http://www.grss-ieee.org/menu.taf?menu=Publications&detail=newsletter

Cumulative Issue #157

December 2010

ISSN 0274-6338

Editor: Lorenzo Bruzzone

Table of Contents
IEEE GRS-S AdCom, Officers
and Committee Chairs ............................ 2
Editor’s Comments ................................. 3
President’s Message ............................... 3
AdCom Members .................................. 5
Chapters and Contact Information .......... 6
GRS-S MEMBER HIGHLIGHTS
Elevate Your Member
Grade or Nominate a Colleague............. 7
Nominate a Colleague for IEEE Fellow..... 7
Nominations for IEEE Awards ................. 8
Complete List of IEEE Technical Field
Awards ................................................. 8
FEATURESpecial Session Honoring theAchievements of Kiyo Tomiyasu
at IGARSS 2010 in Honolulu ................ 10
GRSS, An Obedient Society,
Without Borders ................................... 14
An Interview with
Alberto Moreira, President of GRS-S ..... 14
Geoscience Depends on Geospatial
Information Standards. ......................... 18
NEW REMOTE SENSING MISSIONSTanDEM-X: Close Formation Achieved ... 23
REPORTSGRS-S Publications Awards Presented at
IGARSS 2010 Banquet ......................... 26
Report on the GNSS-R10 Workshop...... 34
INDUSTRIAL PROFILEITT Corporation—Geoscience andRemote Sensing Profile ......................... 37
CALL FOR PAPERS ...................... 42
UPCOMING CONFERENCES ........ 46

Notice to Potential
Advertisers
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The Editor reserves the right to reject advertisements. Please address all enquires to:
Ms. Susan Schneiderman
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445 Hoes Lane
Piscataway, NJ 08854-1331
Tel: +1 732-562-3946
Fax: +1 732-981-1855
www.ieee.org/ieeemedia
2

Newsletter Input and Deadlines

The following is the schedule for the GRS-S Newsletter. If you would like to contribute an article, please submit your input according to this schedule. Input is preferred in Microsoft Word,
WordPerfect or ASCII for IBM format (please send disk and hard copy) as IEEE now uses
electronic publishing. Other word processing formats, including those for Macintosh, are also
acceptable, however, please be sure to identify the format on the disk and include the hard copy.
GRS-S Newsletter Schedule
Month
Input

June
April 15

Sept
July 15Dec
Oct 15March
Jan 15IEEE GRS-S AdCom, Officers and Committee
Chairs – 2010 GRS-29 (Division IX)
President
Alberto Moreira
Executive Vice President
Jon Benediktsson
Vice President for
Information Resources
Adriano Camps
Vice President for Meetingsand Symposia
Melba M. Crawford
Vice President forTechnical Activities
Steven C. Reising
Vice President forProfessional Activities
Kamal Sarabandi
Vice President for
Publications
Wooil Moon
Secretary
Thomas J. Jackson
Director of FinanceJames A. Gatlin
Director of Education
Granville E. Paules III
Director Corporate Relations
William B. Gail
Major Awards
Werner Wiesbeck
Publications Awards
Martti Hallikainen
Asian Activities
Wolfgang-Martin Boerner
Chapter Activities
Lorenzo Bruzzone
Conference Advisory Committee
John Kerekes
Constitution and Bylaws
Jon Benediktsson
Fellow Evaluation
Ya-Qiu Jin

Fellow and Senior
Member Search
David M. LeVine
History and Records
Kiyo Tomiyasu
Latin American Activities
Sonia Gallegos
Chuck Luther
Membership
Jocelyn Chanussot
Nominations
David Goodenough
Chuck Luther
PACE
Paul RacettePublic Relations/Publicity
David Weissman
Soc. Implications
Technology Rep.
R. Keith Raney
Specialty Symposia
Motoyuki Sato
Standards and Metrics
Siri Jodha Singh Khalsa
Strategic Planning
Andrew Blanchard
Student Paper Contest
Martti Hallikainen
Web Editor
Adriano Camps
Transactions Editor
Christopher Ruf
Letters Editor
Paolo Gamba
J-STARS Editor
Ellsworth LeDrew
Newsletter Editor
Lorenzo Bruzzone
IGARSS 2009
Harold Annegarn
IGARSS 2010
Paul Smits

