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REMOTE SENSING FOR GEOSCIENCES AND GIS

Degree course: 
Corso di Second cycle degree in ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Academic year when starting the degree: 
2020/2021
Year: 
1
Academic year in which the course will be held: 
2020/2021
Course type: 
Supplementary compulsory subjects
Credits: 
6
Period: 
First Semester
Standard lectures hours: 
56
Detail of lecture’s hours: 
Lesson (40 hours), Exercise (16 hours)
Requirements: 

Knowledge of physics and geology is a suggested background requirement and, possibly, statistics. English language knowledge is a requisite as well. It would be useful to have attended before a basic GIS introduction.

Final Examination: 
Orale

Student evaluation will be based on a written test followed by an oral examination. The written test will be based on the theoretical content of the course. During the oral examination a hypothetical case study will be discussed with the student. An examination held in this way offers both the opportunity to test student’s knowledge of the course content and to drive the student to develop specific skills on a) analysis of complex problems, b) the development of new and original research approach and c) good communications.Both the tests will be evaluated with a mark from 1 to 30 (30/30).

The final mark will be obtained from the weighted sum of the three parts, according to the following:
Written test: 50%
Oral exam: 50%

Assessment: 
Voto Finale

Teaching objectives
This course includes an introduction to the main techniques of remotely-sensed data acquisition and interpretation, in particular focusing on environmental sciences applications. An introduction to GIS conceptual model as well as methods for spatial data representation and analysis will be offered during the course.
Expected outcomes
The student will be able to:
1. manage and analyze imagery from both active and passive remote sensing missions,
2. calculate radiometric indexes and build RADAR interferograms.
3. to handle vector and raster data in a GIS environment,
4. perform spatial analysis and interpolate point data.

This course is equivalent also for the first year teaching in REMOTE SENSING FOR GEOSCIENCES AND GIS (6 CFU). This course is divided into 4 parts. Parts I to III (for a total of 6 CFU) are planned for the equivalent course of REMOTE SENSING FOR GEOSCIENCES AND GIS. Part IV will be offered only for the students of this specific course.

Main topics are:

PART I – GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM – GIS (tot 16 hours)
01. Introduction to GIS (2h)
02. Data management and representation (2h)
03. Data analysis– DB & querying (4h)
04. Spatial analysis (4h)
05. Introduction to geostatistics – interpolation techniques (4h)

PART II – PASSIVE REMOTE SENSING (tot 18 hours)
01. Remote sensing basics (2h)
02. Optical physics 101 (2h)
03. Sensors and satellite missions (2h)
04. Applications: Botanics, vegetation and landuse (2h)
05. Applications: Hydrology (2h)
06. Applications: Geology (2h)
09. Classification techniques: (supervised e unsupervised) (6h)

PART III – ACTIVE REMOTE SENSING AND INTERFEROMETRY (tot 14 hours)
01. Active sensors (6h)
02 – RADAR Interferometry (8 h)

PART IV – PHOTOGRAMMETRY (tot. 24 hours)
01. Basic principles and applications (8 h)
02. LAB EXERCISES IN PHOTOGRAMMETRY (16 h)

The slides of the course will be uploaded on the University e-learning website as well as all the sample data and SW used during the course.

The following textbooks are strongly suggested:

James B. CAMPBELL Ph.D. – INTRODUCTION TO REMOTE SENSING – Third Ed. – Guilford Press. – course textbook

Federica MIGLIACCIO, Daniela CARRION - Sistemi informativi territoriali: principi e applicazioni – Seconda edizione. UTET., pp.412.

The slides of the course and any additional texts, will be made available on the on-line course platform.

Lessons are basically active lectures, held in one University seat and broadcasted on the other one. Some lectures include some practice on sample data (LANDSAT, SAR scenery and hyperspectral images, stereopaired aerial photographs etc.), using open source software (QGIS, MULTISPEC (Purdue Univ.), MESHLAB, ESA -SENTINEL2 TOOLBOX , GIMP)

Professors

LIVIO FRANZ
PONTI STEFANO

Borrowers