Awards

Here is the second part of the awards presented at the recent Melbourne Congress. At the Congress a number of prestigious awards was presented to members of the scientific community. Some of them were already mentioned in the issue of eBulletin, more will follow in the next issue..

The U.V. Helava Award 2008-2011 Konrad Schindler (Switzerland), Andreas Ess (Switzerland), Bastian Leibe (Germany) and Luc Van Gool (Belgium) The U.V. Helava Award 2008-2011, sponsored by Elsevier B.V. and Hexagon Geosystems, was established to encourage and stimulate submission of high quality scientific to the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. At the same time it honors the outstanding achievements and contributions of DR. Uuno V. Helava to research and development in photogrammetry and remote sensing. The award went to Konrad Schindler, Andreas Ess, Bastian Leibe and Luc Van Gool for their paper "Automatic detection and tracking of pedestrians from a moving stereo rig", published in 2010. » Read more

The Kraus Medal George Vosselman (The Netherlands) and Hans-Gerd Maas (Germany) The Karl Kraus Medal for the best textbook in the fields of photogrammetry, remote sensing, and spatial information sciences went to George Vosselman and Hans-Gerd Maas for their book "Airborne and terrestrial laser scanning". » Read more

The Schwidefsky Medal George Vosselman (The Netherlands) The Schwidewsky Medal recognizes persons who have made significant contributions to photogrammetry and remote sensing, either through the medium of publication as author or editor, or in another form. The Medal went to George Vosselman, the long-term Editor-in-Chief of the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, who will retire from this position at the end of 2012. » Read more

The Willem Schermerhorn Award Cemal Özgür Kıvılcım (Turkey) The Willem Schermerhorn Award is granted to a person wo has most significantly contributed to the activities of a Working Group of the ISPRS during the four year Congress period. The awardee 2012 was Cemal Özgür Kıvılcım, who led and coordinated the activities of the Student Consortium over the last years. » Read more

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	ISPRS homepage
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Editorial

Stronger scientific voice and better service
 
ISPRS is a leading international society in the field of photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences, with a long history, high reputation and strong influence. Now we are entering a new phase with very good opportunities for advancing geo-spatial information science, promoting spatially enabled Government and Societies, and facilitating easier access to geo-spatial education. However, we are also facing grand challenges, such as increasing demands and strong competition. For instance, a better understanding and sustainable development of our planet requires more reliable information about the Earth and its environment and other physical objects and processes, more effective analysis and simulation, more advanced visualization and representation.

During the last ISPRS congress held from Aug. 25 to Sept. 2012 in Melbourne, the General Assembly had elected a new Council. As the new president of ISPRS, I will work closely with other council members to address the above challenges by keeping all the good traditions and taking all necessary reforms to implement the strategic plan. On one hand, stronger scientific voices will be heard from ISPRS. There are many questions we have to answer, such as what are the major scientific and technical, challenges we are facing, what are the key issues to be addressed, what are the latest developments? We will mobilize council members, TCPs, working group chairs, and ISPRS experts to develop vision papers and a research & development agenda for providing vision of the future. The ISPRS book series will be restructured and author books for certain select cutting-edge topics will be organized. Special issues for hot research topics and developments will be encouraged for ISPRS academic journals.

On the other hand, our service for members and the society needs to be improved. We need to discuss whether the current conference structure (congress, symposia, workshops) should be optimized, how more scientists and young people can be brought into ISPRS events and activities. How can we enable TCPs and WG officers to concentrate on scientific works? There are also many other issues to be discussed, including getting the ISPRS Journal of GeoInformaton and ISPRS annals cited in the major indices ISI and SOPUS; setting up a permanent headquarters, developing a closer collaboration on inter-disciplinary research with other societies; and having a collaboration among academia, industry and users.

As I said during the closing ceremony of the Melbourne congress, I will not be able to carry out this task on my own, and rely very much on a team work of ISPRS council, TCPs, Working Group chair, co-chairs; ISAC, IPAC, editors, Regional Representatives, and other ISPRS officers. I hope to get continuing support from Ordinary Members, Regional Member, Sustaining Members, Associate Members and Honorary Members, fellows and many others.

Chen Jun
ISPRS President

Future Earth: New global platform for sustainability research launched at Rio+20 (ICSU)
June 14, 2012, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

An alliance of international partners from global science, research funding and UN bodies, launched a bold new 10-year initiative on global environmental change research for sustainability at the Forum on Science and Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development on Thursday. Future Earth – research for global sustainability, will provide a cutting-edge platform to coordinate scientific research which is designed and produced in partnership with governments, business and, more broadly, society.

» Read more

The 1st International Summer School on Mobile Mapping Technology
June 11-15 2012, Tainan, Taiwan

This summer school is organized by the University of Calgary, the Ohio State University and National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) and officially supported by ISPRS, IAG, CSPRS and National Science Council (NSC) of Taiwan. In addition, more than ten government agencies subsidize the activities of the event as co-organizers. The summer school took place at Zenda Suites within the vicinity of NCKU campus from June 11 to 15, 2012.

