Nikhil Desai
Impervious surface cover across the Barcelona metropolitan region, mapped on a hexagon grid

Nikhil Desai

Geospatial Data Scientist & Software Developer
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Currently
Aretian Urban Analytics

Senior Data Scientist, London

Research
Institute for New Economic Thinking

University of Oxford · Clean technology cost curves for UK climate policy

Nikhil Desai

I'm interested in making people's lives better by improving the cities they live in. I combine advanced ML, econometrics, climate modelling and complex-systems analysis to map how a city actually functions, then test what changes when you intervene.

I care about models that are interpretable, geographically faithful, and useful to those using them.

Currently a Senior Data Scientist & Software Developer at Aretian Urban Analytics, a startup out of Harvard Innovation Labs.

Selected work
City Digital Twin office and business cluster map
Aretian · Live platform

City Digital Twin, Catalunya

Geospatial intelligence platform covering 5,143 census sections across Catalunya: housing, economics, mobility and morphometrics in one map. Conducted the data science.

Visit cdt.cat
Side-by-side agent-based simulation of La Rambla
Aretian × Exea Impact · Live demo

La Rambla Climate Intervention ABM

A pedestrian agent-based model of La Rambla, Barcelona, running current conditions against a proposed climate intervention side by side. Agents seek shade during heat events, so adding tree canopy and cooling amenities changes where people walk, stop and crowd, and the dashboard scores the resulting drop in heat vulnerability.

Run simulation
Harvard and MIT co-authorship network visualization
Research · Network analysis

Harvard & MIT Research Networks

Interactive visualization of co-authorship networks across Harvard and MIT, exploring how collaboration drives research output.

Explore the network
Wind turbines across hills at sunset
Independent · Live app

Solar Valuation

This tool estimates the financial value of a solar power project by simulating thousands of possible future scenarios. Instead of relying on a single best guess forecast, it shows the full range of outcomes and their probabilities.

Open app
Heat Vulnerability Index across the Barcelona metropolitan region
Aretian · Climate modelling

Heat Vulnerability Index, Barcelona

Over two hundred thousand hexagons across Catalunya, each scored for heat hazard, sensitivity and adaptive capacity from more than a hundred data layers. Every layer stays visible, so a bad score can be traced back to exactly what caused it.

Read write-up
Opportunity hub pilot in Langa at night
Norman Foster Institute

Cape Town: Opportunity Hubs

Mapped access to opportunity across Cape Town's transport, employment and racial-segregation geography, then designed Opportunity Hub interventions at metropolitan and neighbourhood scale, piloted in the CBD and Langa.

Read report
Toolkit
Python R JavaScript SQL AWS GCP Google Earth Engine QGIS CARTO Causal Inference Neural Networks Remote Sensing

Working on cities, climate or spatial data? Get in touch.

ndesai.career@gmail.com
LinkedIn GitHub CV