The Spatial Intelligence and Environmental Analytics Lab is a research group in the Department of Geomatic Engineering and Geospatial Information Systems at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi.

We build and operate measurement infrastructure for marine habitats and biodiversity. Imagery and Earth observation data go in — satellite optical, spaceborne LiDAR, towed camera systems, underwater stereo-video — and out come habitat classifications, standardised biodiversity metrics, spatial distribution and hotspot analyses, and mapped outputs with documented provenance and stated uncertainty. The pipeline was built and published on deep-sea imagery from the Pacific and the tropical Atlantic; it is now being applied to Kenya’s mangroves and coastal waters. The deep-sea and coastal lines are two applications of one method, not two unrelated projects.

We design our outputs to meet the reporting standards that carbon and biodiversity markets actually run on, and we are positioned as a methodology and data provider — including upstream of the accredited bodies that carry out validation and verification.

The lab exists because of a specific gap. Biodiversity credit and disclosure frameworks were largely built for terrestrial ecosystems, and marine and coastal systems remain underrepresented in them. Kenya’s mangroves are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth and among the least well measured. Carbon finance already reaches coastal communities here through community-led mangrove conservation; biodiversity finance for the same ecosystems has no equivalent pathway, because there is no established way to measure it. Our aim over the coming years is to make SIEAL a leading source of GeoAI-based blue carbon and marine biodiversity intelligence for the Western Indian Ocean.

Infrastructure

The lab operates its own stack rather than borrowing one project by project. A GeoNode instance, backed by PostGIS and GeoServer, is our data-publishing portal, so that datasets and map services can be released with metadata and served to collaborators rather than emailed as files. Model training runs on an NVIDIA A30 GPU provided by the Kenya Education Network (KENET), with further capacity available on KENET’s Chui high-performance computing facility subject to allocation.

This is what separates an operating lab from an individual researcher, and it is the honest answer to the capacity question any funder or client will ask of a group this size. It is also a fair statement of the limits: present capacity supports model development, and scaling to repeat inference across multiple sites is something we would size and cost as part of an engagement rather than assume.

Funding

• Blue-BII: Biodiversity Integrity Index for Blue Carbon Ecosystems — AIMS Research and Innovation Centre & Carnegie Corporation, June 2026 – May 2027
• An automated workflow for characterizing marine biodiversity and carbon sequestration capacity of mangrove habitats based on Earth Observation: Mwache Creek, Mombasa — Kenya Education Network (KENET), July 2025 – December 2026

Get in touch

We welcome collaboration with conservation organisations, carbon project developers and researchers working on marine and coastal ecosystems in the Western Indian Ocean, and with intergovernmental, regional and development-finance bodies procuring technical input on habitat mapping, biodiversity measurement and area-based management — see Partner with us for what that can look like in practice. If you are looking to work in the lab, see Join us. Otherwise our contact details are here.