Results of the V International Conference "Remote Sensing — the Synergy of High Technologies"

The V International Conference "Remote Sensing — the Synergy of High Technologies" organized by Sovzond was held on April 13-15, 2011 in the Moscow region.


Picture 1. Atlas Park Hotel

DigitalGlobe was the platinum sponsor, Trimble INPHO (Germany) and TTSystems (Russia) were gold sponsors, GeoEye (USA) and RapidEye (Germany) became silver sponsors of the conference. Official partner of the conference was Roslesinforg (Russia). GIS-Association (Russia) also acted as a conference partner. News channel “Vesti 24” was the general information sponsor. Information support for the conference was also provided by Aerospace Courier, Bulletin of Russian Register, Oil and Gas Geology, GEOMATICS, Geoprofi, Head of Local Administration, Land management, Monitoring and Cadastre, Information and Space, Oil and Gas Vertical, New Agriculture, Astronautics News, Spatial Data, Russian Space, Geoinformatics, GEOconnexion, GIM International, Oil market, Vector1, GeoTop electronic catalogue.

The V International Conference "Remote Sensing — the Synergy of High Technologies" gathered managers and lead experts of Russian and foreign companies working in the field of Earth remote sensing (ERS), GIS and mapping, cadastre, ecology, urban planning, land-use planning, regional and municipal management. An opportunity to exchange experience was afforded to ERS data providers, software and hardware suppliers, and users that work in various fields of economic activity, including oil & gas industry, forestry, agriculture and many others.

The conference 2011 was attended by over 400 (in 2010 – 350) representatives from 14 (in 2010 – 13) countries: Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Tadjikistan, Germany, Canada, USA, France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway.

Opening and Plenary Sessions
The V International Conference "Remote Sensing — the Synergy of High Technologies" was opened by the managing director Mikhail Bolsunovskiy. In his speech he noted that remote sensing has become an integral part of our lives. There are more than 100 space vehicles equipped with opto-electronic and radar sensors that take pictures at almost any time of a day, in different spectral channels, with different resolutions, high accuracy and frequency. Mr. Bolsunovsky remarked that the anniversary of the conference coincides with the 50th anniversary of Yuriy Gagarin flight.


Picture 2. Registration of the participants

Plenary sessions, seminars, an exhibition, round tables, announcement of the results of the contest for the best geoinformation project and other events were held as parts of the conference.

The plenary session on the first day of the conference (April 13) was dedicated to the state of the art and development trends of Russian and foreign software and integrated solutions in the field of remote sensing and GIS. The concept of the up-to-date approach to online space monitoring was reported by Sovzond Managing Director, M.A. Bolsunovsky. He confirmed that remote sensing is the most promising method of observation, analysis and forecasting of natural and anthropogenic objects and processes. The rapid development of the industry requires a revision of traditional approaches. The new approach introduced by Sovzond presupposes an active use of the instruments of direct access. The effect of the synergy of space and geo-information technologies strongly manifests in the creation of regional centers for satellite monitoring and information-analytical support.


Picture 4. Opening speech of the managing director Mikhail Bolsunovsky

During the plenary session representatives of  the leading world providers of remote sensing data and software for its processing (DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, RapidEye, MDA, e-GEOS, Trimble INPHO, etc.) made their reports.

DigitalGlobe
Much interest was aroused by the report made by the Sales Director of DigitalGlobe (USA) Maher Khoury who told about the most efficient up-to-date super-resolution satellite cancellation (QuickBird, WorldView-1,2). Its total capacity is 1.5 millions sq.km. per day. Mr.Khoury remarked that the satellite imagery archives of the company reached 1 billion square kilometers of Earth surface coverage. He also said about the plans of the company including the launch of the satellite WorldView-3 in 2014.

With a great attention conference attendees listened to the report of J. Ahlrichs, Vice-President of RapidEye AG (Germany). He told about the unique monitoring capabilities of RapidEye satellite constellation and prospects for the further development of the company’s geoinformation projects and solutions.

GeoEye
Senior manager of GeoEye (USA) A. Shumakov told about the basis for the Internet services and new developments for search, organization and exchange of remote sensing data. He also informed the audience about the preparation of the new GeoEye-2 satellite.

The head of algorithm development of e-GEOS company Mario Costantini devoted his report to the abilities of the Italian radar satellites COSMO-SkyMed. High-precision monitoring of the earth's surface shifts, buildings and structures was based on the data received from these satellites. It was the project for Russian Railways about the monitoring of the objects of the railway infrastructure on the area Tuapse – Adler.

ITT VIS
On the second day of the conference (April 14) there were two plenary sessions "Software, technologies and solutions for remote sensing data procession from the leading international and Russian developers" and "Satellite imagery applications".

Attention of the delegates was attracted by the speeches made by the representatives of the world leading developers of software and hardware systems.  Ms. S. Darnel ITT VIS (USA), devoted her report to the use of the satellite based on the new ENVI and ArcMap software.