Karen M. St. Germain
IGARSS 2011
Motoyuki Sato
IGARSS 2012
Yves-Louis Desnos
IGARSS 2013
Peter Woodgate
2010 AdCom Members
Jon Benediktsson
William J. EmeryThomas J. Jackson
Jay Pearlman
Kamal Sarabandi
Motoyuki Sato
Leung Tsang
2011 AdCom Members
Lorenzo Bruzzone
Jocelyn Chanussot
Ya-Qiu Jin
Melba Crawford
Steven C. Reising
Karen St. Germain
2012 AdCom Members
Adriano CampsJohn Kerekes
David Kunkee
David M. LeVine
Wooil M. Moon
Alberto Moreira
Anthony K. Milne
Past Presidents
Leung Tsang
Anthony K. Milne
Honorary Life Members
Andrew Blanchard
Keith R. Carver
Martti Hallikainen
Kiyo Tomiyasu
Fawwaz T. Ulaby
Werner Wiesbeck

Postal Information and Copyright NoticeIEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Newsletter (ISSN 0274-6338) is published quarterly by the
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.,
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IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

Editor’s Comments
Dr. Lorenzo Bruzzone, Editor
University of Trento
Department of Information Engineeringand Computer ScienceVia Sommarive 14
I-38123 Povo, Trento
ITALY
Phone: +39 0461 282056
Email: lorenzo.bruzzone@ing.unitn.it

This last issue of 2010 of the IEEE Geoscience andRemote Sensing Newsletter is rich of contributions thatare related to different activities developed both in thegeneral field of remote sensing and in the specific framework of the GRS Society. We have a mix of technicalarticles and reports on very important and interesting topics related to our field.
Before providing an overview of the content of the December issue, I would like to remind you once again that
there is the possibility to download the electronic version of
the Newsletter as soon as it is published at http://www.grssieee.org/category/newsletter/. Soon the GRS-S members will
have the possibility to register on the GRS-S website for sub-President’s Message
Dr. Alberto Moreira
German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Microwave Radar Institute
P.O. Box 1116
82230 Wessling/Oberpfaffenhofen
GERMANY
Phone +49 8153 282305
Email: alberto.moreira@dlr.de

What a dynamic and eventful time for the Geoscience andRemote Sensing Society! In the ten years since the beginningof the 21st century, we have experienced substantial changes in
the activities, profile and benchmarks of our society: We have
41% more members (this makes us the IEEE Society with thelargest membership increase during this period), an increase in
the number of GRSS chapters from 13 to 35 (15 in North
America, 10 in Europe, 2 in Africa, 2 in Latin America andscribing a service that advizes by e-mail as soon as a newissue of the Newsletter is published on-line. This e-mail will
also report the Table of Contents of the issue. The new service aims at a timely dissemination of the most updated news
on remote sensing and GRS-S.
This issue contains three articles in the Feature section.
The first one reports on a very special event held at Honolulu during the IGARSS conference, which is related to a special session organized to honor Kiyo Tomiyatsu for both hisvisionary activity in the remote sensing community and his
outstanding service to the GRS Society. The article provides
many details on the impressive career of Kyio that were described in the special session. This contribution is followed
by a nice brief note of Kyio, which regards his vision in theformation and development of the GRS Society. The second
main feature article presents an interview by Paul Racetteto the President of the GRS Society Alberto Moreira. In thisinterview Alberto shares with our community his vision on
remote sensing, on the last years developments of this technology, and on the promising and exciting future expected
for this field. Finally, the third article is focused on the very
important topic of the geospatial information standards
under development and applied in geoscience. Standards
are fundamental for a proper management of the geospatial(continued on page 4)

6 in the Asia-Pacific region), increase in IGARSS attendanceby 80%, two new journals (GRSL and J-STARS), ca. 10 technically co-sponsored Specialty Symposia every year, increased
collaboration with many international organizations and agencies (NASA, CSA, JAXA, ESA, GEOSS, AARSE, ISPRS,JB GIS, etc.), a quarterly industrial sector newsletter, a bookseries, a dedicated conference for GOLD (Graduate of the Last
Decade) members every two years, a web-based educational
program with tutorials and selected conference presentations,an on-line version of our Newsletter with free download, establishment of a task force on membership globalization (morethan 50% of our members now live outside North America),
two new Technical Committees (FARS – Frequency Allocations
in Remote Sensing and ISIS – International Spaceborne
Imaging Spectroscopy), a new GRSS logo, several new awards
to recognize the outstanding scientific work and service of ourmembers, and last but not least, a most fascinating age forremote sensing, indeed a golden age. GRSS is performing very
well, and I foresee a great future for years to come.
(continued on page 40)

Cover Information: TanDEM-X and TerraSAR-X flying in close formation.
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 20103

