The RMIT School of Mathematical and Geospatial Science was an Australian

tertiary education Tertiary education (higher education, or post-secondary education) is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank defines tertiary education as including universities, colleges, and vocational schools ...

school located within the College of Science Engineering and Health of

RMIT University The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (abbreviated as RMIT University) is a public research university located in the city of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia., section 4(b) Established in 1887 by Francis Ormond, it is the seventh-o ...

. Since September 2016 the former school has become part of the new RMIT School of Science. Both Mathematical Sciences and Geospatial Science have transitioned into two of the seven distinct disciplines that make up the RMIT School of Science. The last Head of School was Professor John Hearne.

Centre for Risk and Community Safety

The School includes the centre for and Community Safety which is a collaboration between the Geospatial Science school, Emergency Management Australia and the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

. It is an internationally recognised research department which aims to identify the research needs of emergency management in Australia and publicize the needs as well as undertake research to satisfy them. This centre is also affiliated with the Australian Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (Bushfire CRC). The Bushfire CRC at RMIT is working on Methodology Development for Economic Assessment of Bushfire Costs' and 'Evaluation of Current "Stay or Go" Policy and its Implementation in Bushfire Response'. These both are elements of the Bushfire CRC "Program C" that is focusing on Community Self Sufficiency for fire safety.

Access Grid Room

The Mathematics section of the School includes an " Access Grid Room" this is a room equipped with two way interactive telecommunications including Smart Boards, data projectors and large multimedia displays. It was built in collaboration with the International Centre for Education in Mathematics (ICE-EM) and the room is connected to the worldwide Access Grid.

International Collaboration

Students and Lecturers from the School regularly collaborate with International Organizations and Universities as part of the courses. Recent Collaborations have included the University of the South Pacific and RMIT Vietnam as well as Canada, China, The Netherlands and South Africa

History

Geospatial Science

Mr. Carl S. Honman founded Geospatial Sciences at RMIT and ran Land

Surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the land, terrestrial Plane (mathematics), two-dimensional or Three-dimensional space#In Euclidean geometry, three-dimensional positions of Point (geom ...

Courses in the 1930s as part of Civil Engineering Courses. After his secondment to the

Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government or simply as the federal government, is the national executive government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. The executive consists of the pr ...

due to the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

various lecturers took over the courses until Mr. Love was appointed in September 1949. It was Mr. Love who set up a surveying course that met the requirements of the Victorian Board of Surveying requirements. Over time the size and scope of the school has expanded and in 1978 RMIT University was able to award degrees and the school had degrees in surveying, Cartography and Town Planning. The Department of Surveying became the Department of Land Information in 1987 and was renamed again in the 1990s to the Department of Geospatial Science and in the 2000s was merged with the Department of Mathematics to form the Department of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences seen today.

References