About the Lab
The AUA GIS and Remote Sensing Lab, established in 2017, is a joint initiative of the AUA Acopian Center for the Environment and the AUA Zaven and Sonia Akian College of Science and Engineering.
The Lab adds capacity in mapping and analysis of spatial data to AUA’s academic offerings and research agendas. For this purpose, the Lab intensively participates in work of the Acopian Center for the Environment and the Center for Responsible Mining. It also seeks to expand its collaboration in the fields of public health, data analytics, business, and more.
Outside of AUA, the Lab provides basic and advanced training in GIS and remote sensing to professionals from Armenian counterparts.
Current topics pursued at the GIS and Remote Sensing Lab include:
- Forest and land-cover mapping using high-resolution data from satellites and UAVs (drones)
- Monitoring of mining sites and tailings
- Mapping of ecotourism in Armenia
- Hydrological applications of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, e.g. monitoring of flood events and wetlands
- Mapping of urban environmental parameters
- Use of interactive maps for curricular and extra-curricular school education
Spatial data are becoming an increasingly important basis of information for planning and decision making. Examples of the application of geospatial information can be found in sectors like environmental management, spatial planning, conservation, and disaster risk reduction. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are the principal instrument for handling and analyzing such data and are at the core of a multitude of geospatial applications. Earth observation using remote sensing systems (e.g. on board of satellites and UAVs), on the other hand, serves as an increasingly important source of spatially explicit information, especially in remote and other areas that are hard to access.
Existing maps
AUA GIS and Remote Sensing Lab Seminar Series
- November 30, 2018 — GIS Symposium: Efforts in Armenia to Use Geographic Information System for Effective Governance
- May 10, 2018 — Claudia Bieling (Speaker) — Public Participation GIS for Ecosystem Services: An Introduction to the Project GAtES (Video recording of the talk)
- October 17, 2017 — Gernot Rücker (Speaker) — Monitoring of forest and vegetation fires from global to local scales – with a look at Armenia
- August 28, 2017 — Gohar Ghazaryan (Speaker) — Quantifying Forest Change Using Remotely Sensed Time Series Observations – The Case of Northeastern Armenia
- July 31, 2017 — Hripsime Matevosyan (Speaker) — Systems Perspective: Analyzing the Future Evolution of the Copernicus European Earth Observation Infrastructure
- Those interested in presenting please contact ace@aua.am.
GIS and Remote Sensing Lab in news
- DISASTER RISK REDUCTION INNOVATIONS WORKSHOP IN BUDAPEST
- GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM AND REMOTE SENSING LAB OPENS AT AUA
- A TRAINING ON “GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS (GIS) AND REMOTE SENSING”