Aims and Objectives: Each of these meetings spanned over three days and NCRC members had
intensive debate on multidimensional aspects of the required curriculum.
The main challenges and the task confronting to this group were:
1. To develop international standard Remote Sensing and GIS
curriculum for undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs that
could uniformly be adopted by the public and private sector
institutions.
2. To impart cutting edge knowledge and practical based skills among
our graduates through rigorous theory, practical work and field
exercises centered around key and applied aspects of these space
age technologies.
3. To craft short, medium and long term training programs for Pakistani
academics and resource managers who lack training in Remote
Sensing and GIS.
4.
To craft a mechanism to procure the required technological
components for the smooth implementation of teaching and research
programs at higher education institutes of Pakistan..
As a starting point, Bachelor of Science (RS&GIS) four years degree
program was taken up for the discussion on its nomenclature, duration,
eligibility criteria, and course streams to be offered. Dr. Waqar Ahmad who
is currently the head of Remote Sensing and GIS program at Charles
Darwin University, Australia made a presentation about the key issues that
are critical in the development of undergraduate and postgraduate programs
in RS & GIS. After prolonged discussions, in the first meeting of NCRC, the
abstract draft on degree nomenclature, duration, eligibility criteria, program
structure and core courses for BS (RS&GIS) degree program was finalized.
At the onset of this preliminary meeting, it was agreed to prepare an overall
skeleton of the core and elective courses that could easily be adopted by
various public and private sector institutions. It was unanimously agreed that
the RS & GIS BSc degree would have major streams: Remote Sensing,
Geographical Information Systems, Geography, Information Technology,
Surveying and Field studies. Mathematics and Applied Sciences, English,
Social Sciences and General Education as Knowledge Areas