Teaching
EH 587: Introduction to satellite remote sensing of the environment and its applications in public health
Spring semester, 3 credit hours
Course Description
Geospatial information collected from satellite remote sensing has become an extremely powerful tool in various fields of environmental and public health science as well as policy making. However, public health researchers usually lack training to benefit from this rapidly evolving technology. This introductory course provides students a broadened view of environmental sciences with satellite remote sensing technologies, and basic skills for geospatial data analysis. It covers the history, major instruments, and capabilities of satellite remote sensing as well as the basic scientific principles behind it. Students will learn (1) the terminology and data products of both land and atmospheric remote sensing such as those from MODIS and Landsat, and (2) the basic strategies and techniques to analyze geospatial data in free (e.g., Echo Reverb, GIOVANNI and HDFView) and professional grade (ENVI and ArcGIS) software packages. Various case studies demonstrate the rapidly increasing applications of satellite remote sensing in air pollution, infectious disease, climate change and other areas related to public health. The final project allows the students to apply satellite data together with other information to solve a problem of their interest.
Please contact Dr. Liu (yang.liu@emory.edu) for questions.