Another pandemic year: ISPRS 2021 Congress edition will be digital – but a real Congress
by Christian Heipke & Nicolas Paparoditis
As you have perhaps heard already, in February, after a long deliberation, ISPRS Council has announced to move the 2021 edition of the ISPRS Congress in Nice to the digital domain, as done in 2020, taking place on July 4-10, and to shift the physical meeting to summer 2022, from June 6-10, see also www.isprs.org. As much as we all regret this decision, and as much as we would have preferred to meet physically in Southern France this year, we believe that considering the current pandemic situation worldwide, the restrictions to travel and cross borders in the short term, and the health risks for the members of our community, this is the only reasonable way forward.
On the positive side, this 2021 edition of the XXIV Congress will have most of the features of a classical ISPRS Congress: the classical Congress program, including scientific tracks and sessions, plenary sessions with exciting keynote speakers, a forum track to discuss hot topics for our community (the role of geo in pandemics, earth resource and climate change monitoring, smart cities and autonomous navigation, etc.). The 2021 edition will also involve a technology track for industry to present their latest innovations, as well as an exhibition to meet with sponsors and exhibitors. As introduced last year, all presented videos will be made available to the public after the event, together with the published papers. We therefore encourage you to participate in this exciting event. Registration will open very soon; more details can be found at www.isprs2020-nice.com/.
Before leaving you, allow us to point you to two other interesting developments in ISPRS publications. As published in the last eBulletin editorial, at the beginning of this year ISPRS has started a new open access journal, the ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, with George Vosselman as Editor-in-Chief, which is now open for submissions, see more information below and at www.journals.elsevier.com/isprs-open-journal-of-photogrammetry-and-remote-sensing.
Changes are also coming in other parts of ISPRS publications: we will install Associate Editors for theISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, now in its 10th year of existence, in an effort to further increase the quality and visibility of the journal. You can find the call for positions in this eBulletin edition, please do not hesitate to drop us a note if you are interested in taking up this role.
In closing, we thank you for supporting ISPRS, and look forward to meeting digitally this summer, and in person in summer 2022 in Nice!
The ISPRS Foundation (TIF) News
ISPRS WEC Kennert Torlegård Travel Grant
ISPRS and TIF have estabished a new award, the ISPRS WEC Kennert Torlegård Travel Grant. The purpose of the Award is to support attendance at an ISPRS congress by a young scientist. The Fund from which the Award is financed is known as the White Elephant Restricted Kennert Torlegård Travel Grant Fund (TIF).
The ISPRS Foundation (TIF) has updated its PowerPoint presentation. The new version is downloadable from https://www.isprs.org/foundation/ (just below the information about the TIF brochure). This PowerPoint presentation is available to anyone in the ISPRS community, so please take advantage of it and use it to:
Publicize the work of TIF
Entice students and early-career researchers to apply for awards
Attract donations
Encourage members of your audience to serve TIF as trustees or committee members.
The download is the original PowerPoint (.pptx file), so that you can modify it to meet your needs, for example adding your name as presenter, the date, etc., and perhaps hiding some slides if there is too much detail for your audience or time slot. There is additional information to help you in the Notes pages.
We welcome comments, criticisms and suggestions for improvements – please e-mail me at foundationchair@isprs.org. Thank you.
ISPRS Student Consortium News
Student Consortium GeoMixer
The GeoMixer monthly event is a new opportunity to network with other remote sensing scientists at all career stages from around the world!
Find out how to participate in the next GeoMixer, scheduled for Thursday, 18 March, 11 AM UTC, and more here…
Society News
ISPRS Congress 2021 digital - Physical Congress now 2022
Dear all,
As you will see from the links (postponement note & postponement rationale ), Council has decided to run the 2021 edition of the XXIV Congress digitally only, and to organise a physical meeting in 2022. It was also decided to postpone the General Assembly and the hand-over of all officer positions until June 2022, and to shift the ISPRS meeting cycle by two years. This means that the next Symposia are now planned to take place in 2024, and the Congress following the one in 2022 will be organised in 2026. A rationale for these decision can also be found here.
We would like to thank you all for what you have done for ISPRS during the current term, and we hope to meet you in person in Nice in summer 2022.
