Marie L Urban

Bio

Marie Urban leads a multi-disciplinary research team from across the Geospatial Sciences and Human Security Division in reporting global building occupancies through spatiotemporal observation models influenced by local open source sociocultural and economics data.   This R&D led to the development of the first global probabilistic learning system to report building occupancy estimates with uncertainty captured at the data input level.  This type of research supports many applications including population distribution models, disaster preparedness and response, urban planning, and green building technologies. 

Originally offered an internship through an ORAU Post-MS position, Ms. Urban began her journey at ORNL in 2004 in support of the LandScan USA program through exploitation of open source data, spatial analysis, and remote sensing.  Through her involvement with LandScan USA, she was involved in the development of critical infrastructure within the US, support to emergency response modeling and analysis initiatives.  Marie continues to research and support development of new methods to report higher temporal resolution of building occupancy through use of social media and digital trace data.    

Prior to ORNL, Ms. Urban obtained her BS and MS at Purdue University in Earth Sciences and embarked in an offshore position as a Seismic Engineer in data processing for nearly five years.