Žiga is He is mainly involved in environmental studies using optical satellite imagery processing and airborne lidar data processing, internet cartography, spatial analytics and modelling of natural processes, particularly from the point of view of how various human activities affect the environment, both historically and in the present. He has a particular interest in the protection of natural and cultural heritage. He is good at coordinating different specialisations, linking the goals of projects with the appropriate technology, developing bespoke methods and algorithms, and providing training on the use of datasets and digital tools.

He has a master's degree in Geography (2004, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana) and holds a PhD in remote sensing (2010, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, University of Ljubljana). He obtained the Zois scholarship for gifted students and his graduate thesis was given the Prešeren Award. He was awarded the ZRC Gold Award for exceptional achievements in science. During his doctoral studies he had a position of a Young Researcher and was funded by the Slovenian Research Agency.

He has expanded his knowledge abroad: at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom on a three-month study visit (2006) and six months as an honorary research fellow (2008). He also worked for a month as a visiting scientist at the Icelandic Institute of Archaeology (Fornleifastofnun Íslands, 2010), and at Historic Environment Scotland (2017). He was an Associate Researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology for three months in 2021 and for six months at the University of Vienna (2025-26). 

He has participated or is currently participating in two centres of excellence and other international and domestic, basic, applied, and bilateral projects. He has been or is currently the principal investigator or co-principal investigator of seven projects funded by ARIS, five projects funded by the European Space Agency, a project funded by the European Social Fund, two projects funded by the European Regional Development Fund, two INTERREG program projects, three projects funded by the Environmental Agency of the Republic of Slovenia, a project funded by the Institute of the Republic of Slovenia for Nature Conservation and a project of the Transport Infrastructure Ireland. He was a working group leader of the ArchaeoLandscapes Europe project (7th FP), with 27 co-organizing members and 51 associated partners. He works closely with the main national professional organization in the field of nature conservation.

He is a regular active participant in scientific conferences, symposia and workshops, as well as a lecturer at foreign universities in the field of spatial modelling with geographic information systems and remote sensing (40 invited lectures). He chaired sections and was a member of the scientific committee at several international conferences and symposia. He is a member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the Aerial Archaeology Research Group (AARG), and the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) organization. He was also a founding member of the first Slovenian-French joint European laboratory ModeLTER (CNRS (France) – ZRC SAZU).

He is (co-)author of more than 70 scientific papers and three books. His works have been cited (WoS or Scopus) 1463 times. He is also editor of the monograph series Space, place, time, published by Založba ZRC, reviewer of many scientific journals, member of the editorial board of Nature Sientific Data and Geodetski Vestnik, and evaluator in the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) programme and for the Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Awards. He is also one of the organisers of TRAIL (France 2011, 2014, 2016; Slovenia 2018, 2022, 2025), an international meeting devoted to the study of lidar applications in archaeology, conceptualized in an innovative modern format.

He designed the Relief Visualization Toolbox, which has proven invaluable for the analytical processing of airborne laser scanning data, as well as for related university teaching, professional training, and the creation of awareness-raising and communication materials. Its recommendation by the European Archaeological Council and mandated by Historic England since 2015. PTS Consultancy reports that, with its help, they have conducted 50 courses and trained over 700 individuals, ranging from 10-year-old participants in the Young Archaeologists’ Club to undergraduate and graduate students, established archaeologists from the private and public sectors, and volunteers from the local community, some of whom are over 70 years old. The RVT QGIS plugin version has been downloaded more than 100,000 times and ranks among the 30 most useful plugins for the most popular open-source geographic information system. He is also a member of a group developing ADAF – Automatic detection of archaeological features, an easy-to-use toolbox for creating predictions and training new deep learning models on airborne laser scanning data.

He is an associate professor of geography at the ZRC SAZU Postgraduate School. He also passes on his knowledge to younger generations through regular cooperation with the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the elite academic institution Geodata Paris, France. He also lectured at ERASMUS Intensive Programme and is a mentor at ERASMUS+. He was (co-)supervisor of several master's and diploma theses at home and abroad. He was a co-supervisor to Žiga Maroh, who received Esri’s  best master thesis award, and to Liza Stančič, who received a cum laude for her PhD thesis. Six of the high school research theses he supervised won a national gold medal at the Slovenian Young Researchers Meeting. One was also awarded a first prize at the Slovenia from Space competition, and two at the International Competition of Research Projects organized by MEF Educational Institutions from Istanbul, Turkey. He is currently co-supervising four doctoral students.

• Earth Observation and Geoinformatics (research programme • January 1, 2019 - December 31, 2025)
• Investigation of microrelief structures with airborne lidar (postdoctoral research project • July 1, 2011 - June 30, 2013)
• The Chactún Regional Project: Study of an Archaeological Landscape in the Central Maya Lowlands (research project • January 1, 2016 - December 31, 2018)
• CEOIS – Customized Earth observation based information services (applied project • December 1, 2017 - September 30, 2019)
• SILIS - Satellite images for a Slovenian land information system (research project • April 15, 2015 - April 14, 2017)
• Automatic orthorectification service for very high-resolution optical satellite data (research project • June 17, 2019 - June 16, 2020)
• Automatic object­-oriented land cover classification of optical remote sensing data (August 1, 2014 - July 31, 2017)
• High-resolution drought monitoring based on satellite and ground data (research project • July 1, 2018 - June 30, 2021)
• Geospatial Information Technologies for Resilient and Sustainable Society (GeoAI) (fundamental project • July 1, 2025 - June 30, 2028)
• "Unde venis?" Unravelling the enigma of the stećci tombstones (May 1, 2024 - April 30, 2029)

• Student Prešeren award, 2004
• ZRC SAZU gold award, 2017