Geographic Information Systems

Governments, militaries, business enterprises and other interests rely on information about the land,
location characteristics of people and resources. For centuries, maps have served as the primary
mechanism for managing and communicating geography information. In the 1960s computerized
geographic information systems (GIS) emerged as a means to manage and analyze such
information more efficiently and effectively. Since then, computing power has increased, data
have become plentiful, software has become easier to use, and the scope and complexity of
question that GIS is capable of addressing has expanded dramatically.
GIS integrates hardware, software, data and policies for collecting, managing, computing,
analyzing and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information. GIS helps us observe,
comprehend, question, infer and present data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns
and trends in the form of maps, plots, reports and charts. GIS Technology has evolved over the
past 40-50 years into a sophisticated discipline that inter-relates and encompasses
surveying/navigation methods, map making and cartography, imaging and image interpretation,
database and computing technology.
Applications of GIS have significant social and national relevance. They support governance,
preparing sustainable development strategies, enabling enterprises to better manage business
processes and bring geographic knowledge to citizens. Around the world, GIS has considerable
impact on the economies of local, regional, and national governance and development- by
creating greater efficiency, more visual communication and better decision making with
appropriate integration of maps, images, and attribute data.

Rationale behind M.Tech GIS Programme

India is on a path of progress and growth. With a 2011-12 GDP expected to be around 2 trillion
USD, it is possible that India GDP would approach $9-10 trillion by 2025. These could be sustainable
and would still be powered largely by domestic demand and the transformation to a highly
industrialized and technologically advanced economy. With such a level of economy,
development activities in India will demand a new paradigm and thought-process and Indias
geo-political presence as a dominant economic power will be significant globally. India will
require a vastly different information regime to arm itself for the trillion-level of economy-powered
by very efficient national information system like GIS that will have to be the foundation for the
governing and the governed-bringing the assessment of development needs, bridging disparity
and gaps, bringing equity, transparency, inclusivity and citizen participation. The central
government of India thus plans to expand research and development in geospatial technologies
under the National GIS Program-a nationwide GIS that will support all sector of governance,
enterprise and citizens.
The National GIS would be a fundamental component of Indias planning and developmental
infrastructure, providing visibility into various aspects of the national economic and governance
process, development process, enterprise commerce and citizen participation.
This will create a huge demand for a high quality GIS professional and researchers. It has been
envisaged that the total number of GIS workforce will have to increase manifold to meet the
demand. NIIT University (NU) has taken cognizance to this serious issue and plans to offer an
M.Tech Programme in GIS with active involvement of the GIS industry in India and abroad.

In India, several universities face severe resource crunch and lack partnerships with global
organization to update their GIS facilities and course curriculum that is relevant to the industry. In
contrast, NU M.Tech GIS Programme is research driven and offered with support from ESRI Inc,
California, USA, Worlds leading organization involved in GIS development in India and abroad
are also expected to join and support this unique research driven and industry linked programme
in the near future.
This Programme will enable professionals to start a challenging and rewarding career in the rapidly
emerging area of GIS. Professionals pursuing this programme will get a comprehensive exposure to
GIS components like Geospatial modeling and database, Cartography, GIS programming,
remote sensing for GIS and relevant elective courses like GIS and urban planning, Advanced GIS
platform programming (Mobile, Web and Cloud), Geoinformatics and environment, etc. The
programme will focus on spatial thinking, Technology and application of GIS, GPS fundamentals
and techniques, Geospatial project management and field techniques, exploring geospatial
nature of regions, economy, demography, occupation profile, application of GIS for humanities,
etc. Graduates will be fully prepared for positions as GIS project manager, Application Specialist,
Systems Engineers and GIS Business Development Managers. They will also have the option to
pursue doctoral research at NU.

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Programme Pedagogy
Structure
Delivery methodology
Mentor profile, scholarship

The programme is designed to serve professional development at the workplace and, hence, is
characterized by the pedagogic innovation of Education-Work Linkage. The new pedagogy is
based on the insight that the work place, while being a place to do business-related work, is also a
continuous learning environment where education can happen. Academic instruction
components such as Lectures, Tutorial, Practicals and Projects are integrated business objectives
leading to work-based instruction components. The programme will have blended curriculum
entailing classroom sessions, virtual classroom and internship, and will impart knowledge and skills
in core and advanced GIS areas with strong industry practice and novel research. This
programme is uniquely design to provide academic competencies, industry sector technical
competencies and management competencies.

The 2-Year, 73-Credit Programme consists of 4 semesters. The courses are categories in to University
Core (to inculcate NUs core principles), Profession Core (to gain proficiency in domain area),
Professional Electives (for specialization in an industry-specific domain), R&D Project (to inculcate a
strong research bent of mind), Open Elective (for managing competencies) and Internship ( to
build linkage with Industry-work or Industry-oriented research).

