Hrishikesh Patel

Graduate student at BU and Candidate for MA in Geography, specializing in GIS and Remote Sensing

Hrishikesh Patel received his Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science and Geography from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2005 and worked at ECNext Inc. in Westerville, Ohio for a year before joining Boston University.

ECNext is the leading company for marketing and selling premium business information on the Web. ECNext's technology and search-driven marketing programs allow publishers to sell highly relevant content to users when they need it. His position at ECNext primarily involved programming, maintaining the company website, doing business and marketing research and database querying.

His expertise is in the field of web-GIS working with Internet Map Server (IMS) technology based on notion of a server hosting interactive maps (e.g. Google Maps) to users. He is a Research Assistant working under Dr. Suchi Gopal (Professor, Geography and Environment) on the Marine Integrated Decision Analysis System (MIDAS) tool currently being developed at Boston University. This multidisciplinary research, sponsored by Conservation International, uses GIS and Remote Sensing for of Java-based decision support system for Marine Protected Areas.

He is also working with Dr. Gopal and Dr. Magaly Koch on a project involving development of aridity index for semi-arid environment of Los Monegros in Spain. After the introduction of ground based irrigation in this area, more and more farmland has been converted into agriculture leading to rising salinity. This has long term implications in economic productivity of this area and thus it has become very important to study this area. Using remote sensing techniques various soil and vegetation types are classified to develop the aridity index.

Title of Talk: Changing Times: The Vital Role of Science, Research, and Application of Remote Sensing in Today's Careers

The science of remote sensing involves acquiring information about earth's surface and then analyzing this data for various applications. Introductory topics related to image processing will be briefly discussed. Boston University (BU) is a premier research university doing cutting-edge research in the field of Remote Sensing and GIS. Some of research BU faculty are involved in includes monitoring global land cover and forest change, and climate and vegetation research. Some of the applications of remote sensing include forest fire monitoring, glacial extent, mineral mapping, and urban growth analysis. NASA, NOAA, CIA are some of the places providing job opportunities in remote sensing.