CRISP conducts research in the processing, analysis and applications of satellite remote sensing data. The initial focus of CRISP's research was on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data processing, including interferometric SAR processing.

The research focus was then extended to the applications of SAR and optical data in ocean and coastal studies, and tropical vegetation studies. CRISP has also undertaken projects in environmental monitoring, such as the daily monitoring of the regional land/forest fires and monitoring of ocean oil pollution.

Currently, CRISP's research is focused on the processing and applications of very high spatial resolution imagery, hyperspectral data, and multiple polarizations SAR in order to keep pace with the recent rapid developments in remote sensing technology.

CRISP has been active in forging strong linkages with the international remote sensing research community. Scientists from CRISP are principal investigators of projects funded by the National Space Development Agency (NASDA) of Japan. CRISP's scientists also participate as principal investigators in the NASA's EO-1 science team, and the ENVISAT projects of the European Space Agency (ESA).

CRISP also conducts joint research projects with many renowned international research institutes.

Some of the current research areas of CRISP are:

• Very high spatial resolution imagery
  • Mapping at large scales (1:5000 to 1:25,000) with high positional accuracies
  • Detection and enumeration of trees in high resolution imagery of oil palm plantations
  • Extraction of linear features in high resolution imagery

• Digital elevation models and 3D modelling
  • Generating digital elevation models from high resolution optical and SAR data

• Cloud-free mosaics
  • Cloud-free Mosaics of high resolution optical remote sensing images

• Multiple polarization SAR
  • Land cover classification using multipolarization SAR

• Hyperspectral Data
  • Applications of hyperspectral data from the EO-1 Hyperion sensor in land cover classification
  • Retrieval of coastal water quality parameters from ocean colour and hyperspectral data

• Environmental Monitoring
  • Derivation of environmental information from wide coverage satellite data with tens of spectral bands (such as MODIS, MERIS and GLI)
  • Detection and mapping of land/forest fires
  • Using MODIS for fire monitoring
  • Red tide study using ocean colour data
  • Oil pollution detection using satellite imagery
  • Rapid environmental evaluation using remote sensing data
  • Flood Monitoring

The earlier research projects of CRISP include:

• Monitoring of rice cropping systems using multitemporal synthetic aperture radar

• Tropical forest study using interferometric SAR

• Ships detection

• Ship Wakes

• Internal waves in Andaman Sea

• ERS Mosaic of Southeast Asia