While the world was under COVID lockdowns, UNE’s Remote Sensing Centre and the World Bank were collaborating to develop applied short courses in processing and analysing satellite imagery.
The courses are now being delivered to staff in the Ugandan branch of the World Bank, and the Ugandan Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) and Bureau of Statistics (UBOS).
Professor Andrew Robson, Director of UNE’s Applied Agricultural Remote Sensing Centre (AARSC), observes that recent rapid growth in free remote sensing imagery and related image processing software has brought a surge of interest in remote sensing technologies.
“Organisations are starting to develop their own in-house capacity to build remote sensing solutions,” Prof. Robson says. “This minimises the need for third party operators and makes the adoption of remote sensing technologies more affordable.”
“AARSC developed these short courses to help organisations on this path.”
AARSC drew on its own world-class expertise in analysis of remote sensing data to develop the program. Running over 50 hrs, the courses cover remote sensing theory and provide clear ‘step by step’ direction on how to use free software and free satellite imagery to analyse specific issues.
The course started as an idea within AARSC, and turned into reality when the World Bank, after a briefing on the concept, asked that it be delivered to World Bank, UBOS and MAAIF employees in Uganda to enable them to build their own in-house capabilities.
The courses draw on freely-available satellite imagery from providers like Sentinel-2 and Landsat, and established free and open-source software platforms like Google Earth Pro and Quantum GIS (QGIS). The brief theoretical component of the courses explains key elements of remote sensing like resolution (spatial, temporal and spectral), so that users can assess what data best meets their requirements.
The practical component takes users through processing skills such as derivation of vegetation indices, image classification, the overlaying of spatial layers and the generation of a complete mapping output.
Following the first week-long course delivered by AARSC’s Dr Thilantha Dammalage, the Ugandan audience were excited by the possibilities that their new knowledge unlocked.
“It is very informative, exciting, engaging, interactive, and practical or hands on,” an attendee reported. “It provides a foundation for the use of spatial data or big data tools in administrative statistics and for the establishment of the early warning system in the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF).”
“As the MAAIF rolls out the digital tools and National Food and Agricultural System, the training will enable the team to produce geospatial outputs or products. We are therefore looking forward to next training and more future collaborations, in particular, the working through of examples specific to Uganda.”
As well as the delivery of the full introductory short course to Ugandan participants, sections of the course were also provided face-to-face to students and research staff of Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (UNALM), Peru.
Delivered by AARSC’s Dr Angelica Suarez (in Spanish) to 40 participants associated with cereal research, the Peru course focused on targeted remote sensing theory and an associated practical session on the use of the freely available Google Earth Pro.
The training aligned with a current collaborative international project led by UNALM, looking at using remote sensing to support more efficient phenotyping of quinoa and wheat.
“The course has been extremely well received because it enables organisations and individuals to draw on free resources so they can develop their own remote sensing solutions,” Prof. Robson says.
A variation of the short course is being prepared for delivery to Australian Year 9 students, to instil interest in spatial science in the next generation of scientists.