By Dr. Lorenzo Bruzzone, Chapter Chair University of Trento

Geographical distribution of the chapters in the different IEEE regions.

One of the most important factor for increasing the impact of our society on the remote sensing community is related to the capability to provide support and efficient services to GRS-S members. Chapters are a valuable mean to achieve this goal and their activity should be properly recognized and supported.

Currently we have 34 GRS-S chapters (including joint chapters with other IEEE societies). Many of these chapters were very active in 2009 in terms of both organization of high quality meetings and support to the active participation of their members in GRS-S sponsored initiatives. Many chapters have also shown significant membership growth in the last year.

In this framework, the formation of new GRS-S chapters should be considered a priority for our Society for increasing the impact on under-represented geographical areas and thus consolidating GRS-S activities in new local communities. In this context, it is really a pleasure to welcome the formation of five new GRS-S chapters in the last months. These chapters are:

• Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales Joint Sections, Australia (Chair: Xiuping Jia);
• South Africa (Chair: Meena Lysko);
• Metro Los Angeles Section, US (Chair: Erika Podest);
• Student Branch Brazil Section, Brazil (Chair: Sam Murphy);
• Nanjing Section, China (Chair: Feng Jiao).

Some of these chapters were established in regions which are of great interest for the GRS-S and that were under-represented at the chapter level. This is an important achievement. We expect further development of chapters in the next months (some initiatives for the formation of new chapters are now in progress) for obtaining a wider and more uniform geographical representation of the GRS-S activities.