Samira develops innovative data driven geospatial economic approaches to address the double challenge of economic development and climate change within developing countries. She uses geospatial data science methods and satellite data to address some of the most burning questions economic policy makers face in developing countries in the era of climate change. Contextually she focusses on the effects of climate change within developing countries which includes topics as distributional aspects of climate extreme events, carbon constrained poverty eradication, climate justice in developing countries and just transition and economic decarbonisation within developing countries. Geographically, she is particularly interested in the socio-economic consequences of climate change in countries located in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and in the Middle East (MENA). Methodologically, she combines machine learning approaches for prediction analyses, traditional econometrics approaches for causality questions with satellite and big data and geospatial survey information to generate innovative data driven insight particularly for those countries that suffer from low data availability. Within the ECI, Samira is responsible for leading the geospatial economics workstream.

Samira is very passionate about working directly with policy makers. She works very closely with various teams at the World Bank, in particular with the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and the Sustainable Development teams to support them directly with novel geospatial analyses.

Samira is the Geospatial Economic Analyst within the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. Prior to joining the ECI in autumn 2022, Samira was an Oxford Martin Fellow with the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford. Samira holds a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Imperial College London, an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MA (Hons) in Economics and Finance from the University of Aberdeen.