Newsletter Editorial Board Members:(Editor’s Comments continued from page 3)
information and this contribution points out key issues related to the undergoing activities in this field.
In the New Remote Sensing Missions column, we have acontribution related to the recent launch of the TanDEM-X(TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurements)
satellite of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). TanDEMX is a rebuilt (with some minor modifications) of TerraSAR-X. This new satellite can operate in close formation
with TerraSAR-X creating a single-pass SAR interferometry system with adjustable baselines in across- and alongtrack directions. The article presents details on TanDEM-X,
the current status of the mission, the science exploitationand other relevant information for understanding the technical specifications and the possible applications of this newsatellite.
As in the previous issue, also in this one a large part of theReport section is devoted to the IGARSS 2010 and, in detail,to the article on the GRS-S Publication Awards presented at
the IGARSS 2010 Banquet. The article reports on the winners of the IEEE GRS-S Transactions Prize Paper Award,
the IEEE GRS-S Letters Prize Paper Award, the IEEE GRSS Symposium Prize Paper Award, the IEEE GRS-S Interactive Session Prize Paper Award, the Student Prize Paper
Awards, and the Chapter Excellence Award. Congratulations
to all the award recipients! The Report section also presents a contribution related to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS-R10) workshop, held at the Universitat
Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, in October 21stand 22nd, 2010.
The Industrial Profile column presents the ITT corporation, which is a leading company in the field of remotesensing. The article describes the field of activities of
ITT, its organization, the key technologies that ITT offers
to the remote sensing market and the main applications it
addresses.
Finally, I would like to draw your attention on the different
calls for nominations reported in this issue. It is very importantthat GRS-S members contribute to identify outstanding candidates for the different awards that are assigned by GRS-S andby our sister societies. I would emphasize the call for applications to be elevated to IEEE senior member. There are many
scientists and professionals in our society who meet the eligibility criteria. I encourage them to apply and all IEEE GRS-S
senior members to nominate eligible colleagues to achieve
this valuable recognition.
Sincerely,
Lorenzo Bruzzone
Editor, IEEE GRS Newsletter
lorenzo.bruzzone@ing.unitn.it

4

Dr. Lorenzo Bruzzone, Editor
University of Trento
Department of Information Engineering andComputer ScienceVia Sommarive 14
I-38123 Povo, Trento, ITALY
Phone: +39 0461 282056
Email: lorenzo.bruzzone@ing.unitn.it
William J. Blackwell, Sc.D., Associate Editor for
Organizational and Industrial Profiles
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood St., Room S3-237
Lexington, MA 02420-9108
Phone: 781-981-5324
Fax: 781-981-7271
E-mail: wjb@ll.mit.edu
Sandra Cruz-Pol, Associate Editor
University Profiles
Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept.
University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, PR.
00681-9042
TEL: (787) 832-4040 x2444 x3090
FAX: (787) 831-7564
E-mail: SandraCruzPol@ieee.org
Jocelyn Chanussot, Associate Editor for
European Affairs
Grenoble Institute of Technology
GIPSA-Lab, ENSE3
BP 4638402 Saint Martin d Heres cedex, FRANCE
E-mail: jocelyn.chanussot@gipsa-lab.inpg.fr
Akira Hirose, Associate Editor for Asian
Affairs
Dept. of Electrical Engineering andInformation Systems
Faculty of Engineering
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656,
JAPAN
TEL: (81) 3-5841-6695
FAX: (81) 3-5841-7492
E-mail: ahirose@ee.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Sonia C. Gallegos, Associate Editor
for Latin American Affairs
Naval Research Laboratory
Ocean Sciences Branch,
Oceanography Division
Stennis Space Center, MS 39529, USA
TEL: 228-688-4867
FAX: 228-688-4149
E-mail: gallegos@nrlssc.navy.mil
Tsehaie Woldai, Associate Editor
for African Affairs
Department of Earth Systems Analysis
International Institute for Geo-Information Scienceand Earth Observation (ITC)
Hengelosestraat 99
PO Box 6, 7500 AA Enschede, The Netherlands
TEL: +31-(0)53 4874 279
FAX: +31-(0)53 4874 336
E-mail: Woldai@itc.nl

