sub-Saharan Africa. She has also contributed to collaborative research projects, including the NASA LCLUC project and has presented findings at the AGU conference.

Ms. Asare-Ansah holds an MSc in Urban Forestry from Southern University and A & M College, Louisiana, and a foundational background in Geomatic Engineering from KNUST, Ghana.