Blog

Exploring Climate with GIS, and Data Science

Browsing for something specific? The archive lists every post by year.

The same thesis, in a different typeface
Data Science
Research

Rebuilding the thesis in Latin Modern took about thirty kilobytes of shell script, and most of it was not about the font. It was about making sure nobody could mistake the…

Benny Istanto
Aug 21, 2026

Two years, a full-time job, and a master’s
Climate
General
Research

The graduation letter arrived today. What the two years actually cost, and the slides from the three points where the work had to be defended out loud.

Benny Istanto
Aug 11, 2026

The thesis, in LaTeX and in git
Data Science
Research

I am not fluent in Word. Two hundred pages, a hundred and fifty figures and a moving bibliography made that a problem, and switching was the best decision I made.

Benny Istanto
Aug 6, 2026

The defence that reframed the thesis
Climate
Research

Passed, revision required. The substantive feedback was not that anything was wrong, but that the whole thing started in the wrong place.

Benny Istanto
Jul 31, 2026

What the reviewers actually said
Climate
Data Science
Research

Three reviewers, and the first one found something structural: my tables were scored against the thing I had calibrated to, which made the simplest method look best.

Benny Istanto
Jul 25, 2026

Published: the paper is out in Remote Sensing
Climate
Remote Sensing
Research

The paper is out in Remote Sensing. What it argues, where everything lives, and the one number in it I would most like people to take away.

Benny Istanto
Jul 16, 2026

Making research citable
Data Science
Research

The code and the data have DOIs. The paper does not yet. Which turns out to be the clearest way to explain why one identifier was never going to be enough.

Benny Istanto
Jul 2, 2026

NetCDF to H3: getting climate data into a join
Climate
Data Science
GIS

NetCDF is the right home for gridded climate data and the wrong shape for combining it with anything else. Zonal statistics onto an H3 grid turns a raster into a table you…

Benny Istanto
Jun 26, 2026

Measuring whether your own work reproduces
Data Science
Research

Claiming a pipeline is reproducible is easy. I put a number on it instead: 72.1 minutes, on a free tier, with no accelerator.

Benny Istanto
May 21, 2026

The dashboard nobody asked for
Climate
Data Science
Research

A static paper cannot let you ask a follow-up question. Thirteen interactive pages, and the three longest are all about the calendar.

Benny Istanto
Mar 19, 2026

Migrating a Squarespace site to Quarto
General

What the Squarespace XML export gives you, what it quietly drops, and the three notebooks that turned 132 posts into Quarto markdown

Benny Istanto
Feb 8, 2026

precip-index: fit once, not every month
Climate
Data Science
Research

A Python implementation of SPI and SPEI built for operational monitoring. The design decision that mattered most was refusing to refit the distribution every time new data…

Benny Istanto
Jan 28, 2026

Documenting a research project so someone else can run it
Data Science
Research

Fifty-four pages of documentation for a pipeline nobody has asked to use yet. An argument for writing it anyway, and for what the different pages are actually for.

Benny Istanto
Jan 15, 2026

Sentinel-1 flood mapping you can argue with
Climate
GIS
Remote Sensing

Rapid flood products from radar are genuinely useful, and every one of them contains choices you cannot see. After Cyclone Senyar I wrote a Sentinel-1 workflow in Earth…

Benny Istanto
Jan 9, 2026

csv2gpkg: 184 million buildings, 250,000 at a time
Data Science
GIS

Building footprint datasets keep arriving as compressed CSV with the geometry in a WKT column. Converting all of India took nineteen hours and never went above a few hundred…

Benny Istanto
Dec 31, 2025

Scoping a thesis: the questions I answer with no
Climate
Remote Sensing
Research

Closing the year on scope. Snow, sub-daily rainfall, event-based flood forecasting: three things people reasonably ask this method to do, and why the answer is no.

Benny Istanto
Dec 11, 2025

30 Day Map Challenge, 2025
Remote Sensing
GIS

Thirty maps in thirty days for the 2025 challenge, all made with Python in Google Colab and no desktop GIS at any point

Benny Istanto
Nov 30, 2025

The twenty-three hour day: satellite and gauge calendars
Climate
Remote Sensing
Research

Correlation of 0.20 between the satellite and the gauges. Not because either was wrong, but because we disagreed about when the day starts. Shifting the window took it to…

Benny Istanto
Oct 16, 2025

Global EDDI in Earth Engine, by precomputing the expensive half
Climate
Data Science
GIS

NOAA publishes EDDI from MERRA-2. Public daily reanalysis is now around 0.1 degrees, which makes a higher-resolution version possible, as long as you never compute the…

Benny Istanto
Sep 25, 2025

Why bias correction cannot fix your correlation
Climate
Data Science
Research

Two years of work, and daily correlation has not moved. It turns out it was never going to, and the reason is a property of the method rather than a failure of it.

Benny Istanto
Sep 18, 2025

The bugs that never raised an exception
Data Science
Research

Five failures from this project, none of which crashed anything. Each produced a plausible number instead, which is considerably worse.