» Read more

ISPRS Hannover Workshop 2013
High-Resolution Earth Imaging for Geospatial Information
May 21 – 24, 2013
Hannover, Germany

Earth imaging from air and space has undergone major changes over the last years. Examples of new and significant developments comprise the development of digital aerial cameras, laser scanners and UAVs, now in everyday use, and the ever increasing number of high-resolution and hyperspectral optical and SAR/InSAR satellite sensors. Among other topics sensor and system calibration issues are of major importance as they govern the achievable quality of the results of the final results.
Today, all these data are used for the production of geospatial information. At the same time, updating existing geospatial databases has gained more importance, and automation has had a significant impact on the processing chain.
In addition, the stunning success of virtual globes, e. g. Google Earth or Bing Maps along with developments such as GEO (intergovernmental Group of Earth Observations), GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) and GMES (Global Monitoring of Environment and Security) have significantly changed the remote sensing arena in the last few years.

» Read more

Defence Geospatial Intelligence
January 21–23, 2013
QEII Conference Centre, Westminster, London, United Kingdom

Defence Geospatial Intelligence is Europe's largest annual gathering dedicated to high-level discussion addressing the major challenges of the defence and government geospatial intelligence community. Bringing together Heads of Geospatial Intelligence, GIS, Remote Sensing, Operations, and Imagery and Analysis, the conference provides a unique forum to discuss and debate the development of geospatial intelligence capabilities across the globe. Addressing the use of geospatial information in scenarios such as international conflicts, humanitarian disasters, crime, security, border control, arms treaty monitoring and global climate change, a fundamental objective of the event is to help organisations understand how to build the necessary infrastructure and architecture to take advantage of geospatial intelligence capabilities.
 
For more detailed information, please visit the conference website (www.dgieurope.com).

COSIT 2013
11th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory
September 2-6, 2013
Scarborough, United Kingdom

Spatial information theory is concerned with all aspects of space and spatial environments as experienced and represented by humans and also by other animals and artificial agents. The scope of the conference includes both applications to specific domains and also the development of general theories of space and spatial information.

» Read more (1st announcement)

» Call for Workshops and Tutorials

GEOINFORMATIK 2013
Geo together – GIScience connects
March 13-15, 2013
Heidelberg, Germany

Geo together – GIScience connects is the motto under which participants from academia, private as well as public sectors meet from March 13th -­ 15th at the University of Heidelberg. The goal is to present results, discuss and exchange ideas about new developments, solutions for practical problems and research questions in the realm of digital geographical information. We cordially invite you to submit contributions for GEOINFORMATIK 2013. The three day event presents opportunities for researchers and field experts alike to inform themselves about the newest applications and to discuss future research directions.

» Read more (2nd call for papers)

Newly launched: Geo-matching.com

Geo-matching.com (www.geo-matching.com) is the independent product comparison website for professional hard- and software for geomatics and adjacent fields. The website leads you through the maze of specifications and gives the opportunity to compare products of different producers, read up on reviews given by users, in order to reach a balanced judgment before buying.

The website is bringing together the highly valued GIM International and Hydro International product surveys all in one place. At this moment you can view and compare Total Stations, GNSS receivers, Airborne Laser Scanners, Terrestrial Laser Scanners, Remote Sensing Image Processing Software, Mobile GIS Software. The coverage will be extended the coming year. Soon to be added are: Airborne Lidar processing software, Digital Aerial Cameras, High-resolution Satellite Imagery and Digital Photogrammatric workstations.

At Geo-matching.com you will:

• Find detailed spec-based comparisons for more than 500 products
• Read other industry professionals’ comments and opinions
• Access data quickly, easily and free of charge

» www.geo-matching.com

New publications in the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Volume 73 (September 2012)
Innovative Applications of SAR Interferometry from modern Satellite Sensors

Bistatic system and baseline calibration in TanDEM-X to ensure the global digital elevation model quality
Jaime Hueso González, John Mohan Walter Antony, Markus Bachmann, Gerhard Krieger, Manfred Zink, Dirk Schrank, Marco Schwerdt

TanDEM-X calibrated Raw DEM generation
Cristian Rossi, Fernando Rodriguez Gonzalez, Thomas Fritz, Nestor Yague-Martinez, Michael Eineder

Coherence evaluation of TanDEM-X interferometric data
Michele Martone, Benjamin Bräutigam, Paola Rizzoli, Carolina Gonzalez, Markus Bachmann, Gerhard Krieger

Relative height error analysis of TanDEM-X elevation data
Paola Rizzoli, Benjamin Bräutigam, Thomas Kraus, Michele Martone, Gerhard Krieger

Operational TanDEM-X DEM calibration and first validation results
Astrid Gruber, Birgit Wessel, Martin Huber, Achim Roth

An analysis of terrain properties and the location of surface scatterers from persistent scatterer interferometry
S.N. Riddick, D.A. Schmidt, N.I. Deligne

Shanghai subway tunnels and highways monitoring through Cosmo-SkyMed Persistent Scatterers
Daniele Perissin, Zhiying Wang, Hui Lin

Deformation monitoring of single buildings using meter-resolution SAR data in PSI
Stefan Gernhardt, Richard Bamler

Grouping of Persistent Scatterers in high-resolution SAR data of urban scenes
Alexander Schunert, Uwe Soergel

Retrieval of phase history parameters from distributed scatterers in urban areas using very high resolution SAR data
Yuanyuan Wang, Xiao Xiang Zhu, Richard Bamler

An advanced algorithm for deformation estimation in non-urban areas
Kanika Goel, Nico Adam