Ask Our Lecturer! Dr Filip Biljecki on GIS

“Each time you use your smartphone to find the nearest restaurant offering a particular cuisine and the quickest route to get there, you are drawing on GIS techniques.”

Dr Filip Biljecki, Assistant Professor
Department of Real Estate, NUS

What does location and space have in common

Assistant Professor Dr Filip Biljecki will have you know that location and the managing of space are crucial to the study of real estate. He explains: “You will need a set of tools that collect, manage, analyse, and visualise geographic information on maps. Simply put, each time you use your smartphone to find the nearest restaurant offering a particular cuisine and the quickest route to get there, you are drawing on GIS techniques.” Dr Biljecki’s teaching and research focus on GIS and related emerging directions such as urban analytics and geographic data science.

Dr Filip Biljecki explains the key concepts in geographic information systems to prospective students at the SDE Open House.

GIS, which stands for Geographic Information System, is key to reading the NUS Bachelor of Science (Real Estate) [BSc (RE)]. Dr Biljecki says, “Location and the managing of space are crucial in real estate. Which is why GIS is ingrained in our curriculum. GIS has many applications in the domain, regardless of the type of real estate. For example, it is utilised for site selection and business strategies, and predicting prices on a large scale. Knowledge of GIS is thus essential to real estate graduates.”

Prospective students learnt about GIS at a sample class, organised by NUS Department of Real Estate (DRE) as part of the SDE Open House on Saturday, 6 March 2021.

DRE held another session, “Thinking Spatially: Using GIS in Real Estate and Urban Studies” on Saturday, 13 March 2021, hosted by Dr Wang Xize.