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

2010 ADCOM MEMBERS’ NAMES AND ADDRESSES
Dr. Alberto Moreira
President, IEEE-GRSS
German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Microwaves and Radar Institute
P.O. Box 1116
82230 Wessling/Oberpfaffenhofen
GERMANY
E-mail: alberto.moreira@dlr.de(AdCom 2010–2012)
Dr. Jon A. Benediktsson
Executive VP, IEEE-GRSS
Pro Rector for Academic Affairs
University of Iceland
Main Building, Saemundargata 6
Reykjavik ICELAND
E-mail: benedikt@hi.is(AdCom 2008–2010)
Dr. Thomas J. Jackson
Secretary, IEEE-GRSS
USDA-ARS Hydrology
and Remote Sensing Lab
104 Bldg 007 BARC-WestBeltsville, MD 20705 USA
E-mail: tom.jackson@ars.usda.gov(AdCom 2008–2010)
Dr. Adriano Camps
VP for Information Resources
Dept. of Signal Theory and Communication
Polytechnic University of Catalonia,
Campus Nord, D4-016
08034 Barcelona SPAIN
E-mail: camps@tsc.upc.edu(AdCom 2010–2012)
Dr. Melba M. Crawford
VP for Meetings and Symposia, IEEE-GRSS
Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering
Purdue University
101 W. Stadium Dr.
W. Lafayette, IN 47907-2054 USA
E-mail: mcrawford@purdue.edu(AdCom 2009–2011)
Dr. Wooil M. Moon
VP for Publications, IEEE-GRSS
University of Manitoba
Geophysics Dept.
Faculty of Environment Earth and Resources
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2NT CANADA
E-mail: wmoon@cc.umanitoba.ca(AdCom 2010–2012)
Dr. Steven C. Reising
VP for Technical Activities, IEEE-GRSS
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department
1373 Campus Delivery
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1373 USA
E-mail: reising@ieee.org;
steven.reising@colostate.edu(AdCom 2009–2011)
Dr. Kamal Sarabandi
VP for Professional Activities, IEEE-GRSS
Dept. of Electrical Eng. & Computer Science
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2122 USA
E-mail: saraband@eecs.umich.edu(AdCom 2008–2010)
Dr. Lorenzo Bruzzone
Chapter Committee Chair
University of Trento
Dept. Information Eng. and Computer ScienceVia Sommarive 14,
I-38123 TRENTO ITALY
E-mail: lorenzo.bruzzone@ing.unitn.it(AdCom 2009–2011)
Dr. Jocelyn Chanussot
Membership Chair &Data Fusion Technical Committee Chair
GIPSA Lab, INP Grenoble
BP-46, 38402 St. Martin d’Heres
FRANCE
E-mail: Jocelyn.chanussot@gipsa-lab.inpg.fr(AdCom 2009–2011)
Dr. William J. EmeryGRSS Fellow Search Committee
CCAR Box 431
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0431 USA
E-mail: Emery@colorado.edu(AdCom 2008–2010)
Dr. Paolo Gamba
Editor, Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters
University of Pavia
Dept. of Electronics
Via Ferrata 127100 Pavia ITALY
E-mail: paolo.gamba@unipv.it
Dr. James A. Gatlin
Director of Finance, IEEE-GRSS
Goddard Space Flight Center (Retired)Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
E-mail: j.gatlin@ieee.org

Dr. Ya-Qiu Jin
Fellow Evaluation Committee Chair
Fudan University
Key Laboratory for Wave Scatteringand Remote Sensing Information
Shanghai 200433 CHINA
E-mail: yqjin@fudan.ac.cn, yqjin@fudan.edu.cn(AdCom 2009–2011)
Dr. John Kerekes
Conference Advisory Committee Chair
Rochester Institute of Technology
54 Lomb Memorial Dr.
Rochester, NY 14623 USA
E-mail: kerekes@cis.rit.edu(AdCom 2010–2012)
Dr. David B. Kunkee
Newsletter Editor
The Aerospace Corp.
NPOESS Space Systems
8455 Colesville Rd. Suite 1450
Silver Spring, MD 20910 USA
E-mail: David.Kunkee@aero.org(AdCom 2010–2012)
Dr. Ellsworth LeDrew
Editor J-STARS
University of Waterloo
Dept. of Geography and Env. Management
200 University Ave. West
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1 CANADA
E-mail: ells@uwaterloo.ca
Dr. David M. Le Vine
Distinguished Speakers Committee Chair
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 614.2
Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 USA
E-mail: David.M.LeVine@nasa.gov(AdCom 2010–2012)
Dr. Anthony K. Milne
Past President, IEEE-GRSS
University of New South Wales
School of Biological, Earth and Env. Sciences
Sydney, NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA
E-mail: t.milne@unsw.edu.au
Dr. Jay Pearlman
2241 Prescott Ave., SW
Seattle, WA 98126 USA
E-mail: jay.pearlman@ieee.org(AdCom 2008–2010)
Dr. Christopher Ruf
Editor TGARS
University of Michigan
1533 Space Research Building
2455 Hayward St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2143 USA
E-mail: cruf@umich.edu
Dr. Karen M. St. Germain
IGARSS’10 General Co-Chair
NPOESS Integrated Program Office8455 Colesville Road, Suite 1450
Silver Spring, MD 20910 USA
E-mail: Karen.StGermain@noaa.gov(AdCom 2009–2011)
Dr. Motoyuki Sato
IGARSS’11 General Chairman
Center for Northeast Asian Studies
Tohoku University
980-8576 Sendai JAPANE-mail: sato@cneas.tohoku.ac.jp(AdCom 2008–2010)
Dr. Leung Tsang
Past President, IEEE GRSS
University of Washington
Box 352500
Seattle, WA 98195 USA
E-mail: tsang@ee.washington.edu
Dr. Andrew J. Blanchard
Honorary Life Member, IEEE-GRSS
and Senior Council
University of Texas Dallas
MS AD23
Richardson, TX 75083 USA
E-mail: ablanch@utdallas.edu
Dr. Keith R. Carver
Honorary Life Member, IEEE-GRSS
University of Massachusetts
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Amherst, MA 01003 USA
E-mail: kcarver@ecs.umass.edu
Dr. Martti T. Hallikainen
Honorary Life Member, IEEE-GRSS
and Publications Awards Committee Chair
Helsinki University of Technology
Dept. of Radioscience and Engineering
P.O. Box 3000
FIN-02015 TKK FINLAND
E-mail: Martti.Hallikainen@tkk.fi
Dr. Kiyo Tomiyasu
Honorary Life Member, IEEE-GRSS

