01
Geospatial & Data Engineering
Connect source data to dependable spatial systems through batch and streaming pipelines, SQL, ETL/ELT, Spark, PostGIS, enterprise GIS, and automated QA/QC.
Reliable data foundations
Raleigh, North Carolina
Godwin Etim Akpan.
Geospatial & Data Engineer
GeoAI · Spatial Data Systems · Cloud & Security
Trusted data systems.
Better decisions.
I build reliable, secure data and geospatial systems that transform complex information into actionable intelligence—combining data engineering, enterprise GIS, GeoAI, cloud infrastructure, and security-aware design.
Explore the GeoAI surveillance demoData · Place · Impact
10+Years professional experience
6,000+Maps, dashboards & products
400+Professionals trained
10+Peer-reviewed publications
01 / About
One connected practice.
From data to decisions.
My work in public-health surveillance and GIS began in 2014 supporting Ebola response in Nigeria, followed by an African Union deployment to Liberia. Since then, I’ve built a foundation in geospatial and data engineering, connecting data quality, pipelines, databases, spatial analysis, models, and maps to the decisions they need to support.
Today, I specialize in GeoAI and spatial intelligence, shaped by experience across public-health surveillance, emergency response, environmental GIS, and applied research. My growing capabilities in cloud, Linux, automation, and security strengthen how I build, monitor, and govern the systems behind that intelligence.
My ongoing contract work extends that practice into geospatial AI review and quality assurance. Separately, I developed and evaluated a synthetic geospatial benchmark under a contract program; that development has concluded. These experiences complement my GeoAI surveillance research: building analytical systems, testing evaluation benchmarks, and reviewing AI-generated geospatial reasoning.
Public healthEmergency managementGovernment & researchEnvironmental intelligence
02
GeoAI & Decision Intelligence
Turn spatial patterns into decision support through machine learning, forecasting, spatial statistics, and explainability—grounded in public-health and emergency-response questions.
Intelligence with context
03
Secure Cloud & Data Platforms
Support data-intensive workloads with AWS and Azure, Linux automation, APIs, monitoring, access controls, and privacy-aware governance. Developed through research and hands-on labs.
Infrastructure, reliability & trust
End-to-end delivery
From source data to governed decisions.
Ingest
Validate
Store
Transform
Model
Explain
Serve
Monitor
Security & governance throughoutAccess control · Privacy · Quality · Auditability
02 / Experience
Professional experience.
From surveillance data management and applied GIS research to national geospatial systems, enterprise GIS, data engineering, geospatial AI evaluation, quality assurance, and benchmark development.
Sep 2026 - PresentRemote · Raleigh, North Carolina
Geospatial Reviewer — AI Evaluation & Quality Assurance
Independent Contractor — Geospatial Evaluation
Evaluate AI-generated geospatial analysis workflows and conduct quality-assurance reviews, focusing on methodological soundness, data provenance, spatial reasoning, data-source suitability, analytical completeness, and evidence-supported conclusions.
- Review geospatial workflows across disaster risk, environmental monitoring, remote sensing, accessibility, spatial exposure, land-cover analysis, and location intelligence.
- Assess whether datasets, spatial operations, analytical thresholds, computational methods, and conclusions satisfy defined specifications and acceptance criteria.
- Distinguish valid alternative analytical implementations from material workflow gaps, unsupported conclusions, provenance failures, and substitutions that change the phenomenon being analysed.
- Document review findings, identify analytical gaps, and assess whether outputs meet project specifications and acceptance criteria.
Professional responsibilities only. Confidential client tasks, individual evaluations, internal criteria, and platform materials are not reproduced.
GeoAI evaluationGIS QA/QCData provenanceSpatial reasoningAnalytical governance
2026Raleigh, North Carolina
Geospatial Benchmark Development
Contract-program task
Developed and evaluated a synthetic geospatial benchmark for residential-location inference, grounded in surveillance field experience and modelling ambiguous place names, conflicting geographic evidence, imperfect landmark reports, and location uncertainty.
- Built Python geospatial data-generation and validation components and reproducible evaluation workflows.
