About NGI
About the Institute
NGI is location on the Jubilee Campus in a building purposefully designed and equipped to support our contract and postgraduate research programmes. NGI also has a presence at The University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) in the Faculty of Science and Engineering where we have excellent equipment and facilities to support our staff in research and teaching.
Our wide-ranging skills, expertise and facilities draw research funding and scholarships from industry, government, research councils and European bodies. This has resulted in a rich and evolving research portfolio which feeds into our postgraduate teaching programmes keeping us at the forefront of current research and development.
History of NGI
NGI was formed in the summer of 2011 to combine the strengths of two world-renowned research groups at the University of Nottingham; the Institute of Engineering and Surveying and Space Geodesy (IESSG), and the Centre for Geospatial Science (CGS).
The IESSG was launched in 1988, having been previously well-known as the Nottingham Surveying Group, and as such, has been active since the 1960s. Technological revolution has been key with major advances in terrestrial opto-mechanical equipment, automated acquisition systems, and the development of satellite-based systems such as Transit, GPS and GLONASS, EGNOS and the European Galileo system.
The core of IESSG research activity traditionally focussed on satellite navigation and positioning systems but this widened to include fields such as photogrammetry, remote sensing, sensor integration and geographical information systems. Institute research ranged from fundamental science to application software solutions with an ever-increasing diversity from engineering surveying to unmanned aerial vehicles.
As a major multi-disciplinary research centre, the Centre for Geospatial Science was set up in 2005. It conducted pioneering studies across areas related to geospatial science and technology. Through working closely with partners form across industry, academia, and various government departments, staff from the centre developed research strengths in geospatial science including geoinformatics and data modelling, geospatial intelligence, interoperability and standards, location-based services and semantics, reasoning and cognition.
GRACE
NGI also operates a knowledge transfer and business engagement unit, GRACE, which focusses on assisting organisations, businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs to take advantage of satellite navigation.