Retired890 East Harrison Ave., #30
Pomona, CA 91767 USA
E-mail: k.tomiyasu@ieee.org; orektom2@verizon.net
Dr. Fawwaz T. Ulaby
Honorary Life Member, IEEE-GRSSThe University of Michigan
4080 Fleming Building
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1340 USA
FAX: 734-763-0085
E-mail: ulaby@eecs.umich.edu
Dr. Werner Wiesbeck
Honorary Life Member, IEEE-GRSS
and GRSS Major Awards Committee Chair
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Institute for High Frequency and Electronics
Kaiserstrasse 12
76131 Karlsruhe GERMANY
E-mail: werner.wiesbeck@kit.edu
Dr. Harold Annegarn
IGARSS’09 General Chairman
Department of Geog., Environmental
Management & Energy Studies
University of Johannesburg
P.O. Box 524
Auckland Park 2006 Johannesburg
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
E-mail: hannegarn@gmail.com
Dr. Wolfgang-Martin Boerner
GRSS Rep. on Asian/Pacific Affairs
UIC-ECE/CSN, m/c154
900W Taylor St., SEL.W 4210
Chicago, IL 60607-7018 USA
E-mail: wmbiuic@yahoo.com
Dr. Shannon Brown
GOLD Rep. and FARS Chair
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA 91109 USA
E-mail: Shannon.Brown@jpl.nasa.gov
Dr. Kuan Shan Chen
Deputy Editor-In-Chief J-STARS
National Central University
Chungli, TAIWAN
E-mail: dkschen@csrsr.ncu.edu.tw
Yves-Louis Desnos
IGARSS’12 General Co-Chair
ESA/ESRIN ITALY
E-mail: Yves-Louis.Desnos@esa.int
Jenny Q. Du
Data Fusion Technical Committee Co-Chair
Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept.
Mississippi State University
Mississippi State, MS 39762 USA
E-mail: du@ece.msstate.edu
Dr. William B. GailIEEE GRSS Rep. TAPC
and Director Corporate Relations
Microsoft Startup Business Accelerator
1690 38th St.
Boulder, CO 80301 USA
E-mail: bgail@microsoft.com
Dr. Sonia C. Gallegos
Rep. on Latin American Affairs
Naval Research Lab
Code 7333
Stennis Space Center, MS 39529 USA
E-mail: gallegos@nrlssc.navy.mil

Dr. Eastwood Im
Instrumentation and Future Technologies
Technical Committee Co-Chair
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, M.S. 180-401
California Institute of Technology
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, California 91109 USA
E-mail: eastwood.im@jpl.nasa.gov
Dr. Joel T. Johnson
Frequency Allocations in Remote Sensing
Technical Committee Co-Chair
The ElectroScience Laboratory
The Ohio State University
1320 Kinnear Rd.
Columbus, OH 43212 USA
E-mail: Johnson@ee.eng.ohio-state.edu
Dr. Siri Jodha Singh Khalsa
IEEE Standards Committee and ISO TC-211
Representative
UCB 449
Boulder CO 80309-0449 USA
E-mail: sjsk@nsidc.org
Dr. Nahid Khazenie
Senior Council
8509 Capo Ct.
Vienna, VA 22182 USA
E-mail: n.khazenie@ieee.org
Mr. Charles A. Luther1113 Villamay Blvd.
Alexandria, VA 22307 USA
E-mail: chuckluther@aol.com
Mr. Granville E. Paules III
Director of Education, IEEE GRSS
Kelly, Anderson, and Associates Inc.
424 North Washington St.
Alexandria, VA 22314 USA
E-mail: gpaules@kellyanderson.com
Paul Racette
GRSS PACE Rep.
NASA/GSFC Code 555
Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
E-mail: Paul.E.Racette@nasa.gov
H. (Rama) Ramapriyan
Data Archiving and Distribution TechnicalCommittee Chair
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
E-mail: rama.ramapriyan@nasa.gov
Dr. R. Keith Raney
GRSS Rep. to Soc. on Social Implications ofTechnology
Johns Hopkins Univ. Applied Physics Lab
Space Dept.
Johns Hopkins Rd.
Laurel, MD 20723-6099 USA
E-mail: keith.raney@jhuapl.edu
Dr. Paul Smits
General Co-Chair IGARSS’10
Joint Research Centre Institute for Env. And
Sustainability
Via Fermi 2749
I-21027 Ispra ITALY
E-mail: paul.smits@jrc.ec.europa.eu
Dr. Roger King
Mississippi State University
Box 5405
Mississippi State, MS 39762-5405 USA
E-mail: rking@engr.msstate.edu