Benny Istanto
Aug 14, 2025

Where the heavy-rain skill curve stops
Climate
Data Science
Research

The heavy-rain skill curve ends at 50 mm. Not because the code breaks, but because six records out of 5,899 is not a result.

Benny Istanto
Jul 3, 2025

Admin boundaries: drawing each border only once
Data Science
GIS

Admin boundary line files repeat every border from the level above, so a map layout draws the national border three times. A hierarchical merge fixes it, and the first…

Benny Istanto
Jun 15, 2025

Dry days and detection: every improvement costs something
Climate
Data Science
Research

The correction more than doubled the rate at which a dry day is reported as dry. The same change made the product miss more light rain. Both numbers come from the same line…

Benny Istanto
May 15, 2025

Forty gigabytes that cannot live in git
Data Science
Research

The code is eleven megabytes and the outputs are forty gigabytes. Working out which parts of a project belong in version control and which need somewhere else entirely.

Benny Istanto
Apr 24, 2025

The CNN that refuses to help where gauges are thin
Climate
Data Science
Research

A neural correction that switches itself off across most of the map, on purpose. Where there is nothing to check it against, it declines to make claims.

Benny Istanto
Mar 27, 2025

Earth Engine has no rename
Data Science
GIS
Remote Sensing

Renaming 10,958 Earth Engine assets, because a collection called ET0 stopped telling me which ET0 it was. There is no move operation, so a rename is a copy, a check, and a…

Benny Istanto
Mar 12, 2025

SPI in xclim: fifty-five minutes to twenty-four seconds
Climate
Data Science
Research

My first attempt at SPI with xclim took an hour to fit the parameters. climate-indices did the same job in a minute and a half. The difference was one argument, and the…

Benny Istanto
Mar 4, 2025

Word Clock
Data Science
General

A creative visualization that transforms time into natural language - experience time as spoken words rather than digits or clock hands

Benny Istanto
Feb 28, 2025

TensorFlow will not install, and it is not your fault
Data Science
Research

Five ways the install fails, one per platform, and the two escape routes that mean you may not need it at all.

Benny Istanto
Feb 13, 2025

EDDI, a drought index that never looks at rainfall
Climate
Data Science
Research

EDDI measures how thirsty the atmosphere is, using temperature, humidity, wind and radiation. No precipitation anywhere in the calculation. Here is what that buys you…

Benny Istanto
Feb 6, 2025

Two convolutions and fifty million parameters
Climate
Data Science
Research

A small CNN to clean up what the statistical correction leaves behind. Then I counted the parameters and found that almost none of them are doing the part I care about.

Benny Istanto
Jan 23, 2025

Linear scaling: start with the dumbest thing that works
Climate
Data Science
Research

Linear scaling is one multiplication per pixel per dekad. It cannot fix the distribution, cannot fix the tail, and is still the first thing I run.

Benny Istanto
Dec 10, 2024

Thirty-one metrics into one number
Climate
Data Science
Research

You cannot compare corrections across a hundred thousand pixels using thirty-one metrics. You also cannot trust the single score you collapse them into. Both are true.

Benny Istanto
Nov 7, 2024

NetCDF that other tools can actually read
Data Science
GIS
Research

Your file opens. That is not the same as being readable. A short argument for CF conventions, and for the one attribute I deliberately leave out.

Benny Istanto
Oct 15, 2024

Finishing the HarvardX data science certificate
Data Science

Nine courses in R, finished alongside a full-time job and the first year of a master’s. What the programme covers, and what I chose to do for the capstone.

Benny Istanto
Oct 2, 2024

The tail that quantile mapping flattens
Climate
Data Science
Research

An empirical CDF cannot map a value larger than the largest one it has ever seen. For heavy rain, that is exactly the range you care about.

Benny Istanto
Sep 11, 2024

Two ways to cut night lights into six classes
Data Science
GIS
Remote Sensing

Night-time light is a proxy for how safe a place feels after dark. Turning it into six comparable classes across a set of very small island states turned out to need two…

Benny Istanto
Aug 27, 2024

How to read a Taylor diagram
Climate
Data Science
Research

Three verification numbers plotted as one point, using a trick from the law of cosines. Useful, widely used, and quietly missing the one thing you most want to know.

Benny Istanto
Jul 30, 2024

Correct the parameters, not the data
Climate
Data Science
GIS
Research

The reference grid is five times coarser than the product being corrected. Regridding the rainfall is the obvious fix and the wrong one.

