The department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology (hereafter, GGM) for the first time offered an Introductory remote sensing short course from 26-28 March 2019. This course, led by Mr. Philemon Tsele, targeted beginners in industry who have the appetite to acquire basic knowledge and skill in working with remotely sensed imagery products from Earth-observing satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). 

The use of satellite and/or aerial imagery in industry is widespread however, the skill needed to deal with the imagery using scientific and standard technical procedures to extract meaningful information accurately, is of key concern. In particular, this introductory course was attended by 8 delegates coming from various institutions such ESKOM, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the department of Rural Development and Land Reform. Among other items, the course covered topics and hands-on laboratory exercises on Understanding the 4 sensor resolutions, Visual image interpretation & Statistical evaluation, Extraction and analysis of spectra from various surface targets, Radiometric and geometric corrections, Image enhancement, pixel-and-object based image classification, and Accuracy assessment.

At least, over the past last 5 years the remote sensing (also referred to as Earth observation) community has witnessed the launching of a series of satellite missions by various space agencies, such as European Space Agency (ESA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). These satellite missions increase on the already existing hundreds of satellite missions in space, with a primary objective of systematically orbiting Earth and collecting Earth-based or terrestrial information at varying time scales and resolutions. 

As a result, the remote sensing community is faced with increasingly large archives of satellite imagery distributed free of charge by the space agencies through their online data catalogues. In addition, the increasingly available satellite imagery becomes even more overwhelming when considering the other available imagery i.e. aerial photos, collected through manned and unmanned aerial vehicles. As a result, the availability of such information requires that the remote sensing community, in particular the users of the imagery products, are equipped with the knowledge and skill on acquiring, processing and analysing the imagery to solve real-world terrestrial problems, as well as to inform decision-and policy-making processes.

Having mentioned the above, there are plans to run the same Introductory course again in September 2019.