PhilGEOS 2025 Achieves Remarkable Success as International Event, Serves as Introduction for New Joint Chapter

The University of the Philippines (UP) organized and hosted another remarkably successful Philippine Geomatics Symposium (PhilGEOS) in November 2025. Established in 2012 as a national event, PhilGEOS now attracts geomatics students, professors, and professionals from across the region. The symposium also provided visibility for the newly formed IEEE GRSS-AESS (Aerospace and Electronics Systems Society) Joint Philippines Chapter.

The 2025 symposium boasted attendance of 218 people who participated in 56 talks and 31 poster presentations, and four plenary sessions. The theme of this year’s symposium was “Enhancing Human Quality of Life through Spatial Technologies.” A highlight of two-day event was a keynote from the European Space Agency (ESA).

IEEE GRSS served as one of several event co-sponsors with GRSS members Dr. Mark Angelo Purio from nearby Adamson University and Stephanie Tumampos from the Technical University of Munich (Germany) staffing a booth to promote GRSS and assisted in awarding paper and poster honors. PhilGEOS was among the first official activities for IEEE GRSS-AESS Joint Philippines Chapter chaired by Dr. Purio. award.

Held this year in Quezon City, Philippines, PhilGEOS is a biennial event organized by the UP Department of Geodetic Engineering with a primary goal of exploring how geomatics, remote sensing, AI, and spatial analytics can make our cities and societies more livable, resilient, and inclusive. Presentations spanned a wide gamut of topics including emergency management, climate change adaptation, and environmental sustainability, as well as agriculture and food sustainability.

“We aim to have this gathering to exchange ideas and promote the use of geomatics,” said Dr. Mark Tupas, PhilGEOS Chair, who added that overall attendance, diversity of nations represented, and number of presentations set records for the symposium.

With so many sessions and tracks occurring in parallel, no one could attend every panel and presentation. As a result, organizers and attendees alike offered different perspectives on their most valuable takeaways from PhilGEOS 2025.

For Dr. Ayin Tamondong, Chair of the UP Geodetics Engineering Department, a highlight was a workshop hosted by the United Nations Economic and Social Commissions for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP):

“There were youth geomatics specialists attending, and we discussed why we need geomatics. We had participants from Indonesia, Thailand, and Philippine space agencies [talking] with students and young professionals about the direction of geomatics in each of those countries,” she said. “Initially, PhilGEOS was a national show, but through the years [it has become] international.”

Dr. Alexis Richard Claridades, also from the University of the Philippines, echoed Dr. Tamondong’s sentiment regarding the international growth of the symposium, recalling that many participants came from nearby Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand, but there we also papers and posters from Germany, Spain, and Italy. This global participation was one aspect of the 2025 PhilGEOS that resonated with Dr. Claridades.

“The highlight for me was the participation of undergraduate students. Usually in this kind of symposium we find practitioners, professors, and graduate students, but [at PhilGEOS 2025] we had undergraduate students from different universities in the Philippines presenting quite an impressive quality of papers…it’s fun to see how the geomatics community is starting from such a young age.”

Speaking at a high level, Dr. Mark Purio was gratified to see that the Philippines recognizes the value of geospatial and remote sensing technologies. While he spent much of the show in the GRSS booth, he did take some time to view the posters and came away with these observations:

“I noticed how geospatial technologies can help the Philippines in urban planning and disaster risk reduction applications, some of which [can influence] policy decisions because there were also government institutions taking part in the event. There was a mix of students, academics, governmental organizations, and international attendees.”

Dr. Mark Tupas marveled at how much PhilGEOS has evolved in only 13 years – “The highlight for me as an organizer was people coming to the event from far away without us really reaching out to them…Seeing students, academics, and pillars of industry from far away sharing their ideas back and forth was a highlight.”

The success of PhilGEOS for the attendees and organizers in the Philippines, as well as those who came from abroad, was unanimous. From GRSS’s perspective, the symposium was also an excellent coming-out party for the new IEEE GRSS-AESS Joint Chapter. Dr. Purio commented that many non-GRSS attendees expressed interest in joining the joint effort. Plans are already in the works for a Distinguished Lecturer from University of Tokyo to present in early 2026, with a proposal for an IEEE GRSS Summer School to follow.