Yours sincerely,
Christian Heipke, ISPRS President & Nicolas Paparoditis, ISPRS Congress Director
Seeking Associate Editors for the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
10 years after the appearance of its first volume, the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, the open access journal on geospatial sciences of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) published by MDPI introduces a new publishing process and is seeking a total of 11 Associate Editors.
Under the guidance of the Editor-in-Chief, Wolfgang Kainz from the University of Vienna, each Associate Editor will be responsible for one of the following areas:
Spatial data modeling (3D and multi-dimensional modeling, data structures and algorithms, uncertainty modeling, ontologies…)
Spatial data management (spatial databases, cloud data management, blockchain…)
Spatial analysis and decision making (geocomputation, geosimulation, spatial statistics…)
Geospatial Artificial intelligence (machine learning, deep learning, big data, data mining, cognition…)
Cartography (geovisualization, visual analytics, augmented and virtual reality, digital globes…)
Spatial data infrastructures (data integration, standards, metadata, policies…)
Geospatial Web (semantic web, Internet of Things, sensor networks, web services, cloud computing, interoperability…)
Citizen science, crowd sourcing and volunteered geographic information (open data, social media…)
Location based services and trajectory analysis (mobility, real-time GIS, indoor/outdoor modeling and mapping…)
Urban informatics, smart cities and communities (urban digital twins, BIM/CIM/AEC…)
Published by MDPI, the aim of the journal is to be a channel of communication for scientists and professionals in all countries working in the science and technology of geographic information. A list of topic areas can be found at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijgi/about. It is one of the top ranked geo-information journals with an impact factor of 2.239 and a 5-year impact factor of 2.402.
Duties:
Manage the editorial process for papers submitted to the Journal in the respective areas under the leadership of the Editor-in-Chief.
Ensure high quality scientific content for the Journal, taking into account the Aims and Scope and the MDPI editorial policies.
Work closely with the Guest Editors of special issues in the respective area who will report to the successful candidate.
Work closely with the Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher on matters of the Journal's strategic directions and manuscript decisions (general philosophy, editorial speed, ethics and difficult cases).
Experience and required qualities:
The successful candidates should have a demonstrated record of accomplishment of publishing high-quality papers in peer-reviewed journals.
The successful candidates should have some editorial experience.
This position demands an amount of time, so the successful candidates should not only possess strong time management skills, but should also have the capacity to devote the necessary time to the job.
Strong written English communication skills.
Candidates with demonstrated commitment to the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (as author, reviewer, Guest Editor, or Editorial Board Members) are highly encouraged to apply. Interested individuals should submit a cover letter including a statement of motivation and previous experience, their vision for the journal, together with a CV to Lena Halounová, ISPRS Secretary General, by April 30, 2021 (isprs-sg@isprs.org).
The ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing is open for submissions!
Dear colleague,
It’s our pleasure to warmly invite you to submit research and review articles to the newly established ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (IOJPRS). As the ISPRS Council communicated last December this new journal has been launched in response to the general demand for Golden Open Access publishing. Elsevier, the publisher of IOJPRS, last year noted an increase of 40% in published open access articles while the number of articles only accessible on subscription basis increased by 5%. We are expecting similar developments in the ISPRS community. Together with the ISPRS International Journal of Geoinformation, the ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing now facilitates Golden Open Access publishing for the complete ISPRS scope covering photogrammetry, remote sensing, and spatial information science.
The aim of the ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing is to gather latest advancements in the field of photogrammetry and remote sensing, ranging from cutting edge Earth monitoring tasks to methodological advances in areas computer vision and machine learning”. As editors of the new Open Access journal we also aim to set high quality standards. We welcome you to submit your article on https://www.editorialmanager.com/OPHOTO/default.aspx. Like for all open access journals Article Publishing Charges apply. In the first year a 50% reduction will apply, bringing the costs down to US$ 900.- per article. To enable Golden Open Access publishing by authors from low-income countries, Elsevier’s Research4Life programme offers waivers for 50%-100% of the Article Publishing Charges depending on the authors’ country of origin.
We are looking forward to your submissions!
George Vosselman
Eija Honkavaara
Michele Volpi
The U.V. Helava Award – Best Paper 2020 announced
Congratulations go to Andrea Meranera, Patrick Ebelb, Xiao Xiang Zhub and Michael Schmitt for their paper “Cloud removal in Sentinel-2 imagery using a deep residual neural network and SAR-optical data fusion” which was chosen as the 2020 Best Paper for the new evaluation period.
