MOOC course on Remote Sensing & GIS for Urban Studies and Environmental Modeling

Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) under Indian Space Research Organisation, Department of Space, Government of India is a premier Training, Educational and Research Institute established for capacity building in the fields of Remote Sensing and GIS for urban and regional studies and environmental modeling. The Institute is running many on-campus short and long term capacity building programmes.

To further enhance the outreach of geospatial technology, IIRS (ISRO) offers Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) for national and international participants. MOOC is based on the principle of self-paced user centric learning and aims to link learners from across the globe with educators and provides user and discussion forums to support interactions among students in collaborative learning platform. IIRS MOOC aims to enhance the participant’s capabilities related to the use of geospatial and Earth observation technologies and its applications in various thematic domain. The learning contents for MOOC are delivered by internationally renowned subject matter experts and includes customized video sessions, 2D and 3D animations, SCROM packages, lecture notes and presentations as study material.

The advancement of earth observation has opened new avenues of research in the field of earth sciences. With the technological advancements in geo-information sciences, remote sensing has become an effective method for the detection and investigation of various urban and regional features. The remote sensing data acquired in different regions of electromagnetic spectrum whether optical, infrared, microwave or thermal region can be effectively utilised for number of application in the field of urban planning, regional level analysis and environmental modeling of urban areas. Its applications ranges from basic urban feature extraction to inventory and mapping of various urban features in the form of base map, land use land cover maps, green spaces to advanced high end modeling of urban growth, 3 D modeling, flood and Seismic hazard, pollution assessment, land surface temperature assessment and so on.

Objective: The overall objective of this course is to create awareness among users/researchers/professionals about the applications of geospatial data in various aspects of urban studies and modeling.

Target participants of the course: The course is designed for professionals engaged in Urban & Regional Planning; Students & Researchers of Urban & Regional Planning, Geography, Environmental Studies, Civil Engineering, Architecture, OR equivalent qualification/ specialization. This course is free and open for national and international participants.

This course will begin with overview of Geospatial Applications for urban and regional studies, basic concepts of master plan and smart cities and then proceeds with detailed lecture on various aspects of urban studies and modeling. There are 13 lectures scheduled approximately of 10 hrs duration. Each lecture will be of 20-60 minutes duration. The list of the reference material (that contains the journal articles, names of the books, and links to online tutorials) for each lecture will also be provided. The evaluation/assessment of each lecture will be done from 4-5 objective-type questions.

The topics which will be covered in this course are as following:

S. No. Lecture Title Faculty Duration
1 Overview of Geospatial Applications in Urban & Regional Planning Dr. Pramod Kumar 20 to 60 minutes
2a Elements and Characteristics of Master Plan Dr. Sandeep Maithani
2b Concepts and Components of Smart Cities Dr. Pramod Kumar
3a Base Map and Urban Land Use Dr. Kshama Gupta
3b Concepts of Cadastral Mapping Dr. Kshama Gupta
4 Urban Sprawl and Growth Modeling Dr. Sandeep Maithani
5 Assessment of Urban Green Spaces Dr. Kshama Gupta
6 3D City Modeling for Urban Planning Dr. Kshama Gupta
7 Close Range Photogrammetry for Urban Heritage Studies Dr. Poonam Seth Tiwari
8 Urban Land Surface Temperature Studies Ms. Asfa Sidiqui
9 Urban Utilities and Spatial Analysis Dr. Pramod Kumar
10 Urban Seismic Risk Assessment Dr. Sandeep Maithani
11 Urban Flood Risk Assessment Dr. Pramod Kumar



Dates: Course in English: July 06 – August 05, 2022

Language: English.

Registration: Please click here to register for the ISRO training. Registration is open until the day of training or until the maximum capacity of the course has been reached.

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Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)