Monitoring Climate Change Impact Using GEE 2021 | In-Service ICT Training for Environmental Professionals

Venue: Online

Date: 11 January - 24 February, 2021

Every hour numerous satellites generate hundreds of images of Earth surface, capturing multiple aspects of anthropogenic activities as well as environmental processes. For many years having access to, analyzing and interpreting these petabytes of information (very Big Data) was a privilege of a handful of experts. Latest development in computer technologies and appearance of new tools allowed free access and easy use of that knowledge not only to researches but also to professionals in various domains.

Google Earth Engine (GEE) is game-changing technology, a free cloud-based platform providing both access to multiple repositories of worldwide satellite imagery and geospatial data as well as powerful computation for quick analysis and visualization of large datasets. GEE platform provides the agile tool for data catalog, storage and analysis. The data catalog consists of different free geospatial data, including satellite imageries (optical and radar), climate parameters (temperature, precipitation and so on), relief (digital elevation models), land cover maps and a variety of socio-economic variables.

This course aims to provide basic, yet practical understanding of relevant geospatial techniques and real-world applications using GEE. Fundamentals of remote sensing and GIS packages will be covered, explaining how contemporary data is generated and technology can be used.

Participants will be familiarized with to spatial data search techniques, process of data analysis using GEE, as well as results visualization and interpretation. The course concludes with participants developing and presenting their own example of GEE platform use.

By the end of the course participants should be able to:

understand principles of remote sensing data and analysis techniques;
acquire geospatial and other related datasets useful for geospatial analysis;
develop own scripts for data visualization and analysis;
perform data analysis (e.g. classification) using machine learning algorithms

The course is organized as a series of online presentations (both synchronous and asynchronous) followed by practicals (detailed video instructions), consultations with instructors and individual work on maps development.

Passing the course is based upon completion of the following:

practical sessions: series of maps should be developed and submitted;
individual project: a map of interest to be developed and presented.

Participants who have passed the course will receive a CEU SUN certificate on successful course completion and, if requested, ECTS points, which may be accepted for credit transfer by the participants' home universities.

Workshop Director

Viktor Lagutov, Central European University

Workshop Faculty

Lorant Czaran, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
Elizaveta Khazieva, Central European University
Anastasia Kvasha, Central European University
Pablo Vega, European Commission’s Satellite Center Copernicus

Click here to apply!

Additional information

The Monitoring Climate Change Impact Using GEE workshop continues the series of joint UN-CEU training events under the ISEPEI Project “Bridging ICTs and the Environment”. Co-funded by the Open Society University Networ k (OSUN).