The Remote Sensing Technologies Center, the Water Resources Research Institute, the Computational Geospatial Technologies Center, and the Visualization, Analysis and Imaging Laboratory have merged to form the new Geospatial and Natural Resources Institute. “By administratively reorganizing into the Geospatial and Natural Resources Institute, we will have more resources to address some pressing issues, including water quantity and quality, agricultural competitiveness in a world market and invasive species monitoring and management,” director David Shaw said.
Because of this merge the resources and personnel can unite to better meet common educational and research goals.
“Bringing these four centers together at MSU allows us to further develop our common goals as well as pool our talents and resources on research and educational projects,” Shaw said. “It also allows us to enhance already strong relationships with various academic and research departments and colleges throughout the university and to pull teams of faculty together for multi-disciplinary projects that develop solutions to meet the needs of society and our stakeholders.”
Although this Geospatial and Natural Resources Institute will be a new association, it will start with years of experience and resources, unlike most new organizations.
The Remote Sensing Technologies Center was established three years ago. In these three years, it has gained recognition for its partnership efforts with a number of private businesses and public agencies, including NASA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Consortia on Remote Sensing in Transportation. These partnerships have given the RSTC the chance to be involved in several remote sensing and geospatial projects related to agriculture, forestry, environment issues, state and local government and transportation.
The Water Resources Research Institute was established by The Water Resources Research Act of 1984 as a part of a group of research centers under the U.S. Geological Survey. The purpose is to contribute to the solution of water and water-related land use problems in Mississippi, the region and the nation. To do so, the WRRI is in charge of recruiting and training water scientists, exploring new approaches to water problems and providing water-related research results to managers and the public.
The other two groups that united to form the Geospatial and Natural Resources Institute were formally parts of the University’s Engineering Research Center.
The Computational Geospatial Technologies Center was developed to work with government, commercial and public interests to research and to develop and validate computational geospatial information products for applications that involve terrestrial, hydrologic, oceanic and atmospheric processes. Because of this goal, the CGTC already worked closely with the RSTC, so the merge will provide even more convenience for them.
The last member to the alliance also worked with the CGTC. The Visualization, Analysis and Imaging Laboratory advances the technologies and the practices of scientific visualization, information visualization, visual analysis and image processing for the computational sciences. Because of this complex mission the scientists and engineers who make up VAIL include electrical engineers, computer engineers, cognitive scientists, computer scientists, computational engineers and cognitive engineer. This impressive membership list makes VAIL a valuable part of the Geospatial institute.
“The collaboration will maintain and continue to enhance our close relationships with other university departments and external agencies as well as allow us to take advantage of the tremendous current and future funding opportunities,” Shaw said.