The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), headquartered in Thailand, is an international institute of higher learning. It is Asia’s pioneer institution established in 1959 to help meet the region’s growing needs for advanced learning in engineering, science, technology and management, research, and capacity building. AIT’s mission is to develop highly qualified and committed professionals who will play a leading role in the sustainable development of the region and its integration into the global economy. AIT ranked 19th in the world for SDG-1 (No Poverty) at Times Higher Education Impact Rankings.
The Geoinformatics Center (GIC) is a Center of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok, which focuses on research consultancy services and capacity-building activities in the Asian regions and provides knowledge and know-how to support the processes of planning and decision-making for sustainable development by integrating spatial information with other conventional methods and tools.
The GIC has been designated as the regional hub for the Sentinel Asia initiative (called P-DAN, the Principal Data Analysis Node) for emergency mapping after a disaster in the Asian region. It is also regularly contributing to the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters as the Project Manager to coordinate emergency mapping efforts of catastrophic disasters in the region. Under both the initiatives (Sentinel Asia and International Charter), GIC receives satellite images acquired through the emergency observations and creates value-added products (VAP) to help the affected countries in their emergency response and recovery efforts. The satellite-based products coupled with the available GIS data (such as OpenStreetMap) and other local data from the respective countries are being integrated to help the national government agencies in their emergency response and recovery efforts.
For more information on the host institution, please visit https://www.ait.ac.th/ and https://geoinfo.ait.ac.th/.
