Motivation to form QGRG

In mathematical physics, studies on dynamical systems gained a lot o popularity within the last three decades. Deterministic equations governing certain dynamical systems lead to the "toy models" which explained elegantly on how nature works. Some of the real world dynamical systems indeed exhibit the behaviours that could be easily simulated through those deterministic equations. Many geoscientific phenomena and processes traverse various behavioural phases. Several such phenomena and processes exhibit behavioural changes across short time intervals. It is interesting to to develop system-specific "attractors" that explain the compete dynamical behaviours of such a system under study. Within the context of geomorphology, there exist phenomena and processes that fall under both "highly time varying" and "time-independent" categories. Now we have powerful mathematical tools and ideas that can be applied and made use in developing geomorphologic-system-specific "attractors".

Across the world, there are a very few groups that address intertwined challenges encountered in "Quantitative Geomorphology" that eventually attempts to make predictions in the behaviours of geomorphologically relevant phenomena and processes. We realise the importance of mathematical morphology in addressing numerous challenges encountered in quantitative geomorphology, much better than any other available mathematical theories. By employing mathematical morphology, the five important challenges--that need to be addressed to develop and/or construct system-specific attractor to understand the spatio-temporal dynamical behaviours--include retrieval, analysis, reasoning, and modelling and visualization.

Quantitative Geomorphology Research Group (QGRG) would emphasise rigorous academic research and training for man power development activities. Coordinator of this group, for the first time, have provided initial impetus on showing applications of mathematical morphology in geomorphology. This would further gain popularity across the globe. The idea of forming QGRG is also to let other groups realise the importance of mathematical morphology (over other mixed and/or hybrid approaches) in the context of "Quantitative Geomorphology". Mathematical Morphology has not hither to been employed in the contexts of geomorphology and geographical information science (GISci) by any other Quantitative Geomorphology Group (or) GISci Group.

Quantitative Geomorphologic Research Group (QGRG) deals with science and engineering of Geomorphological relevant information of Earth and Earth-like planets acquired across multiscale,  multispectral, and multitemporal resolutions. While data is available in various forms, it is more appropriate to employ techniques of relevance to (i) retrieve, (ii) visualize, (iii) integrate, (iv) store,  (v) analyze, (vi) reason, and (vii) model by using data as source. All these tasks require knowledge from cross-disciplinary fields such as geomorphology, mathematical morphology, fractal geometry, geostatistics, digital geometry, GISci, geography, cartography, computer science, mathematics, computer graphics, remote sensing technology, complex dynamical systems, etc. One of the main subgroups of QGRG deals with Mathematical Morphology and Applications with a focus on the topics that include (i) on retrieving, understanding, processing, and evaluating of information and knowledge in multi-disciplinary environment. We emphasize on providing new ideas that lead to better understanding of spatial information—from retrieval, visualization, analysis, reason and modelling points of view—with firm quantitative basis.