Benny Istanto
Jun 27, 2024

Rainfall to flood probability: two numbers decide everything
Climate
Data Science

A logistic model turns rainfall into a flood probability using a slope and an intercept. Plotting five plausible parameter sets against the same storm gives answers from 15%…

Benny Istanto
Jun 25, 2024

xkcd style for Country map
General
GIS

Rendering a country map in xkcd style with Python, with the plotting code kept in a Gist

Benny Istanto
May 25, 2024

xkcd style for LSEQM illustration
General
Climate

Drawing the linear scaling and empirical quantile mapping (LSEQM) bias correction steps in xkcd style, with the plotting code in a Gist

Benny Istanto
May 23, 2024

Skip PEARSON fitting on climate-indices python package
Remote Sensing
Climate

How to skip the Pearson fitting step in the climate-indices Python package, with the code kept in a Gist

Benny Istanto
May 3, 2024

Utilizing CUDA
General

This week I try to utilize CUDA on my desktop, to support the upcoming activities on heavy geospatial and climate analytics

Benny Istanto
Apr 16, 2024

Three datasets, three different truths
Climate
Remote Sensing
Research

Before correcting a satellite rainfall product you have to pick something to correct it towards. Every candidate is wrong, and they are wrong in different ways.

Benny Istanto
Apr 9, 2024

L-moments, and why ordinary moments let you down
Climate
Data Science
Research

Fitting a distribution to a short, skewed rainfall sample. One freak day can quadruple your skewness estimate, and there is a well-established way to stop it.

Benny Istanto
Mar 19, 2024

Ten days: why the dekad is the right time step
Climate
Research

Fitting a rainfall correction needs a time window. A year washes out the monsoon, a day has no sample, a month smears the onset. Ten days is the compromise.

Benny Istanto
Feb 20, 2024

Why Indonesia is the hardest place on earth to measure rain
Climate
Remote Sensing
Research

Convective rain, three time zones, and a gauge network that thins out going east. Notes on why satellite rainfall and rain gauges disagree here more than they should.

Benny Istanto
Feb 6, 2024

Two kinds of zonal statistics in Earth Engine
Data Science
GIS
Remote Sensing

Averaging a raster inside a boundary and counting land cover classes inside a boundary are both called zonal statistics, and they need different reducers. Here is both, in…

Benny Istanto
Jan 26, 2024

Maximizing Thinkpad T14 Gen 2 AMD
General

Upgrading a second-hand ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 AMD with a 4K screen, more memory, a bigger SSD and a WWAN card, my second ThinkPad after the T480

Benny Istanto
Jan 25, 2024

Drought Propagation
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Tracing how meteorological drought (SPI) propagates into hydrological drought (SSI) across Indonesia, using lagged correlation at the pixel level

Benny Istanto
Jan 24, 2024

Firmware upgrade on Thuraya SatSleeve for iPhone
General

Fixing the intermittent bluetooth and GPS connection on a legacy Thuraya SatSleeve for iPhone with the v3.0.1 firmware upgrade

Benny Istanto
Jan 3, 2024

Hourly Humidity Data
Remote Sensing
Climate

Working through Teten’s formula with Buck’s parameters, Alduchov and Eskridge, and Clausius-Clapeyron to get hourly humidity data from 1950 to the present

Benny Istanto
Oct 15, 2023

Annual maximum daily rainfall, and the day it fell
Climate
Data Science
GIS

Two output rasters from 365 daily ones: the wettest value each pixel saw, and the day of year it happened. One boolean mask does both, and it never holds more than one…

Benny Istanto
Sep 7, 2023

A certified GISP
General

I am now a certified GIS Professional (GISP), recognised by the GIS Certification Institute

Benny Istanto
Aug 25, 2023

Monthly mosaic of modified Radar Vegetation Index
Remote Sensing

Extending the modified Radar Vegetation Index from dekadal to monthly mosaics, because Sentinel-1 coverage outside Europe is too sparse for a dekad

Benny Istanto
Aug 24, 2023

Parsing BMKG’s daily climate data
Climate

Parsing the daily climate data you get out of BMKG Data Online into something usable, then counting how much of it is actually missing

Benny Istanto
Aug 22, 2023

SPI-based drought characteristics
Remote Sensing
GIS
Climate

Deriving drought duration, severity and intensity from the Standardized Precipitation Index using run theory

Benny Istanto
Aug 11, 2023

Fourier regression model to generate monthly to daily temperature data
Research
Climate

The Fourier regression model has been proven to be a highly effective tool for generating daily time series from monthly temperature data

Benny Istanto
Jul 2, 2023

Regression analysis with dummy variables
Data Science
Climate

This exercise aims to determine the best reduced model (RM) in regression analysis with dummy variables from annual rainfall data and altitude data in three different regions

Benny Istanto
Jun 16, 2023

Sentinel-1 modified Radar Vegetation Index
Remote Sensing

A Google Earth Engine script for the Sentinel-1 modified Radar Vegetation Index, written for the Ukraine response and published as a GOST public good

Benny Istanto
Jun 14, 2023

Second-order Markov chain model to generate time series of occurrence and rainfall
Research
Climate

In the realm of meteorological studies, the use of statistical models is pivotal for understanding and predicting various weather phenomena

Benny Istanto
May 26, 2023

Impact of climate change in cities
Research
Climate

A new World Bank report is launched, in which I had the opportunity to contribute the analysis

Benny Istanto
May 25, 2023

Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) for Flood Risk Assessment
Data Science
Climate

