Laboratorio Dati Economici Sociali e Territoriali, LaDEST, founded in 2008, offers an environment for research and training on geography in the social sciences at the University of Siena.
We deal with a broad range of phenomena that take place in geographic space. LaDEST research themes include sustainable development, environmental monitoring, local development, landscape and political geography; more recently we are interested in volunteered geographic information, citizen science and digital platforms. The laboratory specialises in GIS, spatial analysis, (Big) Data analysis, data collection & visualization, social network analysis. We promote the development of spatial analysis methods and tools and combine them with mining and analysing spatial data, ranging from user-generated data (social media, location based apps, etc.) to traditional data sources (spatial databases, Census, surveys). The Laboratory advances the development and usage of open data and open source tools through education, research and teaching. We occasionally organise short courses and workshops on specific topics.
LaDEST has partnered a 4 year COST Action IC1203 ENERGIC (2012-2016) on the harnessing geographic information from the crowd (http://vgibox.eu/).
The laboratory is member of the transdisciplinary national project (PRIN 2017) on Short-Term City: Digital platforms and Spatial justice (https://www.stcity.it/).
LaDEST offers stage and training opportunities for students at the University of Siena.