In accordance with the statutory mission and activities of ISPRS, the Society shall provide funds to support scientific and other initiatives, which will further improve its international status in the field of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences, and will therefore benefit all ISPRS members. For 2021, seven Scientific Initiatives projects were selected and approved by the Council for funding.
Title
PI(s)
TC
UAV-based Multi-sensor Dataset for Geospatial Research - UseGEO
Francesco Nex
I & II
ISPRS Benchmark Dataset on Object Detection in High-Resolution Satellite Images
Xian Sun
I
H3D - Hessigheim 3D - Benchmark on Semantic Segmentation of High-Resolution 3D Point Clouds and Meshes from Airborne LiDAR and Multi-View-Stereo-Image-Matching
Norbert Haala
II
Urban Underground Space 3D Semantic Mapping
Bisheng Yang
II
ISPRS Open-Data Collector for Supporting Remote Sensing Analyses over Agriculture and Natural Ecosystems by Sharing Sampled Ground Truth (Shy)
Francesco Pirotti
III
Modelling interrelationships among air quality, crop residue burning, soil moisture and crop yield using geospatial technology
Raj Setia
III & IV
Pushing forward the development of software tools for IndoorGML
Council is very pleased to announce that all but approximately 30 publications of the ISPRS Archives are now available online. Dating back almost 100 years, they provide a wealth of knowledge and research history to everyone around the globe free of charge.
In the past weeks, older volumes of the ISPRS Archives have been digitised and integrated into the Archives web site, adding to the many volumes digitised in 2017, by the Technical Information Library (TIB) at Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany.
Since 2014, the ISPRS publications repository is held at TIB, to whom ISPRS is very grateful, and who perform the digitisation as a service to the Society and the spatial science community. ISPRS is greatly indebted to them.
The digitisation of ISPRS Archives began in 2009, at Stuttgart University, when our Web-Master was informed, in regard to indexing, of the importance of open access to old Archive publications, in a uniform format. So, Markus Englich began the tedious task of digitising, with the hardware at his disposal, all publications held in Stuttgart, and also CD-Roms, both locally held, and those received from external sources. It goes without saying that this involved many hours work, and for this, ISPRS is also very grateful, both to our Web-Master and to the Institute for Photogrammetry at Stuttgart University, who continue to host the ISPRS web site free of charge.
So now, Council is very pleased to announce that all but approximately 30 publications are available online, dating back almost 100 years, and providing a wealth of knowledge and research history to everyone around the globe free of charge. You are invited to visit the Archives to view these publications. Should anyone have printed volumes, which are not yet available in digital form and feel they can make them available to the Society, please contact Headquarters at isprs-sg@isprs.org.
Special Issue "Upscaling AI Solutions for National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies (NMCA)”
You are invited to submit a paper for the ISPRS IJGI Special Issue on Geo-Information and Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods. The Special Issue aims to raise awareness and understanding of AI methods applied to large geospatial data and to collect ongoing research activities, best practices and applications showing innovative uses of AI within the context of NMCAs.
Deadline for submitting manuscripts: until 31 December 2021
Call for participation - ISPRS Benchmark on Semantic Segmentation of High-Resolution 3D Points and Meshes
The Hessigheim 3D - Benchmark (H3D) on Semantic Segmentation of High-Resolution 3D Point Clouds and Meshes was selected as an ISPRS scientific initiative 2021. The data set consists of both an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) laser scanning point cloud and a 3D textured mesh captured at the village of Hessigheim (Germany).
The point cloud features a mean point density of about 800 pts/m² and the oblique imagery used for 3D mesh texturing realizes a ground sampling distance of about 2-3 cm. This enables the identification of fine-grained structures and represents the state of the art in UAV-based mapping. The respective point clouds are manually labeled into 11 classes and are used to derive labeled textured 3D meshes as an alternative representation.
Interested researchers can use these state-of-the-art data sets to test their methods and algorithms on semantic segmentation of 3D point clouds for geospatial applications. Detailed information on the data, the participation and the submission of results for the H3D benchmark is also available in the accompanying paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.05346
General Announcements
About the GeoUnions (GUs)
GeoUnions is a network of representatives from the international scientific unions of the International Science Council (ISC) dealing with Earth and space sciences.