1 Implementation In the implementation phase of this analysis, we utilized Python and the Scikit-Fuzzy library to develop a fuzzy logic-based flood risk assessment model

Benny Istanto
Apr 15, 2023

Visualising the WRF output
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

1 Introduction The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is a powerful numerical weather prediction system used to simulate atmospheric phenomena at various scales

Benny Istanto
Apr 1, 2023

Monitoring dry and wet season in South Sudan
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

My contribution to the World Bank publication Rising from the Depths: Water Security and Fragility in South Sudan, on monitoring the dry and wet seasons

Benny Istanto
Mar 29, 2023

PyCPT for Subseasonal Forecasts in Indonesia
Climate
Remote Sensing
Research

PyCPT is a Python library for statistical analysis and forecasting of climate data

Benny Istanto
Mar 15, 2023

Experimental climatological rainfall zone
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Climatological rainfall zones represent distinct areas with different rainfall patterns

Benny Istanto
Mar 7, 2023

PyCPT config and notebook
Climate
Remote Sensing
Research

How to set up and configure PyCPT s2sv1.92 and seav1.92, the Python interface to IRI’s Climate Predictability Tool, for forecasting in Indonesia

Benny Istanto
Mar 6, 2023

Unit Hydrographs
Climate

Unit hydrographs are a fundamental tool in the analysis of floods and their impacts on watersheds

Benny Istanto
Feb 28, 2023

SBR Market Day 2023: Demon Slayer colours on canvas
General

My fourth-grade daughter turned her love of Demon Slayer into a market day business for the IB Primary Years Programme at Sekolah Bogor Raya

Benny Istanto
Feb 15, 2023

Install the WRF Model in WSL2
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Installing the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model under WSL2 on Windows, with the full steps kept in a Gist

Benny Istanto
Feb 10, 2023

Descriptive statistics analysis using climate data
Remote Sensing
Climate

Climate is a complex system that is affected by a variety of factors, including atmospheric composition, solar radiation, and ocean currents

Benny Istanto
Jan 31, 2023

History of climate modeling
Research
Climate

How climate modeling developed from the late 19th century onward, with a reading list of the papers and web resources that trace the story

Benny Istanto
Jan 28, 2023

Heat wave duration index
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Calculating the heat wave duration index (HWDI) recommended by the IPCC, using the WMO definition of five or more consecutive days above the average maximum by 5°C

Benny Istanto
Aug 3, 2022

Maximizing Thinkpad T480
General

I never owned a Thinkpad before, but I used Thinkpad since 2008, T400 version from my office, and every 2-3 years got upgrade to the latest

Benny Istanto
May 1, 2022

Batch task execution in Google Earth Engine Code Editor
Remote Sensing

How to export an entire ImageCollection from the Google Earth Engine Code Editor in one go, instead of clicking through every single date by hand

Benny Istanto
Mar 19, 2022

MODIS LST Explorer
Remote Sensing
Climate

Recently I worked on utilising daily MODIS LST (MOD11A1) to calculate number of day in a year with LST exceeding 35degC

Benny Istanto
Feb 17, 2022

How’s 2021 rainfall in Indonesia?
Remote Sensing
Climate

Looking back at Indonesia’s 2021 rainfall through GPM IMERG, and what the year’s totals and anomalies actually show

Benny Istanto
Jan 2, 2022

Mean annual temperature and number of hot days in a year
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Using MODIS daily land surface temperature from 2000 to 2020 in Google Earth Engine to map mean annual temperature and count hot days per year

Benny Istanto
Dec 11, 2021

TerraClimate and Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Last month, I have a chance to give a try TerraClimate data from Climatology Lab of University of California, Merced

Benny Istanto
Nov 14, 2021

Batch download 30-minutes rainfall data from multiple coordinates and dates
Remote Sensing
Research

The need for the availability of 30-minutes rainfall time series data are very crucial, especially when we are working on the study of extreme rainfall induced landslide

Benny Istanto
Sep 1, 2021

Upgrade the MBP MC724 Early 2011
General

Ten years with the same MacBook Pro 13-inch Early 2011, and what upgrading it bought me instead of replacing it

Benny Istanto
Aug 30, 2021

QGIS auto mapping
GIS

This week I learned a new thing, create a layout and automatically export to PNG files from various datasets using QGIS

Benny Istanto
Aug 24, 2021

Farewell WFP!
General

As you may have heard, I’m moving on to the World Bank HQ after 9 wonderful years at the UN WFP in Indonesia

Benny Istanto
Aug 20, 2021

Visualize daily weather forecast from GFS using Google Earth Engine
Climate
Remote Sensing
Research

Visualising NOAA GFS daily weather forecasts in Google Earth Engine, which carries only 9 of the model’s variables but makes them far easier to reach

Benny Istanto
Jun 18, 2021

Ninth year and the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
General

Nine years with the UN World Food Programme, the year it received the Nobel Peace Prize, and why making maps turned out to be my ikigai