- Designed and executed controlled experiments assessing inference methods, uncertainty, methodological robustness, and reproducibility.
- Implemented automated quality-assurance checks and containerized validation workflows; completed a registered 30-repetition pilot and documented results against predefined criteria.
Development concluded after a registered 30-repetition pilot that did not meet all predefined advancement criteria. Implementation and experimental evidence were preserved; no further development is currently underway.
PythonGeospatial benchmarksUncertaintyValidationDocker
Feb 2025 - Jan 2026Raleigh, North Carolina
Wake County Building Exposure Analysis and Spatial QA/QC
Independent portfolio project
Developed reproducible emergency-management workflows focused on building-footprint processing, spatial QA/QC, topology validation, hazard exposure, and geospatial automation.
- Engineered repeatable spatial workflows for building-footprint and flood-exposure analysis.
- Validated geometry and unique building identifiers; reconciled exposure counts against a dissolved floodplain.
- Documented data-quality controls for reproducible emergency-preparedness analysis.
Independent portfolio demonstration, with a corrected and validated flood-exposure rerun in October 2026. Not employment by or commissioned work for NC Emergency Management.
Spatial ETLGeoPandasGIS QA/QCHazard exposure
Jan 2021 - Jan 2025Liberia
Geoinformation Systems & Information Technology Specialist
African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET) · Full-time · U.S. CDC-funded
Designed and administered enterprise geospatial databases, analytical workflows, automated quality controls, and operational GIS applications supporting Liberia’s national disease surveillance, outbreak response, and emergency preparedness.
- Integrated, validated, harmonized, and geocoded case, contact, laboratory, population, and environmental datasets for spatial analysis and operational reporting.
- Automated data validation, harmonization, spatial analysis, and recurring geospatial products using Python scripts and Excel workflows; produced 6,000+ maps, dashboards, and analytical products.
- Administered enterprise GIS workflows and supported the WHO-hosted COVID-19 Liberia Updates dashboard, reconciling published indicators, maps, and trends with authoritative source records.
- Provided functional and technical supervision across AFENET, the Ministry of Health, and NPHIL: delegated assignments, reviewed outputs, coordinated deadlines, and mentored GIS and geospatial data personnel.
- Trained 400+ public-health professionals in GIS, spatial analysis, and digital data collection.
Enterprise GISPython automationData integrationQA/QCTechnical leadership
Mar - Dec 2020Liberia
Geoinformation Specialist & Data Analyst - COVID-19 Response
African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET) · Contract · U.S. CDC-funded
Supported NPHIL and Liberia’s Ministry of Health through an AFENET technical assignment, connecting national COVID-19 epidemiological and location data with operational public-health intelligence.
- Designed geospatial database and processing workflows to integrate, validate, and harmonize national surveillance datasets.
- Managed source-data preparation, spatial analysis, validation, and update workflows for the initial deployment of the WHO-hosted COVID-19 Liberia Updates ArcGIS dashboard.
- Produced daily disease-distribution maps and hotspot analyses supporting surveillance, resource allocation, and response planning across all 15 counties.
AFENET was the contracting employer; NPHIL and the Ministry of Health were host and beneficiary institutions.
COVID-19DashboardsHotspot analysisData harmonisation
2014 - 2020 / Earlier experience
The foundation: data, place, and public service.
Jul 2019 - Feb 2020
GIS Specialist
Society for Environmental Conservation
Applied spatial analysis to land-use planning, environmental assessment, climate-smart agriculture, and conservation. Contributed GIS expertise to the Sustainable Landscape Rating Tool, supported participatory mapping and field-data workflows, and trained project personnel.
Environmental GISParticipatory mappingField data
2016 - 2018
Research Scholar - Remote Sensing & GIS
UN-ARCSSTE-E
Conducted applied geospatial research in Nigeria across disease risk, land suitability, and environmental modelling. Used cartography, raster processing, and spatial analysis to develop reproducible research outputs and contribute to peer-reviewed publications.
