As part of the EMCDE curriculum, students are expected to participate in a mandatory summer school leading to 6 ECTS credit units (European Credit Transfer System). In order to fulfil this requirement, I participated in the GEOBIA summer school which was organized by the University of Salzburg, Austria (Department of Geoinformatics and UNIGIS) with the support of CopHub.AC and ESA.

The summer school which took place between the 1st of June 2020 and the 9th of July 2020 was aimed at providing participants with knowledge about the methods and approaches of Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) in order to map, analyse, and monitor the dynamics of our globe while leveraging on Earth observation (EO) data. Due to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic which affected lots of physical activities, the summer school was held virtually.

Various activities (such as orientation, lectures, assignments, group works, practical classes etc.) were undergone and I worked on a group project with the topic "Estimating Agriculture Potential in Prince Albert City, Saskatchewan Province, Canada" which was presented at the GI_Forum on the 8th of July 2020. 

I learnt quite a lot of new techniques and approaches on analyzing satellite imagery using different software such as ArcGIS Pro, QGIS, ESA SNAP, eCognition Developer etc. The GEOBIA summer school was very insightful and the various presentations received broaden my scope and knowledge about image interpretation and analysis.