Benny Istanto
Jun 11, 2021

HP CLJ Pro MFP M181fw supply error message
General

I bought printer HP Color Laserjet Pro MFP M181fw and a set spare original HP 204A catridges not long after I started to work from home due to COVID-19 pandemic situation

Benny Istanto
May 25, 2021

How to get daily rainfall forecast data from GFS? (Part 2)
Climate
Remote Sensing
Research

Few days ago I wrote a post on how to get GFS data using GRIB filter and NCAR/UCAR Research Data Archive

Benny Istanto
Apr 16, 2021

How to get daily rainfall forecast data from GFS? (Part 1)
Climate
Remote Sensing
Research

Last week, Tropical Cyclone Seroja hit eastern part of Indonesia and Timor-Leste

Benny Istanto
Apr 13, 2021

Today - a year ago
General

A year since my office sent everyone home, and the arithmetic on what commuting between Bogor and Jakarta was quietly costing me

Benny Istanto
Mar 11, 2021

Calculate SPI using monthly rainfall data in GeoTIFF format
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

A full walkthrough for calculating the Standardized Precipitation Index straight from monthly rainfall GeoTIFFs, using CDO, NCO and the climate-indices package

Benny Istanto
Jan 25, 2021

Setup your machine to be GIS ready!
Remote Sensing
General
GIS
Climate

How I install and configure a whole geospatial software stack on a new machine, after years of untangling geo tools and their dependencies

Benny Istanto
Jan 19, 2021

GeoTIFF to NetCDF file with time dimension enabled and CF-Compliant
Research
Climate

A notebook that turns a folder of GeoTIFF rasters into a single netCDF with the time dimension enabled and CF-compliant attributes

Benny Istanto
Dec 10, 2020

A Reason For Being
General

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that means a reason for being, and here is my version of it

Benny Istanto
Nov 9, 2020

30 Day Map Challenge, 2020
Remote Sensing
GIS

For the month of November, Topi Tjukanov announced a 30 Day Map Challenge on Twitter

Benny Istanto
Nov 1, 2020

La Niña and Indonesia context
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

General sensitivity of rainfall in Indonesia to sea surface temperature (SST) changes in NINO-4 region

Benny Istanto
Oct 8, 2020

Kriging and IDW interpolation in GEE
Remote Sensing
GIS
Climate

I have automatic weather station coordinates from BMKG, along with example data on precipitation accumulation for 1 - 10 Jan 2017 in csv format with column structure: Lon…

Benny Istanto
Aug 29, 2020

Number of dry and wet-spell
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Now, it’s easy to get statistics information on AVERAGE, MINIMUM and MAXIMUM number of consecutive dry and wet days for a certain period using Google Earth Engine platform

Benny Istanto
Jul 21, 2020

Calculate SPI using CHIRPS data
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Calculating the Standardized Precipitation Index from CHIRPS rather than IMERG, for higher resolution and a longer historical record

Benny Istanto
Jul 10, 2020

Calculate SPI using IMERG data
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

A step-by-step Jupyter Notebook for calculating the Standardized Precipitation Index from daily IMERG rainfall data, and my first time using Jupyter

Benny Istanto
Jul 6, 2020

Monthly weather data from ERA5 and FLDAS
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Pulling monthly weather data from ERA5 and FLDAS through Google Earth Engine, so the processing happens in the browser instead of on downloaded archives

Benny Istanto
Jun 30, 2020

30-minutes rainfall and landslide research
Remote Sensing
Climate
GIS
Research

Jemblung Landslide - Banjarnegara 2014 Landslide occured on 12 Dec 2014 in Jemblung of Sampang village, Karangkobar sub-district, Banjarnegara district, Central Java

Benny Istanto
May 5, 2020

Vulnerable groups in COVID-19
Remote Sensing
GIS
Research

Mapping access to health facilities by travel time, to find where the groups most vulnerable to COVID-19 are the least well served

Benny Istanto
Apr 23, 2020

Historical flood occurrence
Remote Sensing
GIS
Research

Extracting the historical average of flood occurrence by month from satellite imagery, to add probability information to WFP’s VAMPIRE flood alert system

Benny Istanto
Apr 9, 2020

Covid-19 and WFH
General

I was in Vanuatu when Indonesia confirmed its first two COVID-19 cases, and days later the office sent everyone home to work

Benny Istanto
Mar 11, 2020

72-hours assessment workshop in Vanuatu
General
Travel

Trip to Port Vila - Vanuatu last week was my first trip to Pacific Islands

Benny Istanto
Mar 9, 2020

Paddy harvesting and planting area 2019
Remote Sensing
Research

BPS (Statistics of Indonesia) release: paddy harvested area of 2019 was estimated around 10,68 million Ha

Benny Istanto
Feb 6, 2020

Jakarta flood 2020
Remote Sensing
GIS
Climate

NASA’s GPM satellite caught at least 300 mm of rain falling on East Jakarta and Bekasi from New Year’s Eve into the morning, opening 2020 with a massive flood

