Clarivate has published the latest list of its “Highly Cited Researchers”. Geoinformatician Thomas Blaschke is once again among the 6,938 people from more than 69 countries. The citations of a researcher’s work by other colleagues – in addition to the number of publications in journals – are considered a measure of the researcher’s significant influence in their field.

The “Institute for Scientific Information” (ISI), part of the data group Clarivate, used scientific papers published and cited in the period from 2011 to 2021 for the analysis. Thomas Blaschke also featured in the period from 2010 to 2020.

Thomas Blaschke can be found in the category “Cross Field”. This category for interdisciplinary work includes people who have a strong influence in several scientific fields. He is one of 25 scientists from Austria in this category.

Blaschke, a geoinformatician, works on Big Data analyses for humanitarian aid, among other things. His research interests include the integration of methods and domain knowledge in spatial analysis and GIS-based spatial decision support systems.

Many of the most influential researchers work in the USA. With 2,764 researchers, they make up almost 40 percent of all researchers on the list. However, their share is falling, down from 43 per cent in 2018. China, on the other hand, is catching up fast, having almost doubled its contribution to 16 per cent since 2018. There are currently 935 researchers featured on the list. With 46 researchers working in Austria, Austria’s global share of the scientific elite is 0.7 percent. This has not changed since 2018.