REMOTE SENSING

Remote sensing

■a process of measurement or
acquisition of information of
some property of some object
or phenomena by a recording
device that is not in physical or
intimate contract with he object
under study.
Remote Sensing
■ According to Evelyn Pruit on 1950s, the remote sensing is the science and art of
identifying, observing, and measuring an object without coming into direct contact with
it
■ Used primarily for the technology where we have sensors on bond and onboard
satellites orbiting around the earth, which have scanners and cameras on them which are
scanners and cameras on them which are scanning the Earth’s surface and drilling the
images down and since its collecting information about the Earth’s surface from far
away.
Process of Remote Sensing
The 2 types of Remote Sensing

Active Sensors
Have its own source of light or
illumination. In particular, its actively sends
a pulse and measures the backscatter
reflected back to the sensor.
Examples:
MICROSCOPE
LIDAR
GPS
XRAYS
SONAR
INFRARED & SEISMIC
The 2 types of Remote Sensing

Passive Sensors
Measures reflected sunlight emitted from
the sun. When the sun shines, passive
sensor measures this energy more on this
later.
Examples:
PHOTOGRAPHIC
THERMAL
ELECTRIC FIELD SENSING
CHEMICAL
INFRARED &SEISMIC
 Applications of Remote Sensing

Topography and Forest Hydrology Disaster warning and

Cartohraphy assesment
- Monitoring the health - Assessing water
- Monitoring floods and
- improving digital crops, mapping soil resources from snow, landslides, volcanic activity,
elevation models. moisture rainfall, and underground assessing damage zones from
aquifers. natural disasters.
 Applications of Remote Sensing

Planning Metereology Glaciology Geodesy

applications - Study of atmospheric - Measuring ice cap - Measuring the figure of
temperature, pressure, volumes, ice stream the Earth and its gravity
- Mapping ecological zones,
water vapour, and wind velocity, and sea ice field.
monitoring deforestration,
velocity. distribution
monitoring urban land use
Applications of Remote Sensing

Coastal Ocean Natural resource Hazard

Applications
- Monitor shoreline changes,
track sediment transport,
and map coastal features
Applications
- Monitor ocea circulation
and current systems,
measure ocean temperature
and wave heights, and track
sea ice.
management assesment
- Monitor land use, map - Track hurricanes,
wetlands, and chaet earthquakes, erosion, and
wildlife habitats. flooding.
Advantages of Remote Sensing
1. Satellites images are permanent records, providing useful information in various wavelengths.
2. Large area coverage enables regional surveys on a variety of themes and identification of large
features.
3. Easy data acquisition at different scales and resolutions.
4. A single remotely sensed image can be analyzed and interpreted for different purpose and
applications.
5. Amenability of remotely sensed data for fast processing using a computer.
Advantages of Remote Sensing

6. The images are analysed in the laboratory thus reducing the amount of field work.
7. Map revision at medium to small scales is economical and faster.
8. Colour composite can be produced from three individual band images, which provide
better details of the area than a single band image or aerial photograph.
9. Floods over a large region, or the forest fire can be located from above and rescue
planning can be immediately arranged.
Disadvantages of Remote Sensing

1. Remote sensing is a fairly expensive method of analysis especially when measuring or

analyzing smaller areas.
2. Remote sensing requires a special kind of training to analyze the images.
3. It is expensive to analyze repetitive photographs if there is need to analyze different
aspects of the photography features.
4. It is humans who select what sensor needs to be used to collect the data, specify the
resolution of the data and calibration of the sensor, select the platform that will carry
the sensor and determine when the data will be collected. Because of this, it is easier to
introduce human error in this kind of analysis.
Disadvantages of Remote Sensing

5. The instruments used in remote sensing may sometimes be un-calibrated which may
lead to un-calibrated remote sensing data.
6. Sometimes different phenomena being analyzed may look the same during
measurement which may lead to classification error.
7. The image being analyzed may sometimes be interfered by other phenomena that are
not being measured and this should also be accounted for during analysis.
The increasing availability of information products
generated from satellites imageries has greatly increased
the scope of understanding the patterns and dynamics of
the earth resources systems at all scales. Hence, there is an
urgent need to develop and to operationalize an automated
object identification system, considering the cost and time
involved in the manual feature extraction process with
high resolution data.