Benny Istanto
Jan 2, 2020

Dry and Start of Rainy Season in Timor-Leste 2019/2020
Remote Sensing
GIS
Research
Climate

For the last 6 weeks, I am working with my colleagues in Bangkok and Dili to produces climate monitoring bulletin related to dry season in the last 2019 and start of rainy…

Benny Istanto
Dec 25, 2019

Visit to DLR and WFP Innovation Accelerator
Research
Travel

Shortly after finishing workshop in Rome, I flew to Munich to attend a workshop in 29 October 2019 with Earth Observation Centre at Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt…

Benny Istanto
Nov 9, 2019

Global GIS Workshop 2019
GIS
Travel

Right after following the innovation bootcamp in SF, I flew to Rome to attend WFPs Global GIS Workshop

Benny Istanto
Nov 8, 2019

SF Innovation Bootcamp 2019
Research
Travel

Last month I had the opportunity to attend 2019 WFP Innovation Accelerator Bootcamp in San Francisco, CA, USA

Benny Istanto
Nov 2, 2019

Innovation in humanitarian crisis meeting
Travel
General

Last week I went to Rome for a workshop and a task force meeting

Benny Istanto
Sep 14, 2019

Technical engagement workshop in Beijing
General
Travel

Last week I wen to Beijing for a technical engagement workshop on emergency preparedness and response at National Disaster Reduction Centre of China (NDRCC) office

Benny Istanto
Jul 27, 2019

Pixel-wise regression between rainfall and sea surface temperature
Data Science
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Pixel-wise regression mapping how sensitive Indonesian rainfall is to sea surface temperature changes in the NINO regions, and why that matters for food security

Benny Istanto
Jul 8, 2019

Summer in Mongolia
General
Travel

I visited Mongolia again last week during Summer season, it was nice

Benny Istanto
May 31, 2019

Surface buffer
GIS

The current state of a volcano is extremely variable with time and it has no meaning to define fixed risk zones around volcanoes (e

Benny Istanto
Apr 22, 2019

Extreme winter in Mongolia
General
Travel

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Mongolia

Benny Istanto
Jan 26, 2019

DSSAT training in Chiang Mai, 2018
Travel
Research
Climate

Training on DSSAT and MWCropDSS in Chiang Mai, using crop simulation models and GIS to study water and nitrogen use under changing weather and climate

Benny Istanto
Sep 11, 2018

Food accessibility for Rohingya refugees
Remote Sensing
GIS
Research

Applying accessibility modeling to the Kutupalong megacamp, to see how well WFP food distribution points actually reach the Rohingya refugees they serve

Benny Istanto
Jun 6, 2018

Visiting Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazaar
Travel
General

Visiting the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, to test the 72hrs approach against the camps’ exposure to the coming monsoon and cyclone season

Benny Istanto
Apr 29, 2018

Telegram group for GIS user in Indonesia
Remote Sensing
GIS

A Telegram discussion group on GIS and remote sensing in the Indonesian context, with more than 900 practitioners and 31 volunteer-led sessions so far

Benny Istanto
Apr 10, 2018

Climate expertise in the humanitarian field
General
Climate

Notes from a curriculum workshop at my alma mater IPB, on what climate and meteorology graduates actually need to be useful in the humanitarian field

Benny Istanto
Apr 2, 2018

VAMPIRE won 2017 Innovation Challenge
General

Today we celebrate VAMPIRE project, won the 2017 WFPs Innovation Challenge

Benny Istanto
Feb 6, 2018

OpenStreetMap Mapathon in Atambua
General

Running an OpenStreetMap mapathon in Atambua, Belu District, to build the detailed base map that disaster preparedness and response in the area was missing

Benny Istanto
Dec 13, 2017

OpenStreetMap GeoWeek 2017
General

November 12–18 is OSM Geography Awareness Week

Benny Istanto
Nov 24, 2017

Blending Satellite Precipitation and Gauge Observations
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

How to blend rain gauge observations with satellite precipitation estimates, using a regression model and kriging of the residuals, step by step

Benny Istanto
Aug 2, 2017

List of free satellite-based products and geospatial data on internet
Remote Sensing
GIS

This post updated regularly, so if you couldn’t find what you are looking for, comeback later or send me an email

Benny Istanto
May 16, 2017

Standing crowd density, 2 Desember 2016
GIS

Menghitung ulang standing crowd density aksi 2 Desember 2016 di Monas dan sekitarnya menggunakan foss4g dan shapefile jalan Jakarta dalam bentuk polygon

Benny Istanto
Dec 5, 2016

Satellite-based monitoring of growing season
Remote Sensing
GIS
Research

Climate and vegetation data sourced from remote sensing satellites are widely used for agricultural monitoring

Benny Istanto
Sep 27, 2016

How long will I live?
Data Science

Playing with Population.io to find my place in world demography - how many people I am older than, and how long I might expect to live

Benny Istanto
Aug 10, 2016

2016 GIS for Sustainable World Conference
GIS
Travel

Early this month I had the opportunity to attend the 2016 GIS for a Sustainable World Conference held on May 2–4, 2016 in Campus Biotech, Geneva, Switzerland

