Universities

Universities in the UK and Ireland have long been the training ground for remote sensing and future earth scientists. The volume of satellite data now being made available through schemes such as LandMap (Manchester University), means that students and researchers alike can rapidly access a huge archive of satellite data for all manner of project work from using low resolution imagery for simple change detection in rain forests, through to urban settlement mornitoring with the latest high resolution data from SPOT, Quickbird or Ikonos.

Through its long standing agreement with Eduserve, the CHEST agreement allows Universities to access multiple copies of ERDAS software, which is recognised as the leading geo-imaging software package, and ultimately the one that gets used for processing and getting to grips with geo-data by students.

The University community is of great importance due to the feedback and input into the ongoing development of ERDAS software products. It was after a University project in the late 1960/1970’s that saw the production of ERDAS IMAGINE version 1 importing and processing Landsat 1 data.

New developments in the evolution of Web Publishing Services have seen the ability to generate spatial models in ERDAS IMAGINE and the ability to publish them on the web and ultimately run spatial models across the web “in the cloud” using ERDAS APOLLO. This development, along with the increase in use of web services, represents the future and as such a powerful functionality that should be embraced by researchers looking to collaborate with other establishments globally, or for those who work around the world but need access to geo-data and develop new interpretation of geo-spatial informations.

The ability to run an NDVI by a researcher in Boston, using data stored in Dundee and present the results to a field operative in Cairo is here and opens up the possibilities to faster, more accurate and better informed research.

We supply ERDAS products to Universities and sites of higher and further education in the UK and to 3rd level colleges in Ireland. These are provided with heavily discounted prices negotiated by Eduserv under the CHEST agreement.

This allows educational establishments to utilise ERDAS software for teaching and research purposes for just one small annual fee. The software can be used both on and off campus.