What really happened at the largest geomatics event in Canada this decade?

Energy and Our Changing Planet was the focus of attention at a recently completed symposium in Quebec City. The joint 2014 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) and the 35^th Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing (CSRS) were attended by nearly 2,000 people from numerous countries from around the world. Congratulations to the organizing committees for hosting and managing such a large event in Canada, including selecting presentations from nearly 2,500 abstract submissions. On most days there were 12 concurrent sessions along with well attended plenary sessions.

The welcoming speakers included Dr. Monique Bernier, Symposium Chair; General Walter Natynczyk, President of the Canadian Space Agency; Dr. Brian Grey, Assistant Deputy Minister at Natural Resources Canada; Dr. Anne Smith, on behalf of the Canadian Remote Sensing Society; plus other dignitaries affiliated with the joint symposia. The keynote presentations focused on applications of remote sensing in energy production, hydrography, renewable energy and electrical networks.

In the technical program, there was a lot of focus on various uses of the data received from the existing Radarsat 2 mission. There was also attention paid to the forthcoming Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM) that's currently under development. There was much excitement about the uses of airborne and satellite collected radar data for a host of applications including energy, urban, agriculture, resources and water. In addition, many optical and hyperspectral data application and technology presentations were given.

While the majority of the presentations were on raster image processing, most often the end results of the particular analysis or processing were loaded into a GIS for further analysis or storage. While the technology for the vectorization and subsequent importation of raster processing results into a GIS has improved over the years, there's still work to do. Raster to vector conversion is still not a foolproof process and several sessions outlined some of the issues with remote sensing and GIS data integration. Several presentations included the use of the ArcGIS Image Extension for Server product for image processing and management.

As the data quality, spatial resolution and frequency of coverage improves with new remote sensing platforms, the resulting imagery is finding its way into more and more operational GIS systems as an image backdrop. Also, certain results of remotely sensed data processing are being included in GIS systems, such as cloud coverage, flood extents, biomass estimation and iceberg locations. The Esri Canada Community Map has various scales of imagery basemaps that were created from satellite and aircraft data.

While the size of the global earth observation community is still relatively small compared to many other disciplines, this group plays an important role in monitoring and managing the health of our planet. The IGARSS/CSRS event in Quebec City helped to ensure that all the researchers and practitioners are aware of current technological capabilities and constraints. Congratulations once again to all those involved with the organization of this significant Canadian event and for making sure that this joint scientific symposium was both interesting and informative.