An Image Information System for Management of Watersheds in Remote Sensing Education

Watershed management in general can implement techniques of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) simultaneously. Remote sensing education at department of information management is teaching in two courses, digital image processing and GIS. In Taiwan, brand names remote sensing and GIS software packages have been widely implemented in public and private sectors. An information system that can provide simple and easy functions for watershed management and works with GIS software packages smoothly is good for operational watershed management. It can be utilized in remote sensing education for both college students and government technician. The objective of this paper was to develop an image information system for management of watersheds that can be served both in daily operations of government watershed management authorities and remote sensing education in university. The test area is located in northern Taiwan consisting of 717 square km with two watersheds. GIS software packages used by the authority consist of ArcMap and ArcPAD, one for office operations and one for field operations. Images were enhanced by remote sensing software packages and converted into ECW file format and SVG file format. Visual Basic programs were written to provide some functions for image files with ECW file format. Internet browsing of images was provided by web pages in SVG file format to meet needs of watershed management prescriptions. College students can create their own image information systems with remote sensing ingredients easily based on concept and working procedure of this paper.