The ISPRS Council is pleased to announce the introduction of a new Golden Open Access journal, the ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (IOJPRS), starting on January 1, 2021 and published by Elsevier. As an independent third journal of ISPRS, IOJPRS will offer additional possibilities for authors to publish their latest results in a high-quality peer reviewed scientific outlet under the umbrella of ISPRS.
The decision to start this new journal followed a careful assessment of its pros and cons over the past 18 months. The most important point was the global development in the direction of open science in general and open access in particular, reflected e.g. in new regulations and initiatives within the European Union such as the so called Plan S. Equally important, the two existing ISPRS journals have been experiencing a rapid increase in the number of submissions and published papers, demonstrating the growth of our field; the two Editor-in-Chiefs of the highly-ranked ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (IJPRS) currently work with 19 Associate Editors to handle 1,500+ submissions a year, while the open access ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJ-GI) has been publishing up to 100 articles per month as it approaches its 10th year of existence. The ISPRS Council, in cooperation with all journal Editors-in-Chiefs and Elsevier, conducted a survey to seek the opinion of the community at large and analyzed the findings before reaching the conclusion that the benefits of adding a new Golden Open Access journal would be significant.
The ISPRS Council is delighted to share the news with our community that George Vosselman, PhD, former Editor-in-Chief of IJPRS, has accepted our offer to serve as the first Editor-in-Chief of the new ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.
George Vosselman is professor in Geo-Information Extraction with Sensor Systems at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. After graduating in Geodetic Engineering from the Delft University of Technology in 1986, he worked at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, until 1992. In 1991, he obtained his PhD degree with honours from the University of Bonn, Germany. He was appointed professor of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing at the Delft University of Technology in 1993. In 2004 he joined ITC, now a faculty of the University of Twente.
George has been instrumental in adapting ISPRS to the rise of laser scanning, including roles as WG chair (2000-2004) on reconstruction from airborne LiDAR and InSAR, WG co-chair (2008-2012) on point processing, and editor of a well-known standard book (with Hans-Gerd Maas). Moreover, he has made a massive contribution to scientific standards, quality control, and reviewing: he was editor-in-chief of the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (2004-2012), a member of the International Science Advisory Committee (ISAC), and chair of the International Program Committee for the ISPRS Congress 2016. He has over 250 publications to his name, many of which have been cited numerous times. He was also the Director of the very successful ISPRS Geospatial Week, organised in Enschede in 2019.
The ISPRS 2021 Congress is approaching
The abstract submission for the 2021 edition will open on 4 January 2021.
Advanced Notice of Opening of The ISPRS Foundation (TIF) Travel Grant Applications
The ISPRS Foundation expects to open applications on the TIF web site by 1 February 2021, for travel grants to attend the postponed ISPRS Congress in Nice France, scheduled for 4-10 July 2021.
The ISPRS Foundation (TIF) is pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Sisi Zlatanova, University of New South Wales, Australia, and Prof. Dr. Sandra Maria Fonseca da Costa, adjunct professor at the University of Vale do Paraíba (UNIVAP) in São José dos Campos, Brazil, have joined the Fund-Raising Committee. Dr. Fonseca da Costa has recently joined TIF’s Board of Trustees. Dr. Zlatanova is well known in ISPRS and currently serves as the President of Technical Commission IV, Spatial Information Science.
Sisi Zlatanova will represent the Committee in the region of Australia and New Zealand. Sandra Maria Fonseca da Costa will represent the Committee in Latin America. Thus, the Committee is now well posed in Australia, New Zealand and Latin America as well as Europe.
The current membership of the Committee is:
Michael Gruber (chair)
Austria
TIF Trustee
Ron Bisio
USA
TIF Trustee
Sandra Maria Fonseca da Costa
Brazil
TIF Trustee
Lawrie Jordan
USA
TIF Trustee
Paul Marshall
UK
Fabio Menna
Italy
Marko Pasko
Slovak Republic
Miguel Pelaz
Spain
Sisi Zlatanova
Australia
ISPRS TC IV President
The Committee is now working on the next phase, to identify points of contact and attract possible donors. This will enable TIF to support more young researchers to contribute to the conferences of the coming year and beyond by awarding more travel grants and to stimulate youth and public interest and participation in the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences, technologies, and applications. The Committee is still open to welcome new members to pursue the worthwhile goal of expanding TIF’s activities. If you are interested – or know someone who may be interested – please contact Michael Gruber at TIF-fundraising@isprs.org. Thank you.
TIF’s Audit Committee is perhaps less well known that its other committees, though it has its own web page, https://www.isprs.org/foundation/committees/audit_committee.aspx. Its terms of reference are quite extensive, but its most important role by far is the annual review of the TIF accounts prepared by TIF Finance Officer Marguerite Madden. TIF is delighted that a new member has joined the Audit Committee, Prof. Dr. Qihao Weng, professor of geography, Indiana State University, USA. Qihao will join Laurent Polidori (France) and John Trinder (Australia) in supporting the Audit Committee chair, Shailesh Nayak (India). Welcome, Qihao.
ISPRS Student Consortium News
ISPRS Student Consortium News – Past Event Reports and Upcoming Activities of the ISPRS Student Consortium
by Sheryl Rose Reyes
The ISPRS Student Consortium continued with its activities in the second half of 2020, amidst the continuing global health crisis to support the youth across the globe. In the last months, the Consortium participated in a conference and organized a summer school.
A digital version of the Awards Booklet for the XXIV ISPRS Congress, with the winners of all categories which are not decided at Congress, has now been published. On behalf of the Society, ISPRS Council once again congratulates all winners for their outstanding contributions and looks forward to personally presenting the awards in Nice in July 2021.
General Announcements
ICORSE Chair, Yana Gevorgyan named new GEO Secretariat Director
ISPRS congratulates Yana Gevorgyan on her recently announced position as the new director of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Secretariat. Gevorgyan is an award-winning international relations specialist at NOAA's Satellite and Information Service (NESDIS). She also holds the position as Chair of ICORSE since early 2020.
Call for Letters of Intention
Our World Heritage (https://www.ourworldheritage.org) invites you to submit a Letter of Intention under A Global Initiative: Heritage in the 21st Century toa global competition to highlight transformational uses of technology that increase community engagement in the monitoring, interpretation, and presentation of World Heritage Sites called TRANSFORMATIONAL IMPACTS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.
Deadline of Letter of Intent is 29 January 2021 at 11:59 PM CET.
Announcements of Scientific Meetings
(see also
ISPRS Calendar)
ISRSE-39 Postponed to Spring 2022
VNSC and VAST officially announce that due to the corona virus crisis, the ISRSE-39 Conference, due to be held in Hanoi 18-22nd October 2021 has been postponed. It is the desire of VNSC and ICORSE that the conference will be rescheduled to the Spring of 2022, at the same venue, the National Convention Centre, Hanoi, Vietnam. Final dates are being determined.
Four Positions of Research Assistant Professors (Urban Informatics and Smart Cities)
Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
2-Dec-2020
Lecturer / Associate Professor in Marine Geospatial Science (Ref: 1873401)
Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering, University College London
Deadline: 10-Jan-2021
11-Dec-2020
EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Geospatial Systems - 10x fully-funded, four-year PhD studentships
Newcastle University and the University of Nottingham, UK
Deadline: 7-Feb-2021
14-Dec-2020
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS), Wuhan University, China
Deadline: 15-Feb-2021
17-Dec-2020
Research Assistant – Fusion of SAR and Multispectral imagery – 80%
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Sciences Remote Sensing and Image Analysis, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany
Deadline: 22-Jan-2021