Remote sensingSpatial modellingResearch
Dec 2014 - Oct 2015
Data Manager - Ebola Surveillance & GIS Support
African Union Commission · Liberia deployment
Seconded by the Government of Nigeria to the African Union Ebola-response mission in Liberia. Managed and validated national surveillance and contact-tracing datasets, developed GIS-supported collection tools, coordinated spatial reporting, and trained local response personnel.
Surveillance dataContact tracingGIS support
Aug - Nov 2014
Data Analyst / Ebola Surveillance Support Officer
Rivers State Ministry of Health / Rivers State Government · Nigeria
Supported the Ebola Emergency Operations Centre with data cleaning, analysis, GIS-supported contact tracing, and operational mapping under WHO-supported technical supervision. Improved digital reporting and trained health workers in ODK and Epi Info.
ExcelODKEpi InfoOutbreak response
03 / Selected work
Data engineering & GeoAI in practice.
Architecture & engineering case study01Flagship GeoAI system
Privacy-Preserving GeoAI Health Surveillance System
An evaluated research prototype connecting governed data engineering, spatial intelligence, explainable risk classification, and authenticated decision support. Explore the architecture, implementation, and post-dissertation validation.
136 districts · 4,760 modelling observations. XGBoost ROC-AUC 0.920 in the original internal comparison.
Retrospective research proof of concept; not validated prospective forecasting or a production surveillance service.
02Geospatial benchmark research prototype
Geospatial Benchmark: Residential-Location Inference
Developed and evaluated a synthetic geospatial benchmark for residential-location inference, including Python data-generation and validation components, controlled experiments, and reproducible workflows.
The registered 30-repetition pilot did not meet all predefined advancement criteria. Development concluded; implementation and experimental evidence were preserved.
2026 · Contract-program task. Development concluded. Protected data and confidential evaluation materials are excluded.
Full historical replay · Processing and recovery03Streaming data engineering
NASA HTTP Log Analytics — Streaming Replay
A full historical NASA-log replay with durable event-time counts, complete batch metrics, and tested checkpoint recovery.
3.46 million requests · 35 data batches · Every final window reconciled.
Historical NASA log replay · Event-time processing and query observability.
Spatial analysis · Building exposure04GIS & hazard exposure
Wake County Building Exposure Analysis and Spatial QA/QC
County-scale footprint preparation, spatial QA, and reproducible flood exposure analysis with distinct building identifiers and independently reconciled results.
325,436 county footprints · 1,837 intersect mapped SFHAs · 0.56%.
Independent portfolio demonstration · Corrected flood analysis: October 2026 · Not commissioned by NCEM.
Historical surveillance coverage · All 15 counties05Public-health forecasting
Lassa Fever Forecasting — Liberia
Surveillance data engineering, rolling-origin forecasting, and county model benchmarking across Liberia.
15 counties · Three annual backtests · SARIMA national MAE 3.04.
Random split vs later capture · Reproducible evaluation06Distributed data engineering + ML
Distributed Security Analytics - UNSW-NB15
Network-traffic data engineering and reproducible PySpark evaluation, from source labels to per-class detection.
2.54 million flows · Later-capture ROC-AUC 0.979 · Ten-class evaluation.
HDFS ingestion · Hive exploration · Interpretable ML baselines.
Feature representations · Classification performance07Text data engineering
Large-Scale NLP & Document Clustering
Built a reproducible text-processing workflow spanning ingestion, cleaning, TF-IDF and Word2Vec feature pipelines, classification, K-Means clustering, and held-out topic evaluation.
206,959 headlines · 42 categories · 0.410 mean TF-IDF macro-F1.
Text representations · Supervised evaluation · Cluster interpretation.
04 / Secure cloud & data platforms
Engineering the systems
behind the intelligence.
Four practical labs connecting host observability, cloud infrastructure, repeatable delivery and cryptographic integrity. Explore the implementation, architecture and verified evidence.
System Health Monitoring
Monitor system health and expose failures.
Interval-based CPU sampling, isolated probe errors, explicit exit states and optional authenticated email.
Verified evidence
11 tests passed · Real local host alert verified.
SMTP delivery and Linux cron integration remain separate checks.
PythonpsutilLinuxSMTP
AWS Infrastructure Lifecycle
Plan, observe and retire cloud resources.
