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Hedeki Yamada
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PhD. Candidate, Tokyo University of Marine Science
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and Technology, Japan
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damaya2000jp@yahoo.co.jp
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I have been studying GNSS technology for 3 years as a post graduate student. The beginning was to take a seminar at the Laboratory of Satellite Navigation as a preparation for the graduation research, when I was a junior of the under graduate. I just had the knowledge about GPS that it was a tool of the car navigation devices. But I was interested in the mechanism of the GPS positioning. It was the first time to study about GPS as a student of Logistics Department, although there are some lectures on satellite navigation for the students at Maritime Systems Department. Reading the fundamental text in English and presenting what we presented each other at the small member seminar for half a year, we studied the fundamental principle of the positioning and GPS terminology. It was very helpful to understand the mechanism of the satellite positioning deeply to tackle the task to develop a positioning program using the pseudo-range measurements of GPS and GLONASS in the graduation research and also master course research. As the positioning mechanism in GLONASS is different from that of GPS and the papers on GLONASS were few, it takes a long time to solve the problems. But it helps me to deepen the understanding on the satellite positioning. And it will help to solve the problems in the multiuse of the GNSS including Galileo, Compass and QZSS in the near future.
As there remain the problems in the dual-use of GPS and GLONASS, I will continue to study to solve the problems. In thinking about the educational problem, because the satellite navigation engineering needs the in-depth knowledge of physics, mechanics, electronic engineering and the communication engineering, it is necessary to learn the base of general engineering firmly in the faculty. And besides, studying there the mechanism of the GPS positioning as an applied problem of engineering helps the smoothly advance to the GNSS technical research.
Firms to take up a PhD student for meaningful research are
highly rare
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Suddhasheel Ghosh
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Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
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shudh@iitk.ac.in,
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Susham Biswas
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Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
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susham@iitk.ac.in
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Geoinformatics or Geomatics has been an emerging industry and a fi eld of research in the world at large since the last decade of the previous century. Geoinformatics research and developments have been spurred by the needs of the industry throughout. Modern data acquisition systems have facilitated the procurement of high resolution data and the reduction of the prices in storage devices have economised their storage. Unfortunately, the geomatics industry in India has been primarily catering to the demands of set trends rather than bringing up a new trend or new technology.
The economical but skilled man power produced is liable to large scale exploitation satisfying vested interests of limited groups. Predominant jobs are now available which are based on the migration of data which is not very challenging to bright minds, thus causing an exodus of trained and highly skilled human resource to foreign lands. Firms that would like to take up a PhD student for meaningful research and development are highly rare.
Although the repository of the data is huge, there is a lack of research and/ or development in terms of processing algorithms in order to extract information from them. In addition, lack of complete metadata creates hurdles in the path of researchers for development of processing methods. A data providing agency for a country should encourage researchers to work on its data either by inviting internships at their premises or by providing good quality data free of cost to one or many of the research and development organisations in that country. There seems to be a big competition in the market between those who would prefer to have knowledge of software and those who prefer to procure the basics of geomatics. Some of the organisations in the country cater to the human resource requirement in the fi eld by provision of explicit training on popular software, which may or may not
be present in the organisation in which the student would be fi nally placed in. On the other hand, young people who have strong fundamentals in the field, fi nd themselves handicapped as far as software training is concerned. Further, a rather large number of unskilled graduates are being churned out of newer engineering colleges cropping up every other day, with unspecialized faculty members and practically negligible infrastructure. These students need to be properly trained in Geomatics to make them more employable.
Opportunities for developing new products or services related to geoinformatics technology are abundant.
Yet, most of the cities in India do not have high resolution maps, our transport and navigational system is not gaining benefi ts from GNSS, we are not coming up with indigenous data processing and managing software, there is no signifi cant integration between GPS, Remote Sensing, GIS etc. which implies that there is a vast untapped related application areas required to be explored.
Recognising this imbalance, many geomatics professionals have suggested that education in this domain be taken to the school level. However, this would evidently trigger the redraft of the syllabi of the other basic courses taught in junior schools, as most of the topics in geomatics need the basic knowledge of physics, mathematics and computer science. Since geomatics is a very powerful tool and is being used in diverse fields of core research like forestry, hydraulics and water resources, agriculture, human settlements analysis etc., and domains of applications such as environmental impact assessment, decision support systems, spatial planning etc., contemporary educational institutes and organisations should consider a redraft of their syllabi in terms of theory as well their applications in these fields.
Ideally one could target the research in an area which requires geospatial inputs and having business potential. The creation of a geospatial consortium where students, knowledge and best practice methods would be exchanged, along with the presence of sufficient funds, access to quality data and infrastructure would help spur research, development and also create a team of trained and upgradeable manpower which would help create services, processing algorithms and also shape products and deliver it to the world market.
As on date, Indian institutions should look forward to participate and collaborate in international fora like the ISPRS, and encourage the students to work on international research projects.
The geoinformatics division, under the aegis of the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Kanpur, stresses largely on the theoretical understanding of the subject and gives freewill to the student about learning of the software.
However, in the post graduate level programmes, working on software is seriously not seen in a very good perspective unless the amount of work done is really huge or there has been a development in terms of data processing and information extraction algorithms. The division is currently looking forward to forge developments and garner relationships in hitherto largely unexplored domains in India like archaeology, sound modelling and immersive visualization. |
(25 votes, average: 4.72 out of 5)
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