Geo Information Science Overview: Understanding Geospatial Data & Applications

Students, [Music] uh first of all, let me welcome you all

for this session on geo information science and overview. Uh well, this particular science may be new to you but

it is quite common in most of the countries especially in the developed countries to and to some extent in the

developing countries. In fact, this particular science is more of where, what, when and how. So, anything which

is related to geospatial information or anything related to the location can directly be modeled by making use of

this particular technology. Well, if you look at the today's scenario, uh we are witnessing change in

our environment due to many factors like population growth, urbanization, globalization, economic development as

well as human conflicts which is leading to climate change in the form of frequent disaster events on our planet

earth. Well, it is becoming difficult and challenging to understand the increasing

complexity of all the phenomenas which are happening on our earth. There is a need to describe the entire

environment with the help of various science related tools. to name a few. Mathematics is one of the

language which is being used to to understand the phenomena with the help of so many different type of algorithms

which are proposed. And not only that, there are ways to to describe the environment through statistics, through

diagrams, through ctography, through models and even music and all these different languages are being used to

understand. But the challenge is how we can organize our reality.

Now if you look at the overall challenges to understand our environment, we need

to have a digital abstraction of our planet earth. Why we need this digital abstraction?

The reason is we need to understand our planet in a better way to represent to understand to manage as well as to

communicate our world as a whole system. Well, in this evolving system, we need to converge

on certain tools like we are able to make measurements, we are able to monitor, we are able to model, we are

able to plan as well as we are able to do any type of decision making related to our planet earth.

And which technology can help you to do all this? That is only possible with the help of geo

information science which gives a framework I would say a holistic framework to cater all the

different type of applications one can build. Now you must be wondering that what is this real world or what is this

geographic phenomena which are which we are talking about. In fact, geographic phenomena is a manifestation of an

entity or a process that can be named or described. It can be georreerenced and another part is it can be assigned a

time or an interval at which it is present. These are the three basic entities which are being used to make

geographical phenomena. Understand? You talk about any phenomena like you might be uh you might have heard about so many

climatic phenomena which are happening like for instance disasters, floods, uh forest fires or let us say Elino all

these phenomenas are related to its location. They are related with respect to time

and of course we have a naming convention for those geographic phenomena. So we really have to have

some framework to be defined which can help you to make geographical science use. So

overall if you talk about the definition of GI science it is basically a scientific field which is a combination

of computational science, social science as well as natural science that includes geographic information

means you can study geographic information. you can represent the phenomena in the real world and how it

represents the way humans understand the world. So it can be captured, it can be organized as well as it can be analyzed.

So basically I would say that it offers an incredible variety of possible applications from traditional mapmaking

to developing datadriven solutions to real world problems using range of geospatial data data science as well as

artificial intelligence skills. Now if you look at the GI science it is as I told you that it is a combination

of variety of areas where you can integrate this and this particular information basically consists of major

verticals. The first vertical is nothing but earth observation systems. You know that there are so many satellites in the

orbit and they are on a different orbits means they are at a different altitude and according to the altitude they are

capturing the they or I would say they are taking the photograph of the earth and in fact this particular uh satellite

data can give you varied images with different spectral resolutions, different spatial resolutions, different

temporal resolutions as well as different radiometric resolutions. Now because of these different type of

resolutions they can be used for various applications. You talk about any application in the in the on the earth

they these satellites can really give you the information. Why? Because anything which is happening on the world

or in the on the earth has got a locationational information. Now because of this varied satellite data you are

able to capture these data as a synoptic coverage of a particular area on a given at a given time. So basically it is not

only providing the satellite data the which is the basic backbone of a geospatial data it also provides certain

geohysical products which can directly be used in modeling the system or in modeling particular application. Another

vertical is called as GNSS that is global navigational satellite system which provides a basic information on

location and navigation and you might be aware of a commonly known word called GPS global positioning system which is

an American constellation of satellites and giving you a location uh with with certain level of accuracy and it is not

only the American satellites which are providing the constellation of these uh uh these uh information but there are

other constellations like Galileo is there, BU is there and our Indian means Indian Indian regional navigation

satellite system IRNSS which is popularly known as Navic is also provide you providing you uh information of a

location as well as it can be used for navigation and it has got a much much uh better accuracy as compared to any other

constellation. which provides the location information. The third vertical which is anyway a component a major

component of GI science is geographical information system rather it is it is a tool to capture any information you can

manage those data you can do any type of modeling and analysis and ultimately the visualization. So these components of

geographical information system makes it a unique uh uh uh p uh vertical which can provide you holistic information uh

with respect to GI science. In fact GIS uh GI GIS has lot of computational aspects into the uh into

the uh into the overall software tool. The basic I would say a backbone of GIS is nothing but a computational geometry

which primarily deals with advanced data types which can be stored into a uh into a uh geographical information system

popularly known as vector and raster. Maybe these type these terms uh will be uh uh quite new to you but you will

understand once you have the GIS uh lecture in your uh coming modules. And not only that all the database

management system the storage indexing there are so many uh techniques which are being used at the back end in order

to provide you the best way of uh handling those data sets as well as modeling and application. So all these

verticals provide you a basic uh backbone of geographical information science and once all these data sets

gets integrated you can develop an application depending upon uh your requirement.

Now there are lot of new technologies which are which are going into uh into GI science. In fact GI science uh is is

getting parallel with information technology. So whatever techniques you are developing in IT sector that can

directly be converged uh into geographical information science and it can provide you better solutions. So uh

uh there are tools uh available on a IML as well as deep learning which can which can provide you better solution uh with

a with a best possible accuracy. There are big geod data processing uh data cubes as well as locationational

intelligence which are new newer areas uh in order to provide uh best possible solution in even uh we are trying to

integrate immersive technologies that is metaverse or let us say 3D models uh digital twins which are uh upcoming

areas in order to provide you best possible solutions. So students uh uh you might have now listened to the

technological aspect but there are a lot of applications which are uh visible in the real world. I think you must be

aware of Google maps which you which can pinpoint your location and not only location it can also help you to

navigate from one part to another. So that is a one classic example of a geo information science. Even you might be

aware of a realtime traffic congestion which you are getting from Google maps and that is also the integration of GIS,

GPS as well as earth observation data. In fact you might be aware about Swiggy, Zomato, Ola, Uber. All these are classic

example of the GIS geo information science which can directly be used and not only that there are uh not only the

governance application but also there are applications related to natural resource assessment uh forest cover

agriculture all these are classic example of utilization of GI science into into the real world solutions. uh

if you look at the disasters early warning system I think now because of the satellite technology you are able to

uh to predict or forecast uh the cyclone which is which might hit uh the particular location and not only that

floods forest fires all these are so many applications where directly geo information science is being used crop

insurance is another area where uh government is getting lot of benefit because of this technology and you'll be

surprised to know that everybody suffered because of covid-19 and there were so many GIS solutions which was put

on the decks in order to make use of these applications for various uh uses and nevertheless there are uses in crime

hotspot mapping location intelligence and of course the supply chain management in fact the list is so many

it is not possible for me to cover everything at the right moment but I would say that this particular

technology has a bright future although this technology ology is almost 30 to 40 or maybe I would say 50 years old but it

is evolving so fast and because of the integration with new technologies this pro this technology gives you a better

solution for the society as well as for the human uh sources. Thank you so much.