THE HISTORY
The GIS Research Unit of the Agricultural University of Athens was created by Professor Vasiliki Kollias and PhD candidate Dionissios Kalivas in 1989 at the Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, after the acquisition of the first GIS system (software+hardware).
After the retirement of Ms. Kollias (2011), Mr. Dionissios Kalivas, Professor of Land Evaluation, has taken over the coordination of the actions. of Geographical Information Systems and Spatial Analysis at the Agricultural University of Athens (AUA). From the end of 2021, a new faculty member staffing the Research Unit is Mr. Konstantinos Soulis, Assistant Professor of Geoinformatics and Spatial Analysis in Agriculture and the Environment. Its permanent executives include Mr. Stelios Gerontidis, Laboratory Teaching Staff with the subject "Geoinformatics - Spatial Analysis - Land Evaluation".
The educational and research of the activity History begins, in the early 1980s, with Territorial Information Systems as the first field of application of GIS in the AUA. It continues in the fields of Spatial Analysis, Spatial Statistics, Geostatistics, Land Evaluation, and Spatial Decision Support Systems for the assessment of natural resource data and for the selection of the most suitable Land Use. Following are activities in areas such as Geobases, Hydroinformatics, Digital Soil Mapping.
Over the past two decades, as geospatial technological capabilities have expanded and the scale of observing abiotic and biotic environmental phenomena has rapidly improved, a key area of activity for the GIS Research Unit has been Spatially Defined Digital Agriculture, supported by modern methods of spatial analysis and artificial intelligence.
Today, the focus of its educational and research activities is GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE.
Since 2007, the GIS Research Unit has had its own premises located in the Central Administration Building of the GPA, with a researcher's room and a classroom, while it is fully equipped with software and machines that serve modern research needs as well as educational needs, including those of Graduate Program "Geoinformatics and Spatial Analysis" of the GPA and continuing education and training needs in the subjects of its activity.
