Magaly Koch

About

Dr. Magaly Koch is a geologist specializing in the application of remote sensing and geographic information systems in the study of groundwater resources and environmental change of arid lands. She is particularly interested in projects addressing global water scarcity and flooding problems as related to extreme weather conditions through an interdisciplinary approach. In recent years, she has become interested in studying climate impact on coastal zones and earthquake-related hazards. She holds a Ph.D. in Geology from Boston University, a Diploma in Ground Water Hydrology from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, and an M.Sc. in Geology from the University of Cologne. Dr. Koch is a Research Associate Professor at Boston University, where she contributes to the Earth & Environment department, focusing her research on environmental and geological challenges using advanced remote sensing techniques.

Research topics

• Geography
• Remote sensing
• Environmental resource management
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Environmental science
• Agroforestry
• Natural resource economics
• Ecology
• Cartography

Selected publications

• Mapping the Groundwater Potentiality of West Qena Area, Egypt, Using Integrated Remote Sensing and Hydro-Geophysical Techniques

  Remote Sensing · 2020 · 61 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  The integrated use of remote sensing imagery and hydro-geophysical field surveys is a well-established approach to map the hydrogeological framework, and thus explore and evaluate the groundwater potentiality of desert lands, where groundwater is considered as the main source of freshwater. This study uses such integrated approach to map the groundwater potentiality of the desert alluvial floodplain of the Nile Valley west of Qena, Egypt, as alternative water source to the River Nile. Typically…

  DOI

• War Related Building Damage Assessment in Kyiv, Ukraine, Using Sentinel-1 Radar and Sentinel-2 Optical Images

  Remote Sensing · 2022 · 40 citations

  Natural and anthropogenic disasters can cause significant damage to urban infrastructure, landscape, and loss of human life. Satellite based remote sensing plays a key role in rapid damage assessment, post-disaster reconnaissance and recovery. In this study, we aim to assess the performance of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data for building damage assessment in Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine, due to the ongoing war with Russia. For damage assessment, we employ a simple and robust SAR log ratio of…

  DOI

• Analysis of Land Use and Land Cover Changes through the Lens of SDGs in Semarang, Indonesia

  Sustainability · 2022 · 33 citations

  Land Use and Land Cover Changes (LULCC) are occurring rapidly around the globe, particularly in developing island nations. We use the lens of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to determine potential policies to address LULCC due to increasing population, suburbia, and rubber plantations in Semarang, Indonesia between 2006 and 2015. Using remote sensing, overlay analysis, optimized hot spot analysis, expert validation, and Continuous Change Detection and Classification, we f…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Usability of existing global and national data for flood related vulnerability assessment in Indonesia

  The Science of The Total Environment · 2023-02-18 · 17 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Regional landslide mapping model developed by a deep transfer learning framework using post-event optical imagery

  Georisk Assessment and Management of Risk for Engineered Systems and Geohazards · 2024-01-02 · 16 citations

  article

  Landslides are major natural disasters in mountainous areas, often caused by earthquakes and heavy rainfalls. Traditional manual delineation methods for identifying landslide features using optical imagery are inefficient, highlighting the need for automated detection techniques. Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have emerged as advanced solutions in computer vision for this purpose. Despite the reliance on pre-event and post-event imagery or various data sources like digital elevation m…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• US Egypt Cooperative Research: Assessing the potential of natural resources for land use planning and development west of Aswan, Egypt

  NSF · $103k · 2010–2013

• IRES Track I: Collaborative Research: U.S.-Indonesian Research Experience for Students on Sustainable Adaptation of Coastal Areas to Environmental Change

  NSF · $199k · 2018–2023

Frequent coauthors

• Thomas Schmid

  Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas

  45 shared

• Elena N. Naumova

  34 shared

• Ahmed Gaber

  Minia University

  24 shared

• Laurie G. Baise

  Tufts University

  19 shared

• Farouk El‐Baz

  National Research Centre

  18 shared

• Erin Coughlan de Perez

  Tufts University

  15 shared

• Sucharita Gopal

  Boston University

  15 shared

• Alexander Liss

  Paderborn University

  13 shared

Education

• PhD, Geology

  Boston University

  1993

Similar researchers at Boston University

• Benjamin Sovacoolh-143
• Ranga Mynenih-130
• Curtis E. Woodcockh-112