Dr. Albin J. Gasiewski
Dept. of Electrical and Computer
Engineering
University of Colorado at Boulder
0425 UCB/ ECOT 246
Boulder, CO 80309-0425 USA
E-mail: al.gasiewski@colorado.edu

Gilbert Rochon
Data Archiving and Distribution TechnicalCommittee Co-Chair
Purdue University PCCRC
503 Northwestern Ave.
West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA
E-mail: rochon@purdue.edu

Dr. David G. GoodenoughPacific Forestry Centre
Natural Resources Canada
506 West Burnside Road
Victoria, BC V8Z 1M5 CANADA
E-mail: dgoodeno@nrcan.gc.ca
Home: dggoodenough@shaw.ca

Dr. Martin Suess
Instrumentation and Future Technologies
Technical Committee Co-Chair
ESA European Space Technology andResearch Centre
Kaplerlaan 1 2200 AG
Noordwijk ZH THE NETHERLANDS
E-mail: martin.suess@ieee.org; Martin.
Suess@esa.int

Alex Held
International Spaceborne Imaging
Spectroscopy Technical Committee Chair
CSIRO Land and Water
C.S. Christian Lab
Clunies Ross Street
G.P.O. Box 1666
Canberra, ACT 2601 AUSTRALIA
E-mail: alex.held@csiro.au
Karl StaenzInternational Spaceborne Imaging
Spectroscopy Technical Committee Co-Chair
Alberta Terrestrial Imaging Center
817 4th Avenue South, Suite 400
Lethbridge, Alberta T1J0P3 CANADA
E-mail: karl.staenze@imagingcenter.ca

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

Dr. David Weissman
Publicity Chairman, IEEE GRSS
Hofstra University, Dept. of Engineering
104 Weed Hall
Hempstead, NY 11549 USA
E-mail: eggdew@hofstra.edu
Mr. Peter Woodgate
IGARSS’13 General Chair
Australian Cooperative Research Centre for
Spatial Information (CRCSI)
723 Swanston St
Carlton, Victoria, 3053 AUSTRALIA
E-mail: pwoodgate@crcsi.com.au

5GRS-S Chapters and Contact Information
Chapter Location

Joint with (Societies) Chapter Chair

E-mail Address

Boston Section, MA

GRSWilliam Blackwell

wjb@ll.mit.edu

Springfield Section, MA

AP, MTT, ED, GRS, LEO

Paul Siqueirasiqueira@ecs.umass.edu

Western New YorkGRSJohn Kerekes

kerekes@cis.rit.edu

Washington, DC & Northern VA

GRS

Atlanta Section, GA

AES, GRS

Greg Showman

greg.showman@gtri.gatech.edu

Eastern North Carolina Section

GRS

Linda Hayden

haydenl@mindspring.com

Southeastern Michigan Section

GRS

Mahta Moghaddam

mmoghadd@eecs.umich.edu

Chicago Section

AES, NPS, GRS, OE

Jack Shermanj.sherman@ieee.org

Region 1: Northeastern USA

Region 2: Eastern USA
James Tilton

j.tilton@ieee.org

Region 3: Southeastern USA

Region 4: Central USA

Region 5: Southwestern USA
Denver Section, CO

AP, MTT, GRS

Michael Janezic

janezic@boulder.nist.gov

Houston Section, TX

AP, MTT, GRS, LEO

Christi Madsen

cmadsen@ee.tamu.edu

Region 6: Western USA
Metro Los Angeles Section, CA

GRS

Erika Podest

Erika.Podest@jpl.nasa.gov

Region 7: Canada
Quebec Section, Quebec

AES, OE, GRS

Xavier Maldaguemaldagx@gel.ulaval.ca

Toronto Section, Ontario

SP, VT, AES, UFF, OE, GRS

Sri Krishnan

krishnan@ee.ryerson.ca

Vancouver Section, BC

AES, GRSDavid G. Michelson
Steven McClaindmichelson@ieee.org
stevenmcclain@ieee.org

