Directed by Dr. sc. Muhammad Adnan Siddique — a 2021 National Geographic Explorer and recipient of multiple Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) grants — the RSA Lab leverages multidisciplinary research to address critical environmental challenges using cutting-edge remote sensing and machine learning. The lab focuses on landslide monitoring, glacier dynamics, land cover change, and marine pollution detection, with a regional emphasis on Pakistan. By integrating satellite data with AI-driven analytics, the lab develops scalable solutions for environmental risk assessment and sustainability. Its international collaborations include MIT, Dartmouth Engineering, ETH Zurich, and KIT Germany. RSA Lab-trained researchers have earned distinctions such as the CleanTech 2022 Challenge and IEEE GRSS REACT EO4SDG awards, reflecting its commitment to innovation and capacity-building. With a mission to bridge science and policy, the RSA Lab pioneers open-access geospatial tools while fostering global partnerships to combat climate-linked hazards.

The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) recently published a blog in their series of contributions related to the EO4DGs, highligthing some of the work from the RSA Lab at ITU.

You can access it here. https://eo4sdg.org/react-remote-sensing-environment-analysis-and-climate-technologies/

In collaboration with Chinese Academy of Sciences & ETH Zurich, Chair of Earth Observation & Remote Sensing, a co-authored article just got published in the "International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation", on Jan 15, 2025.

The paper is titled Glacial lake mapping using remote sensing Geo-Foundation Model. You may access it here.

RSA Lab's contribution in mainly in the curation of one of the datasets used in this paper. Congratulation to all authors.

IEEE GRSS Lahore Chapter (CH11060) is co-organising "Geoscience and Remote Sensing" track at Horizons of Information Technology and Engineering (HITE) 2024 conference, hosted by University of Central Punjab (UCP) Lahore. 

RSA-Lab is proud to announce that: 

The RSA-Lab team will conduct a hands-on workshop on "Geospatial Data Analysis Using Python," offering practical insights into modern techniques. Additionally, two of our esteemed members, Malik Ahmad and Nauman Arshad, will present their research papers. Malik will discuss his work titled "Deep Learning on Sentinel-1 SAR Imagery for Ship Detection Using the YOLO-V8 Model," while Nauman will showcase his research on the "Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Annual NO2 Concentration and Population Exposure in Palestine and Israel."

Dr. M. Adnan Siddique will be delivering talk on "Oil Spill Detection Using Remote Sensing and Deep Learning". Furthermore, Mr. Ehtasham Naseer will be conducting two informative sessions on "Remote Sensing ABC" at Tech for Tomorrow (TFT-2024), also organised by UCP.

Dr. Adnan Siddique (ITU, Lahore) will be co-chairing a community-contributed session on "Earth Observations Contribution to the Sustianable Developments Goals" at the annual IEEE Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), taking place in Athens, Greece this year.

He will also be presenting his paper on "Glacial Lake Outburst Flood risk assessment using logistic regression of remote sensing parameters in High Mountain Asia".

Dr. Othmar Frey (ETH Zurich), Dr. Adnan Siddique (ITU, Lahore) & Dr. Farooq Ahmed (UET, Lahore) win SNSF SPIRIT grant: “Towards a large-scale landslide hazard assessment scheme based on time series analysis of satellite radar interferometry”.

The sponsoring agency, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), is a Swiss government-mandated entity, supporting top-notch academic research. The grant is awarded under the SPIRIT initiative – the “Swiss Programme for International Research by Scientific Investigation Teams”. The total funding amount is 364,012 CHF (~ 115 million PKR) over a duration of 48 months.

Congratulations to everyone involved in making this chapter a reality! The approval date is April 11, 2023 and the geo-code is CH11060.

The effort to establish the chapter was spearheaded by Dr. Muhammad Adnan Siddique, Director of the RSA Lab. We also want to acknowledge the contributions of Prof. Dr. Sobia Baig Baig for her efforts in promoting gender inclusion and expanding the role of IEEE/GRSS in policy-making in this interdisciplinary field.

The mini projects for Sustainable Development Goals competition was an initiative of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Societies Technical Committee REACT (Remote sensing Environment, Analysis and Climate Technologies) to support science and to motivate local students to work together on a specific topic related to Earth Observation and Sustainable Development Goals (EO4SDG). RSA team comprising Mr. Abdul Basit, Mr. Ehtasham Naseer and Ms. Nida Qayyum submitted a project report. The REACT committee evaluated the received reports, and they found RSA team’s work as the best submission. Many congratulations to the winners!

Further details about the project are available on the GRSS REACT website: https://www.grss-ieee.org/resources/news/new-react-eo4sdg-competition/