IGARSS 2010 (http://www.igarss2010.org/), to be held July 26-30 in Honolulu, will spotlight the emerging field of Community Remote Sensing (CRS) with a plenary session entirely dedicated to the topic (supporting the conference theme “Remote Sensing: Global Vision for Local Action”). During the year leading up to the plenary, IGARSS has also dedicated a portion of the conference website to spotlighting existing projects that embody the plenary theme. Participating projects are selected for their promise to create either new knowledge or new technologies associated with community remote sensing. Also included in the website are a ‘perspectives’ section, providing insights on everything from legal issues to data architectures associated with CRS, and a links page to related topics such as citizen science. IEEE has recently announced an essay and blogging contest focused on the CRS theme (www.Earthzine.org). Why CRS? Society’s Earth information needs are vast. Until now, we have relied on government-sponsored satellites and observing systems as the foundation for this information. The rapid emergence of citizen science and social networks introduces an exciting new means for augmenting this knowledge. In part, what GRSS is hoping to do is help build a coherent picture of who is involved in CRS, what they are doing, and where there are areas for cross-pollination. It is a very exciting field right now, and one that will grow as our ability to extract information from centralized remote sensing systems (satellites and aircraft) becomes limited by the cost and complexity of those systems. Centralized systems will remain critical to our knowledge base, but CRS can extend their capabilities at relatively low cost. Applied in conjunction with centralized systems, CRS can be a powerful tool for addressing environmental issues and responding to events such as natural disasters. GRSS has been showcasing CRS projects on the website (http://www.igarss2010.org/CommunityRemoteSensing.asp) and will add more as they are available. Current postings address a wide and novel range of community tools for everything from rapidresponse analysis of remotely sensed data during natural disasters to correcting global wildlife habitat datasets with local ground-truth. One interesting example is a project led by University of New Hampshire known as Digital Earth Watch (DEW) that employs a technology referred to as the Picture Post network. As shown in the figure, Picture Post provides simple instructions that allow anyone with a digital camera to build a stable camera platform that enables science-quality monitoring of the environment. Their web-based social network promotes widespread sharing of the data. The IGARSS 2010 plenary session will reflect on these projects and the general theme of CRS. The plenary will be moderated by Dr. Shelby Tilford and highlighted by a keynote given jointly by Aneesh Chopra (Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President) and Shere Abbott (Associate Director for Environment) from the US Office of Science and Technology Policy. This will be followed by an Agency Panel, consisting of executives from several major space agencies, which will reflect on the past and future of remote sensing and the role of community in their plans. If you are working in this area, your participation in the CRS Collaboration will benefit both your project and the greater community. Further information, including a detailed description of the Collaboration, can be obtained from the Conference Plenary Chair Bill Gail (bgail@microsoft.com or wb.gail@comcast.net, 1.303.513.5474).
What is Community Remote Sensing?
Community remote sensing is a new field that combines remote sensing with citizen science, social networks, and crowd-sourcing to enhance the data obtained from traditional sources and to augment our centralized (satellite, aircraft) observing systems. It includes the collection, calibration, analysis, communication, or application of remotely sensed information by these community means.
The Vision for Community Remote Sensing
Information technologies will provide the foundation for society’s rapid progress in the 21st century. Information about the environment (both natural and human-built) is central to this progress. The enormity of the required undertaking – observing and understanding our world at all space and time scales – takes your breath away. Accomplishing it will be enabled in part by citizens who contribute to ‘remotely sensed’ versions of the world around them. Governments will depend on such information to understand local details of climate change and respond to natural disasters. The private sector will use it to build online maps and virtual worlds that make commerce more efficient and accessible. Within just a decade or so, the influence of community remote sensing will be as profound for understanding our Earth as the satellite revolution has been over the last five decades.