IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - March 2013 - 73

Conference REPORT
Michael Inggs,
University of Cape Town
Chair, IEEE GRSS Conference Advisory Committee

IGARSS 2012 Survey

Introduction
he International Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Symposium (IGARSS) is the premier conference
organized by the Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Society (GRSS). This annual gathering of researchers
and practitioners of remote sensing is held each year
in different international locations. One of the tasks of
the Conference Advisory Committee (CAC) of the GRSS
Administrative Committee (AdCom) is making sure
that our premier conference event fulfills the needs of
the membership. We request all the members of the society, as well as all the attendees of the IGARSS to complete our survey shortly after the conference.1 We report
the results to the membership in this annual article.
You will have noticed that some of the questions are the
same every year, to make it possible to track trends. We
also introduced a few questions on topics that emerged
from the AdCom and from the membership at large.
The percentage figures that we quote below are the
percentage of respondents to the survey that take a particular position. However, not all survey respondents
actually attended the particular IGARSS (2012 in this
case). Furthermore, not all respondents are members
of IEEE GRSS. In both cases, the numbers are small,
so we do not believe there is any significant bias in the
opinions expressed, and that which we capture will help
with IGARSS in the future.
IGARSS 2012, held once again in Munich after
30 years, has been the largest ever held in terms of number of attendees and papers presented. We congratulate
the Organizing Committee on this feat, resulting in a
happy group of attendees and some innovations. This

large event has been important in testing the format of
IGARSS "at an extreme."
In the article that follows, we try to present some of
the facts, as well as some discussion based on comments
we received as part of the survey. We encourage you to
provide such comments when you participate in the
survey, as it is very difficult for a series of questions to
capture every detail.
Respondent Demographics
We would expect that the origin of attendees would correlate with the location of the conference. This appears
to be so if we examine Figure 1. Notice the importance
of our Chinese colleagues. Africa and Latin America
remain small, and the Society has a drive to increase
membership and participation in these regions through
a "Globalization Committee" under Tony Milne.
We notice that over the last four years, there has been
an exciting growth in the percentage of students (from
18 percent to 25 percent of attendees of IGARSS) and
early professional career attendees, at the expense of the
mid and late career attendees. This growth in younger
participants is good for the future of the society.

6
5
2012 Munich
2011 Vancouver
2010 Honolulu

4
3
2
1

Unfortunately, this means some of you received two requests to
complete the survey: the two databases involved would be very difficult
to merge.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2013.2244707
Date of publication: 17 April 2013

march 2013

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

Figure 1. Percentage of respondents by region: (1) Africa,
(2) Asia/Pacific, (3) Western Europe, (4) Eastern Europe,
(5) North America, and (6) Latin America.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - March 2013