Dr. Emlyn Hagen

Dr. Emlyn Hagen is the former lead of the USAID funded Disaster Risk Reduction Program in Afghanistan (2015-2018). He was the principal architect and manager of the Afghanistan Spatial Data Center (ASDC), the most comprehensive and advanced Geo-Information platform for Afghanistan. The ASDC was officially launched at the US Embassy in Kabul by the USAID Mission Director and the Minister of Disaster Management. The program primary goal was to provide support the National Security Council, governmental institutions, UN agencies, NGOs and embassies. Since 2007, Emlyn has supported the NATO CI Agency Geospatial Services unit as a scientist and consultant. He worked both in theater support specifically for Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan as well as on various NATO GIS/RS internal research projects. The design and execution of the “Afghanistan Flood Hazard Map” project was highly visible. The work was nominated for the World Future Foundation (WFF) award 2011. For 5 years Emlyn was the Lead Geographic Information Manager for the Shell Oil operations in Jordan. The 6-person unit provided Geo-services to 40 geo-staff located in Houston and Amman.  His work on "Communication Access and Proximity Maps" was nominated for the Shell CEO Global HSSE Award. This resulted into effective and safe operations for the 300 staff exploring on an area of 22,720 km2, the drilling of hundreds of wells and more than 4 million km driven without incidents in hostile desert environment. Additionally, he was the Geomatics Technical Adviser of a 1.2 Billion US$ project. Since his initial research at the DLR (German Aerospace Center) and CRISP (Remote Sensing, Singapore), Emlyn has continued to provide innovative GIS solutions for Security and Disaster Management. He has published two books and multiple peer reviewed scientific papers. Emlyn was born in Belgium and currently lives in Augsburg, Germany; he acquired his PhD at the NUS Singapore and MSc at the University of Munich.