Benny Istanto
May 10, 2016

So fun Aerial Bold!
Remote Sensing
General

Aerial Bold, a project that scours satellite imagery for the human-built letters of the world and turns them into a usable font

Benny Istanto
Apr 2, 2016

2015 ESRI User Conference
GIS
Travel

San Diego Convention Center 20 – 24 July 2015, San Diego, CA, USA

Benny Istanto
Aug 1, 2015

OSM use case: accessibility mapping
GIS
Research

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free, editable map of the world

Benny Istanto
Dec 16, 2014

Kelas Inspirasi Bogor 2
General

Last week, on 9 Sep 2014 I participated in Kelas Inspirasi Bogor - part of Indonesia Mengajar activities

Benny Istanto
Sep 15, 2014

Menginstall “GDAL/OGR for Python” di Windows
GIS

Beberapa bulan terakhir saya banyak menggunakan GDAL/OGR untuk melakukan clip dan translate data satelit

Benny Istanto
Sep 11, 2013

Cloudless satellite image
Remote Sensing

Trying out image-compositing scripts that filter weather out of satellite images, tested on MODIS subsets over the persistently cloudy skies of Indonesia

Benny Istanto
Apr 15, 2013

MBTiles map
GIS

After few months playing around with TileMill and TileStream, I have created few MBTiles map using data from my previous and current project

Benny Istanto
Apr 2, 2013

Menggunakan fungsi ArcPy melalui Python non-ArcGIS
GIS

ArcGIS menginstal versi Python-nya sendiri yang tidak terdaftar secara resmi di sistem Windows tetapi pada kenyataannya dapat digunakan seperti layaknya Python melalui…

Benny Istanto
Jun 12, 2012

First day at WFP
General

Today is my first day working at World Food Programme, Indonesia Country Office and based in Jakarta

Benny Istanto
Jun 11, 2012

Banjir Tangse di akhir Februari 2012
General

Tangse adalah sebuah kecamatan di Kabupaten Pidie, Aceh, Indonesia

Benny Istanto
Mar 4, 2012

First try using TileMill and TileStream
GIS

Since it was announced through Development Seed’s blog, I am really excited to try TileMill and TileStream

Benny Istanto
Aug 10, 2011

ILO Basic Operational GIS for Road Assessment (Part 3)
GIS

This the last part of 3 series post on ILO Basic Operational GIS for Road Assessment

Benny Istanto
Jun 1, 2011

ILO Basic Operational GIS for Road Assessment (Part 2)
GIS

This the second part of 3 series post on ILO Basic Operational GIS for Road Assessment

Benny Istanto
May 1, 2011

ILO Basic Operational GIS for Road Assessment (Part 1)
GIS

This the first part of 3 series post on ILO Basic Operational GIS for Road Assessment

Benny Istanto
Apr 28, 2011

Back to Aceh (again)
GIS

Starting from 1 February 2011, I am back to Aceh again

Benny Istanto
Feb 10, 2011

Using Google to disseminate information during 2010 Tsunami in Mentawai Islands
General

Information Management in Emergency Situation During post-disaster emergency response, the role of information management is highly important

Benny Istanto
Dec 15, 2010

2010 Mentawai Tsunami and Earthquake
GIS

25 October 2010 - 21:42, that night I was in my room (Agus Salim stadium complex) working on map requested by Ignacio Leon - Head of OCHA Indonesia

Benny Istanto
Nov 1, 2010

West Sumatra Earthquake Response 2009
GIS

Almost 5-months I have been working for UNOCHA as GIS Officer to support earthquake response that happen in West Sumatra, 30 Sep 2009

Benny Istanto
Apr 20, 2010

Web Map Interface
GIS

This training was part of ADB’s ETESP Package 39 Part 2 project and was carried out last month, which was attended by staff from Aceh’s Forestry and Plantation Office

Benny Istanto
Nov 21, 2009

Landmark survey in TLS
GIS

Working for UNFPA as Census Mapping Supervisor in Timor-Leste, running the landmark survey and training field teams ahead of the 2010 Population and Housing Census

Benny Istanto
Oct 5, 2009

Potential soil loss
Remote Sensing
GIS
Research

During my assignment with ADB project called Earthquake and Tsunami Emergency Support Project (ETESP) - Package 38, I am working on development of potential soil loss map

Benny Istanto
Dec 25, 2008

Paddy’s growth and development model, and economic value of farming system
GIS
Research
Climate

Agriculture is one of the important sectors in Indonesia so that the various efforts related to development in agriculture continues to be done, especially paddy

Benny Istanto
Nov 30, 2008

Model simulasi penyakit busuk daun tanaman kentang
Research
Climate

User interface model simulasi penyakit busuk daun (late blight) pada tanaman kentang (Solanum tuberosum L

