Giulia Benati

I hold a Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Urban Planning and recently completed my PhD at La Sapienza University of Rome. My thesis, titled «Ecosystem Services of Urban Green Spaces: Integrating Social Media Data and Physical Models for a Social-Ecological Urban Planning», received a Doctor Europaeus mention in collaboration with ICTA-UAB in Barcelona. My main areas of expertise include urban planning, ecosystem services, environmental modeling, GIS analysis.

In the BIG 5 Project, as a postdoctoral researcher, I aim to contribute to various aspects of the research. I will offer theoretical insights to help shape the conceptual framework of the project, drawing on my previous research in urban ecosystem services, nature-based solutions, and the use of social media to assess the perceived quality of nature. I will also work on text mining and semantic analysis of social media data to explore public perceptions of urban nature, tasks that I have previously applied in past research projects and in a scientific article. This experience will help identify relevant patterns in how people engage with and perceive nature. I will be involved in the methodological development, ensuring that the research approaches we use are appropriate and well-suited to the project’s needs. With my experience in spatial analysis using GIS, I hope to assist in interpreting and visualizing spatial data to better understand spatial processes.