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Florian Nachtigall

PhD Student
Technical University of Berlin & Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
nachtigall(at)tu-berlin.de


About Me

I am a PhD candidate at the Technical University of Berlin, supervised by Prof. Dr. Felix Creutzig, and affiliated with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). My research lies at the intersection of open spatial data, machine learning, and sustainable urban development. I am particularly interested in advancing open geospatial infrastructure to better understand cities and accelerate the transition to low-carbon urban systems.

A major focus of my research is developing large-scale open geospatial datasets and tools. I lead the development of EUBUCCO, one of the largest harmonized open building datasets for Europe, integrating more than 50 national and regional datasets into a unified resource for research and policy. I also contribute to the Overture Maps Foundation, where I develop methods to improve the quality of global open map data, and serve as an expert consultant to the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) on open building stock data and urban analytics. In addition, I contribute to the upcoming IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities.

My work focuses on making open spatial data more complete, reliable, and actionable. This includes graph neural networks for inferring missing building attributes from spatial context, machine learning approaches for large-scale geospatial dataset conflation, and causal machine learning to estimate the effects of transport and land-use interventions on travel behavior and emissions. I also develop global urban typologies that facilitate learning between cities and accelerate the adoption of climate solutions.

Alongside my academic research, I am available for freelance and contract work in geospatial data science, machine learning, and open spatial data.

News

Key Publications

  1. TR-D
    Built environment and travel: Tackling non-linear residential self-selection with double machine learning
    Florian Nachtigall, Felix Wagner, Peter Berrill, Felix Creutzig
    Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 2025.
    PDF

  2. CEUS
    Predicting building age from urban form at large scale
    Florian Nachtigall, Nikola Milojevic-Dupont, Felix Wagner, Felix Creutzig
    Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 2023.
    PDF Code

  3. Sci. Data
    EUBUCCO v0.1: European building stock characteristics in a common and open database for 200+ million individual buildings
    Nikola Milojevic-Dupont, Felix Wagner, Florian Nachtigall, Jiawei Hu, Geza Boi Brüser, Marius Zumwald, Filip Biljecki, Niko Heeren, Lynn H. Kaack, Peter-Paul Pichler, Felix Creutzig
    Nature Scientific Data, 2023.
    PDF Code Data Project Page

Other Publications

  1. ERL
    Refining urban typologies: causal insights into urban form, car commuting, and related CO2 emissions
    Felix Wagner, Florian Nachtigall, Nikola Milojevic-Dupont, Lukas Franken, Nicolas Koch, Jakob Runge, Rafael HM Pereira, Marta C. Gonzalez, Felix Creutzig
    Environmental Research Letters, 2026.
    PDF Code

  2. JIE
    Towards an integrated understanding of circularity, urban design, planetary stability and well-being
    Mira Kopp, Peter Berrill, Harald Desing, Aneeque Javaid, Alessio Mastrucci, Nikola Milojevic-Dupont, Florian Nachtigall, Jakob Napiontek, Hauke Schlesier, Mafalda Silva, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Charlie Wilson, Alona Zharova, Felix Creutzig
    Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2026.
    PDF

  3. TR-D
    An urban shared pooled mobility system cuts distance travelled by over 50%
    Alexander Schmaus, Felix Creutzig, Nicolas Koch, Florian Nachtigall, Nora Molkenthin
    Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 2025.
    PDF

  4. npj
    The impact of the Bangkok metro expansion via Big Taxi GPS probe data
    Eva Ayaragarnchanakul, Hannah Klauber, Florian Nachtigall, Felix Wagner, Jia-wei Hu, Felix Creutzig
    npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport, 2025.
    PDF

  5. npj
    Towards a public policy of cities and human settlements in the 21st century
    Felix Creutzig, Sophia Becker, Peter Berrill, Constanze Bongs, Alexandra Bussler, Ben Cave, Sara M. Constantino, Marcus Grant, Niko Heeren, Eva Heinen, Marie Josefine Hintz, Timothee Ingen-Housz, Eric Johnson, Nina Kolleck, Charlotte Liotta, Sylvia Lorek, Giulio Mattioli, Leila Niamir, Timon McPhearson, Nikola Milojevic-Dupont, Florian Nachtigall, Kai Nagel, Henriette Närger, Minal Pathak, Paola Perrin de Brichambaut, Diana Reckien, Lucia A Reisch, Aromar Revi, Fabian Schuppert, Andrew Sudmant, Felix Wagner, Janina Walkenhorst, Elke Weber, Michael Wilmes, Charlie Wilson, Aicha Zekar
    npj Urban Sustainability, 2024.
    PDF

  6. Nature CC
    Demand-side strategies key for mitigating material impacts of energy transitions
    Felix Creutzig, Sofia G Simoes, Sina Leipold, Peter Berrill, Isabel Azevedo, Oreane Edelenbosch, Tomer Fishman, Helmut Haberl, Edgar Hertwich, Volker Krey, Ana Teresa Lima, Tamar Makov, Alessio Mastrucci, Nikola Milojevic-Dupont, Florian Nachtigall, Stefan Pauliuk, Mafalda Silva, Elena Verdolini, Detlef van Vuuren, Felix Wagner, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Charlie Wilson
    Nature Climate Change, 2024.

  7. TR-D
    Comparing urban form influences on travel distance, car ownership, and mode choice
    Peter Berrill, Florian Nachtigall, Aneeque Javaid, Nikola Milojevic-Dupont, Felix Wagner, Felix Creutzig
    Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 2024.
    PDF

  8. NeurIPS Workshop
    The built environment and induced transport CO2 emissions: A double machine learning approach to account for residential self-selection
    Florian Nachtigall, Felix Wagner, Peter Berrill, Felix Creutzig
    NeurIPS Workshop, Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning, 2023.
    PDF Poster

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