IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2020 - 5

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
BY PAOLO GAMBA

Coping With Uncertain Times

he COVID-19 outbreak is affecting our lives and our
activities, and it has an impact on the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) as well. Our
community is very vibrant in some of the areas heavily
affected by the coronavirus: from the Hubei province
and the city of Wuhan in China to northern Italy, and
from Spain and Catalonia to the United States. We feel
close connections to our friends and colleagues who
have been personally affected and would like to extend
our condolences to those who lost their beloved ones,
often without the opportunity to say a final goodbye.
This is indeed a challenging time for everyone, and
it is a time when the term "community of communities" applies to our Society as we try to help each other
whenever possible and certainly work together to avoid
disruptions in our collaborative scientific activities. This
is the reason I decided to send you this message and provide you with a few updates about GRSS activities that
are affected by this new situation.
As you know, 2020 was meant to be a crucial year for
GRSS conferences as this year we are introducing regional
conferences for the first time. Apparently, this is the way to
go, because the coronavirus will reduce the opportunity for
long-range travel for quite a while but may, however, allow shorter journeys and smaller conferences later this year.
Smaller meetings are also more easily converted to a hybrid
format, when some of the attendees cannot travel to the
conference location and are forced to provide their presentation remotely. Thanks to these factors and the hard work
of our local organizing team, the 2020 Mediterranean and
Middle East Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium
(M2GARSS; see https://2020.m2garss.org) held during early March in Tunisia was a success. Based on this experience,
and we hope the reduction of the pandemic, we expect the
Indian Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium 2020
(INGARSS; see https://www.ingarss2020.org), to be held in
early December, will be equally successful. Unfortunate-

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2020.2989616
Date of current version: 19 June 2020

JUNE 2020

IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE

ly, on the other hand, the 2020 Latin America GRSS and
ISPRS Remote Sensing (LAGIRS) conference, scheduled
for late March in Chile, had to be cancelled. But we expect
LAGIRS 2022 in Brazil to be a success (and to be able to
publish the LAGIRS 2020 proceedings in IEEE Xplore).
Our flagship conference, IGARSS, provides an opportunity for our community to gather every year, and since our
attendees come from more than 50 countries all over the
world, IGARSS is a truly international conference. Because
the safety and well being of all conference participants is
our top priority, the organizing committee has decided to
move IGARSS 2020 to a completely online and virtual event
on 28 September-2 October. The symposium will consist
of 25 parallel sessions conducted in two 2-h blocks over a
4.5-h period: 5:00-9:30 Pacific Daylight Time, the same as
14:00-18:00 Central Europe Summer Time and 20:00-
00:30 China Standard Time. All presentations previously
selected as oral presentations and posters will be delivered
in the same virtual format, consisting of asynchronous and
synchronous components. The asynchronous component
includes a prerecorded video viewable on-demand at least
one week prior to the conference. The synchronous component includes a 10-min slot: 0.5 min for the session chair's
introduction, 5 min for the session chair to play the prerecorded video, and 4.5 min for live and presubmitted Q&A.
Although we are very sorry that we cannot meet in
person this year, I very much look forward to the virtual
IGARSS 2020 as a way to keep our community connected
and exchange important information and research results. The GRSS and its leadership are committed to keeping the same level of service we have provided in previous
years-and even higher if possible. We are focusing all of
our efforts on coping with these uncertain times. We ask
not only for your patience and support but also for your
ideas and suggestions. If you think you have an idea to
make the GRSS a real community of communities within
our Society, please do not hesitate to contact me at president@grss-ieee.org.
I wish you all of the best for good health and productivity during this time.
GRS
5

https://2020.m2garss.org https://www.ingarss2020.org

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2020

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