Masters in GIS and Remote Sensing

Introduction

The Postgraduate M.Sc. programme in GIS and Remote Sensing offered by the Postgraduate Institute of Science of the University of Peradeniya, seeks to provide a sound theoretical and practical knowledge and comprehensive training in the Geographic Information systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS). The goal of this M.Sc. course is to provide opportunity for the participants, a critical understanding and competence in developing systems and tools for the acquisition, processing, transformation, analysis, storage, presentation and use of geo-spatial information. In addition, skills are developed to enable the participants to design and undertake research and development projects in various fields and also to actively engage in multidisciplinary research and development projects.

GIS and RS are rapidly evolving towards becoming standard tools, influencing everyday decision- making particularly among professionals. Even though this has been described as “Geoinformatics” by some of the professionals, the Postgraduate Institute of Science decided to name it as “GIS and Remote Sensing” due to its popularity. As a multi-disciplinary programme, it includes courses in Geographical Information System, Remote sensing, numerical methods and algorithms in RS and GIS, Digital photogrammetry, GPS and its applications, digital image processing. In addition, there are courses in application of GIS in various disciplines such as Earth Sciences, Land use planning, Disaster Management, Natural resources Management, Agriculture, Forestry, Wild life, Transportation and supply net work, Transmission and Telecommunication network will be included. The programme is designed for the students to use computers throughout the programme, enabling them to use the latest software available in the fields of GIS and Remote Sensing.

The programme includes a dissertation component and the students are required to select a suitable research topic in any of the fields mentioned above and submit a research report in the form of a dissertation. In this connection, the students are free to select an institution of their choice to conduct the research study. The Postgraduate Institute of Science would also help the students to find suitable institutions and topics for their research.