To enable students to pursue the M. Tech Programme alongside their work, the Programme design
has two delivery components:
1. On-campus component-NU firmly believes that experiential hands-on learning should be an
integral part of all its courses. Student will spend one full year in the campus to carry out laboratory
work. NUs laboratories are designed more in the nature of Industry Innovation Centres rather than
University laboratories. Further the activities are designed as mini-projects than isolated exercises.
2. Virtual Classroom component- NU has fully equipped web conferencing studios to have two
way interaction with its students located anywhere on the globe. This component is used to deliver
lectures and carry out one-to-one student mentoring and guiding as well as interacting with
industry-supervisors in the third semester.

NUs core faculty is more in the nature of mentors and has a considerable portfolio of intellectual
capital to their credit.
The faculty has a combined industrial experience of over a 100 person-year and have several
granted patents in USA and India. NU faculty members have been responsible for creating
innovative pedagogies and technology-enabled learning products. The faculty has created
award-winning products that can be seen in action across the globe. The team also has a large
portfolio of papers published in reputed international conferences and peer reviewed
international Journals.
Apart from the core faculty, NU also has a vast network of global professionals drawn from the
industry and academia who will participate in the delivery of the Programme .

Course Title

Credits

Semester - I

21

Cartography and Photogrammetry

Remote Sensing and Digital Image Processing

GIS, Geospatial Databases and Technology Trend

GIS Programming

Geostatistics, Geocomputation and Spatial Analysis

Oral and Written Communication

Semester - II

21

Advanced Remote Sensing and Digital Photogrammetry

Advanced GIS Programming

Geospatial Field Techniques and Application Integration

GIS Project Management -I

Professional Elective I

Advanced Productivity Tools

Semester - III

21

Professional Elective II

Professional Elective III

Open Elective 1

GIS Project Management II (Research Project)

Contemporary Issues

Technology Management

Semester - IV

18

Internship

12

Total

72

GIS

Dr Parul Srivastava
Dr Anul Haq

Visiting/ Adjunct Faculty

Dr P S Roy, Geospatial Chair Professor
TVB Krishna Rao (ESRI India)

Communication

Dr Vaishali Shinde

Summer Internship Program (SIP):

Duration - 8 Weeks, From 1st June to 31st July

Industry Practice (IP):

Duration 24 Weeks, From 1st January to 30th June

Industry Practice conducted onsite in the organization provides students with an

opportunity to gain experience working in interdisciplinary teams on real-life. The 4th
semester of the M. Tech course is known as the Industry Practice semester, which falls
between January June.

During IP, students are guided by a dedicated faculty mentor and a mentor from the
organization.

Pre Placement Offer (PPO):

During Industry Practice the students can be offer full-time employment by the
organization, depending upon their performance.

Ameya Surendra Joshi is currently pursuing M. Tech GIS from NIIT University with
a scholarship from ESRI. He has completed his M.Sc in Geoinformatics and also
worked for Planet Geotech GIS consultancy, Pune and was part of Water
Supply and Sanitation Project aided by the central government. He has also
presented a paper at India Society of Geomatics National conference on
Development of Beach Infrastructure for Konkan Tourism Using Geotechnical
Tools. During his M.Sc programme, he was working as a GIS consultant for
wildlife tourism agency The Territory in Pune and now working on the web GIS
part of it during academics. Currently he is working on R&D project on Forest
fire impact analysis on Tiger Habitat. He wants to obtain a responsible position
in an organization which will increase his knowledge-base and where he can
contribute to the successful growth of the organization, with his knowledge and
expertise

Payal D. Gajbhiye is currently pursuing M. Tech in Geographical

Information System with a scholarship from ESRI. She has worked with
ArcGIS, ERDAS, and ENVI. She has knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, Python
and R.
She completed her 2 months internship in C-DAC Pune on Project
Investigating fire occurrence patterns and identification of potential fire
risk zones in Kudremukh and Periyar National Parks and Tansa Wildlife
Sanctuary of western Ghats of India from 2001-2014 . She completed
B.E. in Environmental in year 2013 from Kolhapur Institute of Technologys
college of Engineering, Kolhapur.

Manoj Haloi is currently pursuing M. Tech. (GIS) programme at NIIT University,

Neemrana. During M. Tech. he had done two months summer internship in
Cyient Limited, Hyderabad. During internship he worked in Object Based Image
Classification.
He had also worked as Project Scientist for 3.4 Years in National Institute of Rural
Development North Eastern Regional center, Guwahati, Assam. He has been
engaged in various projects like Multilayer generation of Cachar Dist. Assam,
Integrated watershed Management Project (IWMP) for Kokrajhar and Pradhan
Mantry Adarsh Gram Yojna. He has completed Master of Arts in Geography from
Gauhati University in 2010.

