Master Programme in GIS and Applied Geography 60 cr

The continuously growing issues in our environment and society pose challenges that affect us all. These issues include the increasing number, magnitude and intensity of natural hazard events (e.g., floods, landslides, heavy, rainfall, droughts, etc.) as effect of climate change; growing societal problems such as poverty, urbanisation, increasing crime rates and violence; and, the different environmental problems like pollution, species extinction, and water scarcity. These issues and events are often attributed to a particular geographic location, with specific characteristics. Addressing and managing these problems require geographic knowledge and approach to understand their complexities and how they affect nature and humans altogether. One of the continuously gaining valuable approaches is the application of Geographic Information System (GIS) to comprehend and answer geographic-related problems, not only in the field of geography, but also across different disciplines.

The past two decades have witnessed significant advances in geographic information systems and geographic information technologies (GIT), including remote sensing. GIS is an important part of the GIScience field, that has originally been considered as a tool and analysis method, mainly by geographers, to answer spatial related questions. However, over the years, GIS has also evolved to cover much more than the spatial analysis part, because of growing interests in the broader spectrum of GIScience. Currently, GIS is tightly knitted to geospatial data acquisition and usage, database management, spatial data infrastructure and data interoperability, cartography and geovisualisation, and application of remote sensing data and technologies, making it more valuable as ever. GIS has therefore established itself as an important, tool, method, and technology that can be used for answering complex problems in the environment and society, and to attaining viable solutions that can meet the different sustainability goals.

Structure of the programme

The Master programme in GIS and Applied Geography consists of nine courses (i.e., three basic and six advanced level courses) and one thesis project. The first three courses given at the basic level have two purposes. The first is to offer the opportunity for progression, wherein students with slightly different background are given the possibility to be introduced to basic education offered at the university, which are pre-requisites to the advanced level courses. The other purpose is to offer students the chance to gain broader knowledge in the subject’s disciplines. The six remaining courses at the advanced level mainly deal with more advanced GIS applications, as well as research preparation for the coming thesis project that culminates the studies.