Charter Special Session

IGARSS2005, Seoul, South Korea
July 2005

The IGARSS symposium is an annual event organized by the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society. This year's symposium coincided with the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the Society, and carried the theme "Harmony between Man & Nature". The return of IGARSS to Asia, after Tokyo and Singapore, saw the majority attendance from the Far-Eastern nations of China, Japan and Korea. They represented more than 50% of the symposium crowd. At 21%, North America (U.S.A and Canada) represented the second largest gathering. The conference venue was the huge COEX Convention & Exhibition Center, located in the southeastern part of this haze-covered metropolis of 10 million inhabitants. The murky city skyline was a reminder every day of the industrial pollution associated with these fast growing economies of the Asian region.

The opening ceremony was held on the morning of Monday, July 25th, and was addressed by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Science and Technology, Korea, as well as by the President of IEEE. The keynote speakers were the Executives of the Chinese, Japanese and Korean space agencies, who primarily spoke about their respective agency programs.

The invited session on the Charter was held in the afternoon on Thursday, July 28th, and was presided by Dr. Ahmed Mahmood, the Charter Executive Secretariat member of the Canadian Space Agency. His Co-Chair was Mr. David Stevens of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (OOSA).

Of the eleven papers listed in the published symposium program for this full session, five were for presentation in the first half, before the coffee break, and six in the second half. The first paper of the first half of the Session was entitled, “International Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’ – Status Report” and was presented by the Chair himself. The second paper, “ESA Role in the Provision of EO Data and Services for Disaster Relief in the Indian Ocean” was delivered by an alternate speaker, Mr. Henri Laur from ESRIN, ESA. The first presentation was essentially an update on the Charter activations, preceded by a status report on membership. The second presentation focused on the various initiatives undertaken in Europe for value-added services, such as GMES, Respond, etc., for product enhancement and delivery based on the data from the Charter and other disaster management-related sources.

In order to fill the remaining time of the first half of the Session, the Chair offered a comprehensive presentation on the Asian tsunami disaster. The presentation entitled, “Asian Tsunami Coverage by the International Charter” was first presented in February of this year during the COPUOS S&T held in Vienna, Austria. After a brief introduction, the Charter operational loop was described, and then a detailed, minute-to-minute summary of events was given. In the end, some typical products of the tsunami were shown. The presentation was given as a tutorial, receiving questions and permitting discussions along the way. This tactic engaged the audience so much that by the time the presentation was finished, it was already a few minutes past the allotted time for the first half of the session.

The representation was better in the second half of the Session, and four out of the six principal authors were present to give their respective presentations. With the concurrence of the audience and the presenters, the Chair decided that discussions be held separately for the first and the second two presentations. The first presentation of the second half of the Session, “U.S. Geological Survey Supports International Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’” was given by Ms. Brenda Jones of SAIC ( Science Applications International Corporation), EROS (Earth Resources Observation and Science), to mark the entry of the USGS in the Charter, and described the various protocols for accessing their data holdings related to disasters. The second presentation by Mr. David Stevens of UN OOSA (Co-Chair of the Session) on “Space-based Technologies for Disaster Management Making Satellite Imagery Available for Emergency Response in Developing Countries”, in addition to describing the part played by the UN Agencies in activating the Charter for disasters in different countries of the world, in particular the Asian tsunami in Indonesia-Thailand, gave an overview of the UN OOSA and its responsibility as the Charter Co-operating Body. The presentations raised a lot of interest, and the audience addressed several questions to the speakers about the contents of their presentations. The second two presentations were made by Mr. Robert Saint-Jean of the Canadian Space Agency (“The Role of the ECO in the Context of an Activation of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters”) and by Mr. Bernard Allenbach of SERTIT, France (“Rapid EO Disaster Mapping Service: Added Value, Feedback and Perspectives after 3 Years of Charter Actions”). Both were first-class presentations, one about the real-life experience of a Charter functionary and the other about the beautiful products that are being generated on the initiative of the member agencies, in this case CNES, for delivery to the users. The Session ended with much applause and having fully utilized the time reserved for it by the symposium program.

In view of the success of this first invited session on the Charter, it is strongly recommended that similar dedicated sessions be arranged in future in major aerospace and remote sensing conferences/meetings.