Training Workshop on Google Earth Engine

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), in partnership with Institute of Remote Sensing and GIS, Jahangirnagar University (IRSGIS) have conducted a five-day training workshop on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform at the university campus in Dhaka, Bangladesh, under its SERVIR Hindu Kush Himalaya (SERVIR-HKH) Initiative from 20 – 24 August 2017. Google’s GEE platform can be used for large and small-scale scientific analysis and visualization of geospatial datasets. It stores, organizes, and provides access to a wide variety of satellite imageries and geospatial datasets, and offers global-scale environmental data analysis capabilities. In addition to the tools and cloud computational powers necessary to analyze large datasets, the GEE platform also offers Application Programme Interfaces (API)s in JavaScript and Python. GEE is widely used by researchers, nonprofits, educators, and governmental agencies to analyze large scale geospatial data, and is available free of cost for non-commercial users.

This training arranged in Bangladesh offered participants an opportunity to gain hands-on experience using GEE to complete a series of real-world environmental remote sensing projects for beginners, intermediates, and experts. Participants learned the technical aspects and received necessary skills to develop an integrative assignment/project that encompasses remotely sensed data inputs, processing and analyses for an environmental scientific investigation. Although no prior programming experience was required, the course had touched upon the basics of programming languages at the outset to make the participants familiar with codes and scripts of programming.