The GeoUnions (GUs) is a network of representatives from the international scientific unions of the International Science Council (ISC) dealing with Earth and space sciences. The GUs established a Steering Committee in 2004 (in Paris, France) to promote the sciences worldwide, to communicate and to coordinate the scientific activities of the individual unions, and to speak on behalf of GU members to the ISC Governing Board, ISC Members and its interdisciplinary bodies, and at international level, especially to the United Nations organizations and other global stakeholders. The current Members of the GUs are:
The Steering Committee of GUs normally meets a day before of the ISC General Assemblies and Scientific Unions Meetings of ISC. More information about the GeoUnions, including Working Procedures, can be found at http://www.icsu-geounions.org/
ISPRS plays an important role by participating in several joint projects and taking chair positions. Currently, ISPRS Secretary General Lena Halounová is the Chair of the Steering Committee.
New Activity: ISC GeoUnions Standing Committee on Disaster Risk Reduction
The GeoUnions Standing Committee on Disaster Risk Reduction (ISC-GU-SC-DRR) was established in July 2020, initiated and lead by Prof. Orhan Altan, who was nominated by the International Science Council (ISC) GeoUnions Steering Committee and ISPRS. The newly established Committee seeks to strengthen the long-standing ISC leadership in advancing DRR.…
Geospatial Information-enabled SDGs Local Monitoring Featured as Outstanding Good Practice by UN DESA
A pilot practice, lead by Prof. Jun Chen (ISPRS Past President), of comprehensive SDGs local monitoring with geospatial information was featured as one of the 16 outstanding examples of SDG implementation across the globe and presented in the new UN DESA booklet publication “SDG Good Practices: A complication of successful stories and lessons learned in SDG Implementation”.
Announcements of Scientific Meetings
(see also
ISPRS Calendar)
The 42nd Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing
June 21-24, 2021
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada
A hybrid event that will bring together academics, practitioners, vendors, and policymakers from the Remote Sensing community in an informative and productive five-day event under the theme of Understanding Our World: Remote Sensing for A Sustainable Future. With special sessions, general sessions, Keynotes, panel discussions, and workshops. Attendees will enjoy both technical sessions and networking opportunities, online and those attending on-site, will be enjoying the beautiful City Yellowknife. We hope this will encourage cross disciplinary and cross-cultural engagement as well as the sharing of knowledge derived from a range of scientific and traditional approaches.
The 2021 International Student Competition on Architectural Design and Digital Modelling
The Theme of the event is “Modelling: Resilience: To Recreate the Glamour of Canals”, including Architectural Design, Structural Design, Building and Space 3D Modelling. An International Photography Competition on Historic Canal Towns Along the Belt and Road will be part of the event. Award ceremony and work exhibition will be held in October 2021, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
02-04 Apr 2021
UASG-2021
Second International Conference on Unmanned Aerial Systems in Geomatics-2021 https://new.iitr.ac.in/uasg2021/
Greater Noida, India
11-14 Oct 2021
3D GeoInfo 2021
The 16th 3D GeoInfo Conference
in conjunction with 3D Cadastres https://3dgeoinfo2021.github.io/
New York City, USA
01-04 Nov 2021
Joint Conference of Gi4DM and High-level Forum on Urban Geoinformatics
1. Geo-Information for Disaster Management (Gi4DM 2021), Nov.1-3, 2021
2. High-level Forum on Urban Geo-Informatics (Urban Geo-Informatics 2021), Nov.2-4, 2021 https://www.gi4dm.net/2021/
Beijing, China
07-11 Dec 2021
SGEM Vienna Green 2021
21st International Scientific GeoConference SGEM Vienna Green 2021 https://www.sgemviennagreen.org
Vienna, Austria
16-24 Jul 2022
COSPAR 2022
44th Scientific Assembly of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and Associated Events https://www.cospar-assembly.org
Athens, Greece
Wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiterin/Mitarbeiters (m,w,d) (EntgGr. 13 oder 14 TV-L, 100%) mit Promotion (PostDoc) im Bereich des Maschinellen Lernens, Schwerpunkt optische Fernerkundung
Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany
Deadline: 30-Apr-2021
9-Mar-2021
PhD student Autonomous UAV Data Acquisition for 3D City Modelling
Faculty ITC, University of Twente, the Netherlands
Deadline: 15-Apr-2021
16-Mar-2021
Full Professorship of Remote Sensing
At the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Geodesy / Institute of Geodesy, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Deadline: 17-May-2021