Newsletter 8
December 7, 2006
Dear PORSEC Association Members,
It is now just 4 weeks since my return from the Pan Ocean Remote Sensing Conference of 2006, actually the ISRS2006PORSEC. It turned out to be a good meeting with many happy renewals of friendships among the PORSEC Association members and many good scientific presentations. Everything went according to plan; most people who had papers accepted arrived (which was a relief after all the struggles with visa issues). We had excellent weather, excellent facilities at the BEXCO center and Busan was a pleasant discovery, especially since most of us were in hotels in the Haeundae Beach area. Our Korean hosts, the Korean Society for Remote Sensing, had really put themselves out to give us a great time in their country with a very nice reception and banquet. We are very grateful to them. Prof Hong Joo Yoon of Pukyong National University is a PORSEC Association and Scientific Organizing Committee, SOC, member. Prof. Yoon led the many people who were our local hosts for ISRS2006PORSEC and the Association’s meetings on his campus. Our heartfelt thanks!
Funding contributions were provided by two U.S. agencies, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, and the Office of Naval Research, ONR. The Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency, the Indian Space Application Center, the Korean Aerospace Research Institute, KARI, and the Canadian Space Agency, CSA, sent their representatives to speak to us in a Special Session on satellite developments and applications. Further support for PORSEC activities were provided by KARI and the European Space Agency, ESA, for the capacity building courses held previous to the conference on the KARI campus in Daejeon. The International Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO together with PORSEC sponsored the participation in the courses and PORSEC 2006 by 11 non-Korean students, while local students were supported by KARI. We express our sincere appreciation for all the financial support.
You can see the program and details of the meeting on the PORSEC website. Please keep an eye out for reports on scientific sessions of the conference in the first few issues of our new publication, the PORSEC Association Bulletin, discussed below.
A Special Issue of peer-reviewed articles based on the PORSEC 2006 is planned for the International Journal of Remote Sensing. Deadline for submissions is the end of February 2007. We are to adhere completely with the Journal’s rules, which can be found at the following web-site: http://www.ijrs.net/ . (A link will also be established on our own website). The editor for the Special Issue is Dr. Gad Levy (who will be assisted by many specialists from the PORSEC Association who will act as associate editors, e.g. Dr. James Gower for ocean color). All papers should be submitted electronically to IJRS directly mentioning Dr. Gad Levy, as special editor. Papers submitted via regular post can also be accepted, but would take a little longer for the review process. If you plan to submit a paper please contact Dr. Gad Levy for detailed instructions.
Email: ijrs (at) porsec.nwra.com
Regular post: Dr. Gad Levy , PORSEC Ass.
c/o Northwest Research Associates Inc, PO Box 3027
PO Box 3027, Bellevue, WA 98007-3713, U.S.A.
Courier (DHL, FEDEX, etc): Dr. Gad Levy, PORSEC Ass.
c/o NorthWest Research Associates Inc.,
14508 NE 20th Street, Bellevue, WA 98007-3713,
phone: 1 (425) 644-9660 ext. 324.
***
The Tsunami Workshop and the PORSEC Scientific Organizing Committee meetings on Nov. 1 at Pukyong Nat’l University were important events.
Some News Item from the SOC meeting and From the General Assembly held Nov 2 during the Conference itself:
a) We ratified the Statutes and By-Laws—as planned.
b) We discussed memberships on both the SOC and in the PORSEC Association. In a separate resolution we decided that SOC membership should be reviewed every 4 years—with commitment to membership implying some involvement. Several new members were elected. (A full list of SOC members will be established on our web-site later on).We discussed membership in the PORSEC Association and voted on a new membership category—Life Member. During the conference, we collected a total 1,340$’s in membership fees, which is good for our budget. One person became a life time member, Dr. Long S. Chiu, professor at the George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Thank you for your support, Dr. Chiu! Any new Life Members will receive a gift from me with the PORSEC logo, as personal thanks. Regular membership support is also much appreciated ($ 20/year full members, $10/year student member, usually paid in 2 year installments).
c) We will have a publication (not just the president’s Newsletters) for the membership. We propose Bulletin of the PORSEC Association, which we expect to publish 3 time/year. (I take on the editorship for now.) Immediately, we solicit short articles about your science and other news items (such as announcements of relevant meetings and courses, if given
early enough) to be sent to katsaros (at) porsec.nwra.com via email. Issues are to appear in March, July and November of each year. (These articles will not be peer reviewed and should be very short, so will not be equivalent to the Special Issue of IJRS and other journals. Do not hesitate to communicate about this. We need your help to make the Bulletin interesting.)
d) We are happy to announce !!!!!— The South China Sea Institute of Oceanology (SCSIO) will host the 2008 PORSEC with the colleagues in Qingdao co-hosting. More information to appear in time on our website and in the Bulletin of the PORSEC Association.
e) Dr. Pankajakshan Thadathil, pankaj (at) nio.org was appointed the chair of the election committee. By next summer he needs to have nominations for President and Vice-President of the PORSEC Ass., who will take over after the 2008 conference. He also needs about 2-4 additional members of his committee. (He will invite folks to join him, but you can volunteer your willingness to serve.)
The Tsunami Workshop was well attended and very interesting—it was decided that Dr. Tom Allan will lead the production of a summary article—- to be submitted to EOS (probably) this coming winter. We will print an abstract in the new PORSEC Bulletin. Other tsunami articles based on PORSEC presentations can be submitted as reported above.
***
Two people were honored with the PORSEC Awards: Dr. Ming-Xia He was given the Service to PORSEC Award and Dr. James Gower the Scientific Achievement Award. Both awards were presented at the General Assembly.
***
The two courses given October 25-27 at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, KARI, in Daejeon also went well. I was there as an observer and found the material very interesting given by excellent teachers. The students were delightful and very dedicated. Dr. Pascal Lecomte of ESA was leading the teaching effort with several colleagues. The IOC of UNESCO with ESA supported 11 students from 7 different Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand,Vietnam). The PORSEC Association supported their participation in the Nov. 1 Tsunami workshop and the Conference Nov. 2-4. Three of the students gave talks at the conference. They are now members of the PORSEC Association. We are very pleased with this development and hope that the experience will be valuable for the future work of these young professional scientists.
***
On behalf of the whole Executive Committee
Happy Winter Holidays and a Happy New Year, 2007!
Yours,
Kristina Katsaros—
President of PORSEC Association
with the all of the Executive Board members:
Vice President: Antony Liu, LiuA (at) onrasia.navy.mil;
Treasurer: W.TimothyLiu, W.Timothy.Liu (at) jpl.nasa.gov;
Executive Secretary: Gad Levy, gad (at) porsec.nwra.com;
Past President: Yasuhiro Sugimori , sugimoriy (at) nifty.com;
Past Vice –Presidents : Ming-Xia He, Z. S. Liu, James Gower.
PORSEC Association Committee–Chairs:
Publications: Bill Emery
Awards: Mal Heron
Elections: Pankajakshan Th.
MEMBERSHIP
Please help up keep up on the email contacts. When you have a change in email, please send a note to Dr. Gad Levy; gad (at) porsec.nwra.com. We appreciate hearing from members with ideas and comments.
MEBMERSHIP FEES We encourage all members to pay their membership fee of $20 per year, $10 per
year for students. These funds can be sent by check to our treasurer, W. Timothy Liu (if you have a U.S.
bank account, if not, the cost of cashing a foreign check is too high for these sums—of the order of $10.)
Tim’s address is given above. We hope that you work out a method to get the funds to us without cost. We
are still working on a bank account with a credit card option for payments.
