IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2014 - 80

The Director of Education will assist future IGARSS
organizers with the Tutorials, and in order to do this, I am
proposing a few changes to the procedure of selecting the
Tutorials. There is a fine line between quality and over regulation, but it makes sense that we should look at:
◗ A standardised tutorial description that includes suggested prerequisite knowledge, and articulation of the
outcomes of the tutorial.
◗ Individual surveys of each tutorial by the attendees, to
assist the instructor in improving the tutorial, and helping us to select only the best for future Tutorial days.
◗ Formalise the remuneration of instructors: this varies
somewhat at the moment.
◗ The criterion (such as number of registrations) to decide
whether to cancel a tutorial or not.
Maybe having tutorials at other GRSS affiliated events?
Should we become involved in longer training events for
CPD? For example, full week courses. We have to be careful, as this is the domain of our Universities. Clearly the
Society can assist universities to publicise their offerings,
but should it go beyond that?
In summary, CPD is clearly important part of what
GRSS should offer its members. The Tutorials seem to
work as they stand, but maybe a little fine tuning will make

Thursday, July 18
09:00-09:10 AM

Opening

09:10-10:30

Nathan Quadros (Lidar Processing)

10:30-10:50

Morning Tea (provided)

10:50-12:10

Suzanne Furby (Image processing for
carbon accounting)

12:10-01:30 PM

Lunch (on your own)

1:30-02:50

Mihai Datcu (Image information mining)

02:50-03:10

Afternoon Tea (provided)

03:10-04:30

Lorenzo Bruzzone (Multi-temporal
imagery)

05:00-?

Social event

Friday, July 19

09:00-9:10 AM

Housekeeping

9:10-10:30

Jocelyn Channusot (Hyperspectral
imagery)

10:30-10:50

Morning Tea (provided)

10:50-12:10

Phil Tickle (Developing Australia's high
resolution coastal DEM for sea level rise
and coastal flood applications)

12:10-1:30 PM

Lunch (on your own)

1:30-2:50

John Richards (Radar)

2:50-3:10

Afternoon Tea (provided)

3:10-4:10

Mihai Tanase and Rocco Panciera
(Calibrating airborne radar for soilmoisture extraction)

4:10-4:20

Issue of certificate, photo, and wrap-up

them even better. Let us know your opinions, and, importantly, why not offer a CPD tutorial of your own? It will
widen your reputation, and embed your new technology
into the profession.
IV. HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT
It is probably a moot point as to what age HCD is considered over, but I will define all activities not related to
CPD as being HCD, and this is mostly about semester type
courses offered at University. However, we can also so see
shorter interventions, such as the GRSS Summer School,
mentioned next.
A. GRSS SummeR School
Our society has a large pool of very talented teachers, so
it is well within our capabilities to provide material on
almost any topic. The format for a Summer School (SS) is
two days. The material is very introductory, and is aimed
at early Ph.D. students and maybe advanced Masters students. However, the SS has further objectives to allow up
and coming GRS students to meet some of the top international and local practitioners in their field. We also encourage socializing during the school, so there are opportunities for early career networks to be established.
The SS is typically held just before an IGARSS. The advantage is that both local and out of town students attending
IGARSS can take advantage of the summer school. There is
no reason that a SS cannot be run standalone, or, in conjunction with other GRS events. Please contact me if this
makes sense for something that you are planning.
1) An example: GRSS Summer School 2013: As an example
of a Summer School, the Team in Melbourne put together
an excellent programme, modelled closely on the successful Munich event. The key members of the local team are
Kim Lowell and Xiuping Jia, who have provided the information for this section of the Education Corner. I have
repeated the programme here to give an idea of the mixture of local (Australian in this case) and foreign lecturers
that is possible.
B. 2014 educAtion eventS
The 2014 IGARSS Local Operating Committee (LOC) set
up a small team to run the GRSS Summer School in Quebec City: already there have been a promising number of
registrations2. We encourage early PhD students to register.
The fee is low and this is an excellent opportunity to meet
well known GRS teachers.
The GRSS, together with the African Association for
Remote Sensing of the Environment (AARSE) is running
a Summer School in Johannesburg, as part of the AARSE
Conference, held every two years3. The event is being organized by the South Africa AESS/GRSS joint chapter, under
Jeanine Engelbrecht and Waldo Kleynhans, with Nicky
2http://rsss14.ete.inrs.ca/
3http://www.aarse2014.co.za/

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

june 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2014