Benny Istanto
Nov 9, 2008

GIS for immunization activities
GIS

In the last 4-months I have been working for USAID funded project as a GIS Consultant on Immunization for 64 districts in 7 provinces in Indonesia

Benny Istanto
Dec 15, 2007

Automatic Coordinate Register System
Remote Sensing

Image registration is the process of transforming different sets of data into one coordinate system

Benny Istanto
Feb 10, 2007

Jacub Rais Award
Remote Sensing
GIS
Research

Minggu lalu saya mengikuti Pertemuan Ilmiah Tahunan XV dan Kongres IV Masyarakat Ahli Penginderaan Jauh Indonesia (MAPIN), yang diadakan di Bandung, 13 - 14 Desember 2006

Benny Istanto
Dec 21, 2006

Sistem Peringkat Bahaya Kebakaran
Remote Sensing
GIS
Research
Climate

LAPAN secara rutin melakukan pemantauan Sistem Peringkat Bahaya Kebakaran (SPBK/FDRS - Fire Danger Rating System) berbasis data satelit

Benny Istanto
Nov 9, 2006

Numerical random search
Research
Climate
Data Science

Estimating air humidity from minimum and maximum temperature records using numerical random search, for the many stations that have no hygrometer

Benny Istanto
Aug 12, 2006

Multi Person Decision Making
Research
Climate
Data Science

Using multi person decision making to combine weather predictions from several stations across a large area, where each station needs its own set of parameters

Benny Istanto
Jul 23, 2006

How to calculate the Fire Weather Index in Indonesia
Research
Climate

FWI Excel program add-in is a quick and easy way to calculate the fire weather index into a table in Microsoft Excel, hereinafter known as XLFWI add-ins

Benny Istanto
Jul 20, 2006

Sarjana Meteorologi
General

Hari ini saya dinyatakan lulus program sarjana Meteorologi - FMIPA IPB, setelah tadi siang saya menerima Surat Keterangan Lulus (SKL)

Benny Istanto
Mar 10, 2006

Magang di TISDA, BPPT
GIS
Research
Climate

Ringkasan magang saya di Laboratorium TISDA, BPPT pada 2004, merancang SISR - perangkat lunak penyaji peta tematik curah hujan untuk Sumatera Barat

Benny Istanto
Jun 10, 2005

Termodinamika dalam pertanian rumahkaca
Research
Climate

Makalah berikut merupakan tugas dari mata kuliah Termodinamika di semester 4, dibimbing oleh Pak Hanedi Darmasetiawan

Benny Istanto
Mar 27, 2005

Satelit Geostasioner
Remote Sensing
Research
Climate

Mengamati bumi melalui satelit Geostasioner (GOES EAST, METEOSAT, IODC, GMS dan GOES WEST) tanggal 25 Oktober 2004, Jam 18.00

Benny Istanto
Jan 8, 2005

Model biomassa dan neraca air
Research
Climate

Model ini merupakan tugas akhir mata kuliah Model Simulasi Pertanian di Semester 6

Benny Istanto
Jul 8, 2004

Pendugaan deret hari kering
Research
Climate

Makalah berikut merupakan tugas dari mata kuliah Klimatologi Pertanian di semester 6, dibimbing oleh Pak Rizaldi Boer

Benny Istanto
May 22, 2004

Model pendugaan biomassa tanaman padi
Research
Climate

Ini adalah salah satu tugas praktikum dari mata kuliah Model Simulasi Pertanian yang diberikan oleh Pak Handoko dan Pak Yon Sugiarto

Benny Istanto
Apr 27, 2004

Menghitung radiasi matahari
Research
Climate

Mata kuliah Mikrometeorologi membuat saya dan teman-teman melakukan pengamatan cuaca selama 24 jam di halaman Kampus IPB Baranangsiang

Benny Istanto
Jan 3, 2004

Anak UMPTN memang beda!
General

Di kampus lagi sering ledek-ledakan antara mahasiswa yang masuk IPB lewat jalur USMI dan UMPTN

Benny Istanto
Dec 10, 2003

Mekanika - gerak dalam dua dimensi
Research
Climate

Makalah berikut merupakan tugas dari mata kuliah Mekanika di semester 4, dibimbing oleh Hanedi Darmasetiawan

Benny Istanto
Nov 25, 2003

Makalah Dasar Agronomi
Research
Climate

Makalah berikut merupakan tugas dari mata kuliah Dasar Agronomi di semester 3

Benny Istanto
Nov 20, 2003

Pengukuran Suhu
Climate
Research

Tugas mata kuliah Metode Observasi dan Instrumentasi Cuaca di semester 3

Benny Istanto
Oct 28, 2003

Menduga distribusi ukuran butir hujan
Climate
Data Science

Praktikum mata kuliah Hidrometeorologi tentang pendugaan distribusi ukuran butir hujan pada berbagai kondisi atmosfer, awal atau akhir hujan

Benny Istanto
Oct 16, 2003

Halo!
General

Hari ini saya memulai sebuah blog, dan ini tulisan pertama saya

Benny Istanto
Oct 8, 2003
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