An EC2 lifecycle runner with account checks, restricted SSH, encrypted root storage and ownership-based cleanup.
Verified evidence
14 offline tests passed · Historical AWS screenshots preserved.
New AWS execution is pending; offline tests use simulated responses.
AWS CLIEC2IAMCloudWatch
Azure Static Delivery
From source control to a reviewable release.
A minimal static application, hosting configuration and deliberate GitHub Actions publishing.
Verified evidence
5 artifact checks passed · Source and deployment workflow supplied.
Azure deployment and public endpoint verification remain pending.
AzureGitHub ActionsCI/CDHTTP headers
Applied Cryptography
Recover the original. Reject the altered.
Isolated test keys, encrypted text recovery, detached signatures and a deliberate tamper test.
Verified evidence
4 real GnuPG checks passed · 5 offline failure tests passed.
Azure Key Vault is a separate plan; no cloud execution is claimed.
OpenPGPGnuPGIntegrityKey management
More documented work across Google Cloud, OpenStack, cloud simulation, and distributed processing.
Full cloud & security collection05 / Technical toolkit
Tools with a purpose.
Capabilities that connect.
From the data foundation to spatial intelligence—and the platforms that support both.
01
Core engineering
Build, connect, and validate the data foundation.
Pipelines & processing
PythonSQLPandasETL/ELTSparkPySparkHiveHDFS
Spatial systems & integration
PostgreSQLPostGISEnterprise GISArcGIS OnlineREST APIsSpatial QA/QC
02
Spatial intelligence & AI
Understand patterns, forecast change, and explain results.
Spatial analysis
ArcGIS ProQGISGeoPandasPySALSpatial statisticsRemote sensing
Modelling & explainability
Scikit-learnXGBoostRandom ForestSHAPARIMAProphetModel evaluationResponsible AI
03
Platform, reliability & trust
Operate the environment and protect the information it serves.
Cloud & delivery
AWS EC2AzureGoogle CloudDockerFastAPIGitHub ActionsStreamlit
Linux & automation
CentOS StreamUbuntuBashsystemdcronDNF / APTVMwareVirtualBoxTroubleshooting
Monitoring, access & governance
CloudWatchIAMJWTRBACLeast privilegeAudit loggingOpenPGPAzure Key VaultSplunkNessusNmap
06 / Education & credentials
Credentials & Selected Professional Development
MSc Big Data Technologies — Candidate
University of East London / UNICAF
M.Tech. Geoinformation Science & Remote Sensing
Federal University of Technology, Akure / UN-ARCSSTEE
Data & geospatial
Credentials & development
Earned credentials
IBM Data Science Professional Certificate
Spatial Data Science: The New Frontier in Analytics
Esri · Six-week MOOC · Certificate of completion
Cloud & platform
Credentials & development
Earned credentials
NDG Linux EssentialsCisco Networking Essentials
Google IT Automation with Python Professional Certificate
Google · Python automation & IT workflows
Security
Credentials & development
Earned credentials
CompTIA CySA+CompTIA Security+Splunk Core Certified User
Cybersecurity Analyst Training Program
Per Scholas · Hands-on security training
Public Health & Field Epidemiology
Domain-focused professional training
Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) — Intermediate Course
Liberia FETP · NPHIL, U.S. CDC & AFENET · April–December 2023
Introduction to R for Applied Epidemiology
Applied Epi · 40-hour synchronous course · Certificate of completion
Project Management in Global Health
University of Washington · Professional development · 7.5 CEUs
07 / Research
Research that informs practice.
10+ peer-reviewed publications spanning spatial epidemiology, public-health intelligence, and geospatial analysis.
Featured research
Privacy-Preserving GeoAI Health Surveillance Using a Hybrid Cloud Architecture
MSc dissertation research evaluating predictive performance, spatial intelligence, explainability, security, governance, usability, and decision-support value.
08 / Contact
Let's build better data systems.
I'm open to professional opportunities and collaborations in data engineering, geospatial engineering, GeoAI, and secure cloud data platforms—especially where reliable data systems support consequential decisions.
godwinea.ai@gmail.com