GEO-INFORMATICS
 

Geographic Information System (GIS)

The GIS Section is a unique, spatial analysis facility that combines GIS, remote sensing, and Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies to help clients capture and transform data into useful and interactive visualizations. The GIS Section provides clients and researchers at KISR with the tools they need to analyze and display information relative to geographic location, allowing them to interpret, inquire, and imagine data in ways that reveal the correlations, patterns, and tendencies of various environmental and social trends.

Remote Sensing Laboratory

Remote sensing research at KISR dates back to the late 1980s. The existing remote sensing facility in The Environment and Life Sciences Center was established in 1992, with funding by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS). The establishment of this facility was intended to facilitate remote sensing research and applications to various fields of science and engineering.

The remote sensing facility has served as the main laboratory for remote sensing research by providing information to ministries and public authorities. It played a key role in providing evidence of many environmental problems that occurred during and as a result of the 1991 Gulf War.

With the ongoing advances in space technology, KISR's remote sensing facility has the capability to handle higher spatial, temporal and spectral-resolution datasets that facilitate real and near real-time study of the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and intervening biosphere. Advances in processing techniques enable researchers to study dynamic atmospheric and climatic phenomena in ways that were inconceivable only a decade ago.

The focus of remote sensing applications is multidisciplinary, welcoming participation of scientists and staff from different areas of research in order to integrate cost-and time-effective observations for environmental assessment and monitoring, and provide reliable, impartial information to Kuwait's public and the global community in the form of maps, data, and reports containing analyses and interpretations of the Earth's geosphere, marine environments, atmosphere, natural hazards, and dynamic processes.