Introduction

Department of Remote Sensing and GIS is the stylish term used for previously named Department of Cartography, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and GIS. Currently, Cartography and Photogrammetry streams are brought into the umbrella of GIS and Remote Sensing. However, all four main streams are being fully taught, promoted, and researched.

The mission of the Department of Remote Sensing and GIS is to serve society through excellence in education, research, and service in the field of Remote Sensing and GIS. We produce well-qualified graduates, in Remote Sensing and GIS streams, dedicated to the sustainable development of our motherland and its resources. The Department is outfitted with well-qualified academic staff dedicated to teaching and research. They always transfer cutting-edge knowledge, particularly in laser scanning, UAV Photogrammetry, Ground Penetration RADAR, Microwave Remote Sensing, Crowd sourcing, 3D GIS, BIM, customizing techniques for developing tools and GIS software, and all other industry-demanded subject components to the respective students by providing necessary hands-on experiences. Besides, we offer aesthetic subjects such as Sinhala and Tamil languages for counter parties.

Through research, the Department attempts to generate new knowledge and technology sought by the industry for the benefit of the entire world. Mainly, our research revolves around computational methods to convert image-like data into models of the world. The data come from various sources, including consumer cameras, airborne mapping cameras, laser scanners, range cameras, optical and RADAR systems on remote sensing satellites, and vector data collected by field survey methods or extracted from high-resolution sources, etc. The outputs we aim to deliver are maps and models of the environment, such as virtual reality models or maps of elevation and land cover.

We focus on automatic image interpretation, context-based image data classification, pattern recognition, to extract both accurate geometric measurements and useful semantic interpretations of the world from the said datasets. On the other hand, the development of computer algorithms and tools, particularly by Python, Java, C++, etc., scripting, is another main research area, especially in GIS. There is a huge demand for customized tools by GIS and Remote Sensing communities. 3D GIS, BIM, Crowd sourcing, web mapping, and Ontology are other demanding areas that we touch, which open the path to future data mining. Higher dimensional visualization techniques, such as space and time cubes and Cartographic generalization, are some other areas that we still deal with.