It offers a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in geography, human geography and related subjects such as natural hazards and disaster management and geographical information systems. But what sets it apart from other universities is that it is the first in Europe to offer a full-fledged undergraduate degree in GIS in 1989. It followed it up by offering several MSc and Phd research degrees in GIS. The Kingston Centre for GIS of the School of Earth Sciences offers major and minor undergraduate degrees in GIS as well as an MSc in Applied GIS.

Undergraduate courses
The BSc degree in geographic information systems, offered by the Kingston University, was the first of its kind in Europe and has been running successfully since 1989. The core area of the course is the study of GIS concepts and how these are applied. Although computing and statistics are included, emphasis is placed on the applications as well as the technical computing aspects of the subject.

BSc in Geographical Information Systems: This course focusses on key GIS concepts and their application to problem-solving in the real world. It is built around a number of key themes – the analysis of spatial problems, the collection of spatial data using remote sensing and global positioning systems, information management, GIS application development and the visualisation of spatial data. It is an honours programme and is of three years duration. A related programme, which is called the geospatial investigation joint honours, focusses less on information and communication technologies and more on the applications of GIS technology. This too is of three years duration.

BSc in GIS with Business
GIS is widely used in business areas such as asset management, marketing analysis, oil exploration, route analysis and store location. This degree aims to give the student relevant skills in business management combined with an understanding of the core concepts and applications of GIS.

BSc in GIS with Computing
Telecommunications, computer networking, information management and GIS technologies are currently converging. Convergence is creating exciting career opportunities for GIS professionals with a good technical expertise. This degree helps the student acquire specialist GIS knowledge combined with universal programming and software engineering skills.

BSc in GIS with Internet Computing
Telecommunications, computer networking, information management and GIS technologies are currently converging. Convergence is creating exciting career opportunities for GIS professionals with a good technical expertise. The degree is so designed as to make the student a specialist with sound GIS knowledge and excellent programming and software engineering skills.

BSc in Property and Land Information Systems
The programme introduces students to a range of core subjects relating to the evaluation of property and real estate assets together with techniques for computer mapping and geographic interpretation of data. These subjects include property appraisal and valuation, investment, law, land development, geographic analysis, databases, GIS modelling and spatial statistics.