Welcome to UTEP GIST
The UTEP GIST Graduate Certificate is a 15-credit-hour program designed for professionals from any discipline who already hold a baccalaureate degree and wish to add a high-demand geospatial skill set to their portfolio. Geospatial Information Science and Technology (GIST) is a collective term encompassing geographic information systems, remote sensing, global positioning systems, internet mapping, and other methods for collecting, managing, analyzing, and visualizing data with spatial attributes. In recent years, Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI)—the integration of AI and machine learning with geospatial technologies—has emerged as a transformative force in the field, enabling advanced pattern recognition, predictive modeling, and decision support at unprecedented scales. GIST, which originated in the 1960s and became a fully recognized discipline in the 1990s, has expanded rapidly over the past decade as both GIST and GeoAI have become integral to modern life. Deceptively simple applications, such as online maps and mobile navigation, are powered by a sophisticated array of geospatial science, technology, and increasingly, AI-driven analytics. The National Academy of Sciences has identified spatial thinking as a key skill that should be taught at all levels of education. It is spatial thinking – the powerful combination of concepts of space, tools for representation, and the process of reasoning – that is at the heart of the success of geospatial technologies. The tools themselves are only as useful as the skills and expertise of the people who employ them.
Geospatial technologies are transforming the way many fields conduct research, make decisions, and solve complex problems. In the earth, ecology, and environmental sciences, they are used to model the Earth’s subsurface; assess and predict climate change impacts on surface processes; quantify the extent and spatial distribution of natural resources and land cover; monitor disasters in real time; and map extreme environments—including the deep ocean and Mars. In the health and biomedical sciences, geospatial technologies enable the tracking of disease emergence and spread; investigation of environmental factors contributing to chronic health issues; analysis of health disparities related to the location and accessibility of medical facilities; and evaluation of “living space” conditions, such as proximity to walkable areas, grocery stores offering healthy foods, and other resources that support well-being. In national defense and border security, they are used to track the movement of people, weapons, and other contraband (e.g., drugs, radiological materials); monitor foreign military operations across the spectrum of warfare; map the spread of adversarial propaganda and disinformation on social media; and pinpoint the locations of terrorist activities, including the use of improvised explosive devices. In global enterprise and border studies, geospatial technologies support site suitability analysis; evaluation of collaboration, competition, and innovation networks; development of transportation and delivery plans; shipment tracking; and identification of market gaps. Increasingly, GeoAI, integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning with geospatial data, is enhancing these capabilities, enabling faster, more accurate, and more predictive insights across all these domains.
Images: (Left) L-band microwave radiometer brightness temperature retrievals and (right) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from a multi-spectral (RGB+NIR) image. Both images were taken by the same unmanned aerial system carrying different sensors on the same day over the same agricultural field in Anthony, New Mexico. Images courtesy of the Center for Geospatial Sensing and Sampling of the Environment “GeoSenSE”.