Geospatial Research and Education Laboratory (GREL), Pakistan

In 2011, two of the world's leading geospatial organizations, International Cartographic Association (ICA) and Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), started a global initiative of establishing laboratories around the globe  that would advocate the use of free and open source software for geoinformatics (FOSS4G) for making geospatial education and opportunities accessible to all. The initiative was later joined by another leading geospatial organization, the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS).

To date, 102 ICA-OSGEO-ISPRS laboratories have been established in top ranking universities worldwide. Institute of Space Technology (IST) has pioneered to establish the first and, to date, the only ICA-OSGEO-ISPRS laboratory in Pakistan.

Objectives of the GREL
Geospatial Research and Education Laboratory (GREL) has the following objectives;

• Spreading geospatial awareness across Pakistan by providing education from grass root to higher levels. In this regard, we are planning to develop national curriculum for geospatial education at schools and colleges. We will provide free geospatial education to school and college students all over Pakistan using our endogenously built open source eLearning platform.

• Being the first ICA-OSGEO-ISPRS laboratory, we are the ambassadors of the initiative in Pakistan with the responsibility of proliferation of “Geo for All” vision. We will mentor and support the establishment of more laboratories in Pakistan that support this global initiative, such that a national network is built to support geospatial education and research across Pakistan.

• Develop and maintain a high-quality and high-impact research portfolio, tackling national, regional and global level research problems in the domains of geographic information science, remote sensing, and associated fields.

• Establish international linkages with academia, industry, government and non-government organizations.

• Offer short and long term courses for capacity building of government and non-government organizations focusing on applications of FOSS4G in their respective domains.

Aim and Ambition
GREL has the ambition of imparting quality education and doing innovative research in the emerging fields of Geographic Information Science (GIScience) and Remote Sensing (RS). Our distinguishing feature is the vision of focusing on “doing the Science of GIS” in addition to the applied work by “doing the Science with GIS”. We are currently offering MS and PhD in RS and GIScience and intending to offer undergraduate programs in near future.

Research Group @ GRELL
The members of GREL constitute a strong and active research group, with faculty in the areas of both core and applied GIScience and RS. The faculty at GREL has won numerous competitive research projects, from both national (such as Higher Education Commission [www.hec.gov.pk/], Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission [www.suparco.gov.pk/] and international (such as NASA, ICIMOD [www.icimod.org/], IFS [www.ifs.se/]) funding agencies. Research problems being tackled include studying Pakistan’s forest biomass content using satellite images, developing decision support systems for watershed conservation, monitoring glaciers using stereo satellite imagery, establishing ground measurement of winter fog, 3D city modeling for smart cities, satellite-based meteorology, observing and simulating ionospheric disturbances, and studying oceanographic phenomena in the Arabian Sea.

The Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms (MoP) has recently taken the much awaited initiative of developing National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) for Pakistan. GREL is actively contributing towards the “National GIS” vision of MoP by heading the working group on “NSDI Technology, Standards, Education and Research”.

The GREL was formally inaugurated by the honorable P'''resident of Pakistan Mr. Mamnoon Hussain on August 20, 2015 at Islamabad.

Mailing List
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Address
Geospatial Research and Education Lab (GREL) Department of Space Science Institute of Space Technology 1, Islamabad Highway, Islamabad 44000 Phone: +92-51-9075549