Ottawa Section

OE, GRS

Hilmi Dajani

hdajani@site.uottawa.ca

Region 8: Europe, Middle East and Africa
France Section

GRS

Gregoire Mercier

GambiaGRS

LouLuo Moucard

gregoire.mercier@telecombretagne.eu
louluomoucard2010@rocketmail.com

Germany Section

GRS

Irena Hajnsek

irena.hajnsek@dlr.de

Central Italy Section

GRS

Nazzareno Pierdicca

Nazzareno.pierdicca@uniromal.it

South Italy Section

GRS

Maurizio Migliaccio

maurizio.migliaccio@uninav.it

Russia Section

GRS

Anatolij Shutko

anatoli.shutko@email.aamu.edu
ashutko@mail.ru

Spain Section

GRS

J. M. Lopez-Sanchez

Ukraine Section

AP, MTT, ED, AES, GRS, NPS, Oksana V. Shramkova
EMBo.shramkova@gmail.com

United Kingdom & Rep. of
Ireland (UKRI) Section

GRS, OE

Yong Xue

y.xue@londonmet.ac.uk

Student Branch, Spain Section

GRS

Pablo Benedicto

pablo27@casal.upc.edu

South Africa

GRS/AES

Meena Lysko

MLysko@csir.co.za

juanma@ieee.org

Region 9: Latin America
Student Branch, South Brazil Section GRS

Sam Murphy

sam@ige.unicamp.br

Student Branch, Colombia Section GRS

Leyini Parra Espitia

leyiniparra@ieee.org

Region 10: Asia and Pacific6

Beijing Section, China

GRS

Chao Wang

cwang@rsgs.ac.cn

Seoul Section, Korea

GRS

Joong-Sun Won

jswon@yonsei.ac.kr

Islamabad Section

GRS/AESM. Umar Khattak

ukhattak@hotmail.com

Taipei Section, Taiwan

GRS

Kun-Shan Chen

dkschen@csrsr.ncu.edu.tw

Japan Council
Australian Capital Territory and
New South Wales Joint Sections,
Australia

GRS

Yoshihisa Hara

Hara.Yoshihisa@cb.MitsubishiElectric.co.jp

GRS

Xiuping Jia

x.jia@adfa.edu.au

Nanjing Section, China

GRS

Feng Jiao

jiao_feng323@hotmail.com

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

GRS-S MEMBER HIGHLIGHTSCALL FOR SENIOR MEMBERS:ELEVATE YOUR MEMBER GRADE OR NOMINATE A COLLEAGUEThe grade of Senior Member is the highest for which application may be made by the member and shall require experience
reflecting professional maturity. IEEE Bylaw I-104.3 sets forth
the criteria for elevation to Senior Member grade as follows:• a candidate shall be an engineer, scientist, educator, technical executive or originator in IEEE-designated fields.
• candidates shall have been in professional practice for atleast ten years.
• candidates shall have shown significant performanceover a period of at least five of those years.
In addition, candidates for Senior Member grade must supply
three references from current IEEE members holding the gradeof Fellow, Senior Member, or Honorary Member. It should be
noted that all of these references can contribute their reference
online and the request is made automatically as part of the application process. The entire application process is done online.
More information about requirements for Senior Member
Grade elevation can be found at IEEE website: http://www.
ieee.org/membership_services/membership/senior/senior_requirements.html
An IEEE Member can be nominated for Senior Member Grade.
Learn more about this procedure at IEEE website: http://ieee.org/
membership_services/membership/senior/nominate.html

An IEEE Member can apply for Senior Member Grade elevation by filling up the application at IEEE website: http://
ieee.org/membership_services/membership/senior/senior_application.html
You can also visit the GRS-S website: http://www.grssieee.org
Senior membership has the following distinct benefits:• The professional recognition of your peers for technicaland professional excellence.
• An attractive fine wood and bronze engraved Senior
Member plaque to proudly display.
• Up to $25.00 gift certificate toward one new Society
membership.
• A letter of commendation to your employer on theachievement of Senior Member grade (upon the requestof the newly elected Senior Member).
• Announcement of elevation in Section/Society and/or
local newsletters, newspapers and notices.
• Eligibility to hold executive IEEE volunteer positions.
• Can serve as Reference for Senior Member applicants.
• Invited to be on the panel to review Senior Member
applications.
• Eligible for election to be an IEEE Fellow.

