PORSEC Newsletter 4
March 2006
Dear PORSEC Association Members,
Greetings to you all!
This is now 8 months before the Pan Ocean remote Sensing Conference of 2006. We hope that you are all now in touch with your PORSEC Association via our web-site. Please go to it and get details about the up-coming conference and learn about abstract submission (first deadline is June 15). If you have not visited it yet via the internet, now is the time to have a good look — http://porsec.nwra.com/ click on the link to conferences and find 2006 Korea. You will see that the conference is held jointly with the International Remote Sensing Symposium. The dates are November 8-10, 2006 (the web-page says Nov 7-10, but there has been a change). The registration cost is kept low by the shared conference preparations. We will work to keep the PORSEC atmosphere and collegiality even though we will be in a larger forum. I hope that can benefit from some cross- fertilization in this environment.
Themes to be covered at PORSEC 2006 are listed in the announcement but we are soliciting special focus sessions that anyone amongst you may propose. We have several in mind already, one on the use of Scatterometry—organized by Tim Liu, one on The China Sea, organized by Anthony Liu, and one on Space Agency Contributions to Science and Development in Asia similar to what we had on the last day in Concepcion 2004 (for those of you who were there). I will help to organize this session, but it will be co-chaired by the LOC for PORSEC 2006.. Other possible session have been suggested: one discussing, altimetry for use in monitoring the oceans for tsunamis (need a constellation of satellites for the sampling concerns), one on capacity building in developing nations for enhancing the use of remote sensing for oceanography and coastal issues. Please communicate with me if you have something to contribute in these latter two areas.
In addition, there will be a training course offered the week before the conference, November 1-7 approximately, sponsored by PORSEC. The main topic will be Synthetic Aperture Radar— a tutorial of principles and current available instruments in space, as well as application for regional research. Other subjects include ocean color and oceanography generally. The course will be taught by Prof. Werner Alpers, Dr. Pascal Lecomte and others. Details will be forthcoming soon. We are seeking support from several agencies and expect to provide some financial support for participants. We hope to provide subsistence and registration costs, while travel should be procured from other sources. We expect to support about 20 students. By student is meant either university students or young professionals. The course only requires the person to be somewhat familiar with microwave remote sensing and satellite oceanography.
You should all have received information about the membership email list earlier.
We have tried hard to connect with all known members and have verified your email addresses. Please check with your colleagues in your country, who might be part of PORSEC Association to make sure we are reaching them, and if you know that someone has recently changed email address, please send the new address to Gad Levy (see below) so we can reconnect with that person. Email is the only practical way for us to communicate in such a far-flung organization. We would appreciate if one or two members in each country (China, Japan, Korea, U.S.A., India ….) would volunteer to be the membership representative in their country, so we can ask them to investigate when we get a message returned. These volunteers would be members of the Membership Committee of the PORSEC Association automatically. (See the Statues and By-Laws section of the web-page.)
It is so important to reach people by email these days. We do not expect to mail announcements by post. All folks involved in remote sensing today have access to email.
We will inform you when we have information about financial assistance for a few people to attend the 2006 PORSEC conference. We are seeking financial support from the regular sponsors. Each one of you is encouraged to solicit some support from space agencies in your home country for yourself to come to the Conference and also for some students that could then be sponsored by the PORSEC Association (especially from countries where we are trying to build up remote sensing capabilities). We will have a competitive announcement for such support. Your agency would be listed as a co-sponsor of the PORSEC 2006. Let me know if you know of such possibilities and if the Executive Board of PORSEC can help with the solicitation.
Looking forward to seeing you in 8 month’s time in Busan.
Yours,
Kristina Katsaros— katsaros at porsec.nwra.com or katsaros at whidbey.com
President of PORSEC Association
For your information:
The Executive Board consists of:
Vice President: Anthony Liu, tony at porsec.nwra.com
Treasurer: W. Timothy Liu, W.Timothy.Liu at porsec.nwra.com
Executive Secretary: Gad Levy, gad at porsec.nwra.com
Past President: Yasuhiro Sugimori
Past Vice –Presidents : Ming-Xia He, Z. S. Liu, James Gower,
Committee–Chairs:
Publications: Bill Emery
Awards: Mal Heron
Elections: Jose Stuardo
Program: Local Organizing Committee for PORSEC 2006, Busan, Korea is lead by:
Dr Yeong-Sup Kim and Dr. Young- Cheul Suh (both of Pukyung National University
Dr. Hong-Joo Yoon is the person behind the invitation to Korea for PORSEC 2006.
He chairs the overall program committee.
E-mail Addresses:
yoonhj@pknu.ac.kr
kimys@metr.re.kr
(See further the list of members of the LOC in the PORSEC 2006 announcement on the web-page)