Our ability to observe and understand the environment has been improved thanks to the capacity to develop and deploy sensing technology that allows us to monitor and model complex phenomena at different scales. The increased number of sensing systems and field instruments enables collecting huge amounts of data of different resolutions and qualities. Expertise in handling big data, designing and applying specific algorithms (control, estimation, geostatistics, machine learning, onsite and remote data and signal processing, modeling), as well as customizing through programming intelligent sensing systems becomes crucial not only for better understanding and representing complex environmental phenomena, but also to engineer solutions for solving concrete environmental problems. Intelligent sensing systems and computational methods will play a key role in applications related to the water cycle, air quality, land use, climate change and natural hazards.

Course content

This specialization covers the aspects of observation and data on the environment:

• Databases, sensors, image processing
• Earth observation, geographic information systems
• Environmental modeling, geostatistics

Link to list of courses

Professional prospects

• Companies in environmental and civil engineering
• Industry (imaging, robotics), key players in data sciences
• Insurance (e.g. risk analysis), public administrations
• National agency (e.g. swisstopo, METAS)
• International companies and institutions
• Research institutes: e.g. EMPA, PSI, WSL