People

Bernd Eckhardt is a Geographer focusing on Information Management (IM) during the last 10 years of his career. He studied Physical Geography at the Ludwig-Maximillians-University in Munich, Germany and completed his MSc in 1997 in the field of Remotes Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In 1998, he joined the European Commission as a researcher working on Crisis Preparedness Mapping at the Institute for the Protection & Security of the Citizen at the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. In 2003 he moved on to the United Nations and applied GIS & Information Management in the Humanitarian Crisis Response context for UN OCHA in Iraq, South Sudan and Myanmar. For UNDP he worked in Sierra Leone supporting the development of a National Mineral-Rights Cadastre. Since 2013, he applied GIS and IM as a consultant focusing on the development of Property Taxation Systems supporting Local Council Administrations in Malawi and Ghana. About 2 years ago he re-joined The JRC at the Bio-Economy Unit. His duties are the collection & value adding to official National Forest Inventory datasets from 39 European countries and to remote sensing based forest data provided through the Copernicus Programme. Such data and ongoing information products condensed therefrom, will build the information base for the future Forest Information System for Europe – FISE to be held by EEA, Copenhagen, supporting decision finding at policy maker level at the European Commission.