GIS AND REMOTE SENSING

The main objective of the course is to provide expertise for the development of professional and disciplinary skills in new technologies for the land and the environment, by means of concepts, methods and tools for the modern management of spatial information. To this aim theoretical knowledge related to Geographic Information Systems and knowledge needed to extract environmental information from remote sensing images to be used in Geographic Information Systems will be provided. The course will also provide basic knowledge on the use of GIS software (e.g., ArcGIS from ESRI, QGIS) for the management of geographic data in vector and raster formats, the performance of spatial analysis as well as data thematic representation and print.

The didactic methods adopted include lectures and exercises in the computer lab.

The course includes 28 hours of frontal lessons and 28 hours of practical lessons (discussion of case studies and guided tours, reports, essays, individual or group research carried out by students, educational field experiences, seminars). If measures to mitigate the impact of the pandemic should be incremented lectures could be held online or in mixed mode.

Should teaching be carried out in mixed mode or remotely, it may be necessary to introduce changes with respect to previous statements, in line with the programme planned and outlined in the syllabus.

As a guarantee of equal opportunities and in compliance with current laws, interested students can ask for a personal interview in order to plan any compensatory and/or dispensatory measures, based on their specific needs and on teaching objectives of the discipline. It is also possible to ask the departmental contacts of CInAP (Center for Active and Participatory Integration - Services for Disabilities and/or DSAs), in the persons of professors Giovanna Tropea Garzia and Anna De Angelis.

Notes on cartographic representation. Introduction to GIS: definitions, components, functions. Devices and file types in GIS. The data and data sources in GIS. The scale in GIS. The concept of georeferencing. The data model. The concept of topology. The DBMS. The analysis of the data. Spatial analysis and analysis based on attributes. The thematic representation. Practice using ArcGIS and QGIS: file management commands, commands to change settings, control data management, and attributes; management commands operations on the data, commands related to data analysis, controls related to thematic classifications of data, display commands, thematic data, commands related to printing data. Remote sensing: concepts, principles and definitions; sensors and satellites; notes on visual interpretation and image processing.

1. Liu J.G., Mason P.J. 2009. Image Processing and GIS for Remote Sensing: Techniques and Applications. Wiley Blackwell.
2. Emanuela Caiaffa. 2012. ECDL GIS. La rappresentazione cartografica e i fondamenti del GIS. McGraw-Hill
3. Niccolò Dainelli. 2011. L’osservazione della Terra – Telerilevamento. Dario Flaccovio Editore.
4. ArcGIS (ESRI) Handbook