Last week I was at the 40th International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment (ISRSE-40), which took place at the Farnborough International Exhibition & Conference Centre in the UK, and was co-located alongside the Farnborough International Space Show. It was my first time visiting Farnborough, the location of the famous air show, also held at the same location, so I saw the airfield but not any planes.
ISRSE has been convened biennially since 1962, and this year’s event was titled Synergy in Sight: Harnessing Earth Observation for Sustainable Development. There was an impressive series of plenary presentations, including Dr Driss El Hadani discussing the activities of the United Nations Office of Outer Affairs and its involvement in Earth Observation (EO) and current issues, which include lack of access, free-to-access data not being sufficient, and insufficient public funding to purchase commercial data. The United Nations has been taking a proactive approach by building local infrastructure alongside investing in capacity building within sectors such as water management. At the same session, Dr Sherif Sedky from the Egyptian Space Agency discussed activities within Africa and its own development. EO plays a key role in understanding how the country is evolving, with examples such as the urbanisation of the Nile Delta and Cairo.
On Tuesday, one of the morning panels focused on climate change and environmental monitoring, and later in the day there was a session dedicated to the use of EO for sustainable water management that was led by Dr Alex Held from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Within the later session AquaWatch Australia, the bilateral UK/Australia project AquaWatch-AUK and the STFC-funded Vis4Sea project were showcased. We are partners in both AquaWatch-AUK and Vis4Sea, and it was great to see overviews of their progress.
Dr Samantha Lavender presenting the work of the AquaWatch AUK UK Space Agency Internal Bilateral Fund project at ISRSE-40. Picture courtesy of Andy Palfreyman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.
Wednesday was a busy for me, in the morning I gave a presentation linked to AquaWatch-AUK, which focused on the UK Overseas Territories Case Study – looking specifically at how EO data could be used assess water quality round the British Oversea Territories of the Pitcairn Islands and Anguilla. This session also included a range of talks that showcased the capture of street view images, from video cameras within cars for understanding the environment. This was a fascinating talk about tracking the blooming of cherry blossoms in Japan – and I came across several trees in full bloom in London this weekend after the event! There was also a presentation on the use of the GEDI laser-based sensor (lidar) on the space station, for understanding the vegetation understorey in forests that acts as fuel when forest fires occur and how to manage it, and how high-resolution EO data, such as Landsat, was being used to understand pollution in Delhi in India.
Dr Samantha Lavender presenting the work of the Hyperspectral Chroma-D Instrument (HERCHI) project at ISRSE-40. Picture courtesy of Andy Palfreyman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.
On Wednesday afternoon I gave my second presentation of the day, which showcased the work of the Hyperspectral Chroma-D Instrument (HERCHI) project, led by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and Pixalytics is one of the partners. We highlighted the results of our work on user requirements gathering, and technical activities, to understand the potential opportunities and role of a small satellite greenhouse gas/air pollution mission. Alongside my talk there were presentations on the development of high-altitude platforms (HAPS), uncrewed autonomous vehicles (UAVs) for tracking damage to trees caused by deer, wild boar and squirrels in the UK, and the use of UAVs for collection of meteorological measurements as virtual meteorological towers.
It was a really interesting symposium, and it was great to meet and discuss issues with a wide variety of scientists and researchers from across the globe.