Delegates listened attentively to the reports of the General Director of Rakurs company V. Adrov about the new features of PHOTOMOD 5.1.

At the second plenary meeting there were the reports of the specialists of Gazprom VNIIGAZ, Shpilman Science-analytical center of rational subsurface management, TomstNIPIneft.

Last Day
The plenary session of the final conference day (April 15) was devoted to the practical experience of using remote sensing data, unique and advanced technologies. Reports were made by the managers and specialists from many Russian and CIS companies.

Seminars
In comparison with the previous years the conference was more actively attended by the representatives of universities. Presentations were made by the professors, teachers, postgraduates and research staff of Gubkin Oil and Gas University, Omsk State Agricultural University, Irkutsk State Technical University, Moscow State Forest University, Perm State University, etc. They presented their study cases about the remote sensing data use for educational and scientific purposes. Particular attention was paid to the universities supply with remote sensing images and to the students training new software tools and technologies of data processing and analysis.

Almost all the reports made at the plenary sessions aroused much interest. The reporters were asked a lot of questions, discussions continued during personal talks and coffee breaks.

During the conference the following seminars were held:

• More detail, better insight, accurate analysis –WorldView-2 Power of 8 bands (DigitalGlobe).
• Efficient Processing Of Imagery — From Image Orientation To Orthophoto Mosaic  (Trimble INPHO).
• Experience of using satellite earth remote data and advanced methods of automatic data processing in forest inventory
• Practical use of Trimble INPHO software in Sovzond regional scale projects
• Novelty in the ENVI product line: ENVI 5.0, ENVI server application for ArcGIS Server
• New software version for processing SARscape 4.3 radar images
• Overview of ESRI desktop and server solutions. New features of ArcGIS 10
• Use of Earth RS data and geoinformation technologies to provide informational and analytical support for agriculture
• Use of ArcGIS Desktop for forest management solutions
• Large-scale mapping using super-resolution space imagery. Myths and reality
• Sovzond GEOSERVER” — advanced WEB solution of geoinformation support for territorial projects
• Automated Building Extraction From Point Clouds In An Integrated Workflow Length (Trimble INPHO)
• Creating geoportals using ESRI ArcGIS Server technology
• Use of radar data in oil and gas
• Use of radar data for on-line (up to 20 times a day) all-weather, irrespective of clouds and illumination, monitoring of navigation and ice situation in aquatic areas
• Use of radar data for agricultural solutions

Seminars were conducted by the representatives of sponsor companies and Sovzond lead specialists. An interesting presentation made by G. Marchisio, DigitalGlobe Senior Research Assistant, should be particularly noted. Within the seminar he demonstrated many examples of unique capabilities of up-to-date WorldView-2 multispectral satellite.

Seminars about the use of remote sensing data for forest and agricultural purposes and radar imagery were extremely popular with the delegates. They exchanged their experience, asked hot questions and participated in the aroused discussions.


Picture 13. Entertainment program

Interesting regional projects were presented at the seminar “Use of Earth RS data and geoinformation technologies to provide informational and analytical support for agriculture”. The representatives of Krasnodar region told about the space monitoring of the region. It was remarked that the monitoring covered about 4,000,000 hectares including more than 150 thousand agricultural fields. They managed to identify inefficient owners, violations of crop rotation, etc. The administration of the region took into consideration the results of the monitoring, made the appropriate conclusions and took necessary measures.

Deputy General Director of Space Research Institute, E. Loupian told about the great work done by the Institute for satellite monitoring of crops condition in Russia. The established system is online and can provide users with objective information about the state of crops in almost real time. The system uses mainly MODIS data, but the speaker remarked that the accumulation of sufficiently long time series of higher resolution data and the developed technologies will be adapted to the possibilities of new satellite systems.

In the resent years radar monitoring aroused more and more interest because of its unique (almost all-weather and all year-round) possibilities and the launch of a new generation of radar satellites. That’s why it was decided to devote the whole day to the issues of radar images. During eight hours the participants of the workshop discussed the examples of the projects, performed by Sovzond, MDA (Canada) and Kongsberg (Norway). The workshop on the use of radar data in oil and gas industry ashore and in waters was extremely popular with the participants:

Round Table
There were a lot of discussions during the Round Table "Space monitoring centers. Use of up-to-date earth remote sensing systems and geoinformation technologies in regional management". The topic was so acute and interesting that many participants expressed their opinion very emotionally. The organizers of the roundtable, the representatives of Sovzond and REKOD, had to answer numerous questions. Particular attention was paid to financial support and the distribution of authority between the federal and regional organizations in the question of the centers establishment. Regions representatives suggested using the existing local researches and projects as the basis. It was decided to have a special seminar with the representatives of the regions that use GIS and remote sensing technology successfully.

Sovzond thanks all the participants for active work and invites them to take part in the VI International Conference "Remote Sensing — the Synergy of High Technologies" to be held in April 2012.

Internet: www.sovzond.ru