Wageningen University and Research
Dutch public research university and non-profit research institute, ranked first globally in agriculture and forestry. Operates as two co-managed legal entities (Wageningen University and Stichting Wageningen Research) under a shared Executive Board. The Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing (GRS lab, led by Johannes Reiche) developed the RADD forest disturbance alert algorithm and the Forest Foresight predictive deforestation model. Not an EO operator or instrument manufacturer.
Wageningen University and Research (WUR) is a Dutch public research university and non-profit research institute, operating as two co-managed legal entities, Wageningen University and Stichting Wageningen Research, under a shared Executive Board. Founded in 1876, WUR is headquartered in Wageningen, Netherlands, and is funded primarily by the Dutch state, NWO, EU Horizon programmes, and private sector contracts.
WUR's earth observation relevance is concentrated in the Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing (GRS lab), a unit of the Department of Environmental Sciences. The lab employs approximately 67 researchers and focuses on synthetic aperture radar, time series analysis, deforestation monitoring, and tropical forest dynamics.[^reiche-2021][^wur-reiche-profile]
The GRS lab is the lead developer of the RADD Forest Disturbance Alerts (Radar for Detecting Deforestation), a near-real-time forest monitoring system built on ESA Sentinel-1 C-band radar. Associate Professor Johannes Reiche is the corresponding author of the founding paper (Reiche et al. 2021, Environmental Research Letters) and leads the Radar Remote Sensing team within GRS. Professor Martin Herold, also GRS-affiliated, contributed senior oversight to RADD development.[^reiche-2021][^wur-reiche-profile]
The RADD algorithm applies pixel-specific Gaussian Mixture Models with Bayesian updating to Sentinel-1 VV and VH backscatter, detecting forest disturbances at 10-metre resolution regardless of cloud cover, a critical capability in humid tropical regions where optical sensors lose coverage for months at a time. At launch in 2021, coverage encompassed the Congo Basin across six countries; the system has since expanded to 44 countries across humid tropical forest biomes in South America, Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Confirmed alerts (0.2 hectare minimum mapping unit) achieve 97.6 percent user accuracy and 95.0 percent producer accuracy in the Congo Basin benchmark, with 74 percent of core pixels confirmed within 24 days.[^reiche-2021][^gee-catalog-radd]
RADD alerts are available open-access (CC BY 4.0) on Global Forest Watch, Google Earth Engine, Sepal.io, and EarthMap. The World Resources Institute hosts RADD on its Global Forest Watch platform and co-facilitated the commodity-company funding coalition that supported initial development. Satelligence, a Dutch EO company with Wageningen alumni roots, handled operational scaling in Indonesia and Malaysia. The University of Maryland contributed as a co-author institution; WUR is the lead methodology originator.[^gfw-blog-2021][^wri-press-2019][^gee-catalog-radd]
Beyond RADD, the GRS lab leads the Forest Foresight predictive deforestation model and Reiche chairs the GFOI R&D group on deforestation alerts. Reiche also serves on the Sentinel-1 Next-Generation Mission Advisory Group representing the land EO community.[^wur-reiche-profile]