Sai Anand Peketi is currently pursuing M.Tech GIS from NIIT University,
sponsored by ESRI, California. He has hands on experience on C sharp, Core
Java, Microsoft visual studio, ArcGIS, ENVI 5.1, Google Earth and Android
studio. He has learnt Python and Android, ArcGIS Online and data base SQL,
PostgreSQL by self-learning.
During his first semester, he undertook the project Web based GIS Terrorism
Mapping of India integrating terrorism dataset with robust GIS tools to find
the trends and to predict the threatened areas. During his second semester,
he undertook the project Multi spectral and Hyper spectral Remote sensing
of Alpine snow properties using ERDAS and has worked on Big Data software.
He did 2 months summer internship with Indian institute of Remote Sensing
(IIRS) ISRO, Dehradun on Mapping of Uttarakhand disaster by using
OpenGeo suite. He has completed B.Tech in Computer Science Engineering
from Kakinada Institute of Engineering and Technology in year 2014. With his
background in Computer Science Engineering along with his thorough
knowledge on GIS, he wants to build his career as a successful GIS Engineer.

Pankaj Mahajan has around one year of working experience in the field of GIS
as GIS Engineer in Data World India Pvt. Ltd, Noida and also worked as a
Senior Associate in Innodata India Pvt. Ltd., Noida.
Currently he is pursuing M.Tech. GIS from NIIT University, sponsored by ESRI. He
has secured 8.56 CGPA till 2nd Semester. He has participated in 15th ESRI India
User Conference held in Delhi and GIS Workshop held at NIIT University,
Neemrana. He completed his two months summer internship from Indian
Institute of Remote Sensing, where he worked on open source Web GIS using
OpenGeo Suite for managing data and building maps. Currently he is working
on a project naming Assessment of Impact of Temperature Rise Due to
Urbanization Using Geospatial Tools.
He completed his Post Graduation Degree (M.Sc.) in Remote Sensing and GIS
from University of Jammu. He was awarded with Gold Medal in 14th
Convocation ceremony of Jammu University. During his Post-graduation, he
attended the EDUSAT based program on Remote Sensing, Geographical
Information System and Global Positioning System organized by University of
Jammu Coordinated by Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), Dehradun
and sponsored by NNRMS Department of Space, Govt. of India.

Sayali Holankar is pursuing M. Tech in Geographical Information System with

the scholarship of ESRI. She has maintained her CGPA above 8.0. She worked
with ArcGIS, ERDAS and ENVI and has basic knowledge of C# and
Javascript.
She completed her two months summer internship in C-DAC Pune for the
period of June-July, 2015. During internship, she worked on project
Investigating fire occurrence patterns and identification of potential fire risk
zones for Kudremukh and Periyar National Parks and Tansa Wildlife Sanctuary
of Western Ghats of India from 2001-2014. She completed Engineering in
Environment from Kolhapur Institute of Technologys College of Engineering,
Kolhapur, Maharashtra in year 2013 with percentage 69.25%.

Sushant Singh is a second year student of Masters of Technology in

Geographical information Systems (GIS) at NIIT University. The course is
sponsored for him by ESRI, California which is a leading organization in the
world in the field of Geographical Information Systems. He has undergone an
internship as well for two months at ESRI India, Gurgaon where he has worked
on Webapp Builder and developed widgets. Previously he has done his B.Tech
in Bioinformatics (2008-2012) from Sathyabama University, Chennai where he
received award of excellence for his outstanding performance in the course.
During his B.Tech he has also undergone summer training at Biotech Park. He
wants to build his career as a GIS Engineer and wants to be a successful
professional with expertise in the field of application development &
databases. He has a CGPA of 8.9 and is highly motivated to learn more. He is
an integral part of Student Placement committee at NU.

Md. Thouseef have 5 years of working experience in the field of GIS as a

Planning Assistant-GIS in Town and Country Planning Department Kerala and
worked as a GIS Data Quality Controller in GTT Saudi Arabia for the project
Medina Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI). I am pursuing M.Tech. in
Geographical Information System with the scholarship of ESRI. During M.Tech,
he worked as an intern in Indian Institute of Remote Sensing on Uttarakhand
Disaster Management System project using open source Web GIS tools. He
has completed his Post graduation and graduation in Geography from
Madras University and Calicut University, Kerala respectively.

Vikram K, Anudhekar is currently pursuing M.Tech degree in GIS with maintaining CGPA
of 8.72. He has completed his Post-Graduation degree (M. Sc) in Geoinformatics from
University of Pune. During post-graduation studies he worked with an organization
naming Planet Geotech for 6 months as an intern.
During the course curriculum, he completed his 2 months summer internship with Cyient
Ltd. Hyderabad, where he worked on Object Based Classification techniques. He had
also worked on the projects which include Morphometric Analysis of Naner Basin, 3D
Mapping of Forts in Maharashtra. Currently he is working on project Assessment of
Impact of Temperature Rise Due to Urbanization