Short-Term Courses

 

In July of 1998, the Remote Sensing Division (DSR/OBT) offered a first forty-hour course for elementary and high school in-service teachers from both public and private schools entitled “The use of Remote Sensing for studying the Environment at School Settings”. Since then, INPE has been offering this course every year and it has been very successful in disseminating the use of remote sensing as an educational tool among teachers.

Since 1999, the Image Processing Division (DPI/OBT), in partnership with SELPER-Brazil (Society of Latin-American Specialists in Remote Sensing), has offered conventional (presential) short-term courses aiming at supporting the usage of geotechnology in Brazil. The students come from a variety of backgrounds and application interest areas such as geology, geography, engineering, cartography, etc. Most of them work at institutions or companies that require an application of remote sensing at some level.

Presential Courses

 

	The school use of remote sensing for environmental studies The main goal of this course is the dissemination of remote sensing technology among primary and secondary teachers in Brazil, encouraging them to develop multidisciplinary project in their schools with their students using remote sensing data to look at and study a local environmental problem. This course is usually held on the second week of July.
	Geoprocessing Concepts and SPRING SPRING (Georeferenced Information Processing System) is a state-of-the-art GIS and remote sensing image processing system with an object-oriented data model which provides for the integration of raster and vector data representations in a single environment. It works in UNIX and Windows environments, supporting a great data volume keeping the identity of the geographic objects throughout the whole database. It manages both vector and raster data, and integrates Remote Sensing data in a GIS. Using practical examples of geographic data manipulation and analysis, you will learn how to operate the basic functions of SPRING. Basic Contents: SPRING Overview Reading Images Image Registration Image Processing Classification Vector Data Manipulation Numeric Modeling Analysis and Spatial Query Generating and Printing Maps
	Digital Image Processing This course presents an introduction to the techniques of digital image processing. The main topics covered include contrast enhancement, spatial filtering, radiometric correction, arithmetic operations, image statistics, maximum-likelihood (statistical) and region classifiers and a specific module for radar images.
	Geographic Databases This course presents the basic concepts about Geographic Databases, models, architectures and queries, including applications to Geographic Information Systems.
	Spatial Analysis of Geographic Data This course focuses on the main techniques of Spatial Analysis in the Geoprocessing context. Introduction to GIS applications. Topics include geostatistics, spatial interpolation, autocorrelation, kriging, and their use in geographic problem solving with spatial analysis software.

 

 

Hybrid Courses

 

Introduction to Remote Sensing - Interpretation and Processing of Images A Hybrid course is a combination of traditional classroom instruction with continuous distance support through a distance education managing system - TelEduc (free software developed by University of Campinas). Students were encouraged to use the software SPRING and gather data for their own study areas among the several public sources available (CBERS and LANDSAT images, digital maps, SRTM data, etc.).

 

 

Distance Courses

 

Introduction to Remote Sensing The main goal of this introductory courses is to diffuse the use of remote sensing as part of the curriculum and pedagogical resource to teaching science topics in universities. Hands-on exercises have been made available through specially structured tutorials and selected datasets. Students are encouraged to use SPRING (INPE’s image processing free software) and gather data for their own study areas among the several public sources available (CBERS and LANDSAT images, digital maps, SRTM topographic data etc.). The main topics covered are: 1. How to use TelEduc and prepare a thematic or educational project proposal 2. Basic environmental concepts 3. Remote sensing principles 4. Image Interpretation 5. Image processing 6. Examples of remote sensing applications 7. Proposal preparation help through distant student advisement 8. Final evaluation and course assessment.