NOMINATE A COLLEAGUE FOR IEEE FELLOW
If you are considering nominating a colleague from industry,
government, or academia for elevation to IEEE Fellow grade,the opportunity to do so is now. This prestigious 46 year oldgroup now numbers over 6000. These Fellows are the visionaries, the dreamers, the pioneers, and technology leaders intheir field as well influential members in the international
technology community.
IEEE Senior members or IEEE Life Senior members in goodstanding, who have completed five years of service in any gradeof IEEE Membership and who have made an outstanding contribution to the electronic or electrical engineering profession may
be nominated in one of four categories: application engineer/practitioner, educator, research engineer/scientist, or technicalleader. The IEEE Fellow web site, http://www.ieee.org/fellows,
has all the information you will need including the requirements
for nominee eligibility as well as nomination instructions and all
the necessary forms. The nomination period is presently open
and will continue through 01 March 2011 for the Class of 2012.

You are strongly encouraged to read the information on“Before You Hit Submit” and then use the Online Application
process which is quick and easy. Once you have started theapplication, it can be held in Draft status until you have completed the entire form and are ready to send the information
to us. Once you have submitted the application, the electronic
process will automatically send emails to your references andendorsers and provide the means for you to track their status.
Also once you have submitted the nomination, no changes forwhatever reason can be made which is why we encourage you
to put the maximum number of references on the form andfind out if they are willing to help you with the submission
before sending the nomination.
The IEEE Fellow Staff is working to make your nomination process as trouble free as possible and they are ready toassist with all phases of the application process. Should you
have any question during the completion process you canemail fellows@ieee.org with any questions.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 20107

NOMINATIONS FOR IEEE AWARDSThe IEEE Awards Program provides peer recognition to individuals whose contributions to the art and science of electroand information technologies worldwide have improved thequality of life.
The IEEE Geoscience & Remote Sensing Society members may be particularly interested in the following Technical Field Awards, whose nomination deadlines are 31 January
2011. The awards typically consist of a bronze medal, certificate and cash honorarium.
IEEE Electromagnetics Award for outstanding contributions to electromagnetics in theory, application or education
IEEE Photonics Award for outstanding achievement(s) in
photonics.
IEEE Frederik Philips Award for outstanding accomplishments in the management of research and development resulting in effective innovation in the electrical and electronics
industry.

IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award for outstanding contributions
to communications technology.
IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award for outstanding early to midcareer contributions to technologies holding the promise ofinnovative applications.
Awards presented by the IEEE Board of Directors fall into several
categories: The Medal of Honor, Medals, Technical Field Awards,
Corporate Recognitions, Service Awards, and Prize Papers. The
IEEE also recognizes outstanding individuals through a special
membership category: IEEE Honorary Member.
Nominations are initiated by members and the public, andthen reviewed by a panel of peers. Their recommendations
are submitted to the IEEE Awards Board prior to final approval by the IEEE Board of Directors.
For nomination guidelines and forms, visit http://www.
ieee.org/awards. Questions? Contact IEEE Awards Activities, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA; tel.: +1 732
562 3844; fax: +1 732 981 9019; e-mail: awards@ieee.org.

COMPLETE LIST OF IEEE TECHNICAL FIELD AWARDSIEEE Cledo Brunetti Award for outstanding contributions
to nanotechnology and miniaturization in the electronics arts
• Award consists of a certificate and honorarium
IEEE Control Systems Award for outstanding contributions
to control systems engineering, science, or technology• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, andhonorarium

IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing
Award for outstanding contribution to the advancement ofspeech and/or audio signal processing• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium
IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award for outstanding contributions to solid-state devices and technology• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, andhonorarium

IEEE Component Packaging Manufacturing Technology
Award for meritorious contributions to, the advancement of components, electronic packaging or manufacturing technologies.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, andhonorarium

IEEE Herman Halperin Electric Transmission andDistribution Award for outstanding contributions to electrictransmission and distribution• Award consists of a certificate and honorarium

IEEE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Award for outstanding
contributions to the field of nuclear and plasma sciences andengineering• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, andhonorarium

IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award foroutstanding contributions in the field of consumer electronics
technology.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, andhonorarium

IEEE Electromagnetics Award for outstanding contributions to electromagnetics in theory, application or education• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE Internet Award for network architecture, mobility
and/or end-use applications• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

8IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems
Award for outstanding contributions to information storage
systems, with emphasis on computer storage systems.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium
IEEE Richard Harold Kaufmann Award for outstanding
contributions in industrial systems engineering• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium
IEEE Joseph F. Keithley Award in Instrumentation andMeasurement for outstanding contributions in electricalmeasurements• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium
IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award for outstanding
contributions to the fundamentals of any aspect of electronic
circuits and systems that has a long-term significance or
impact• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium
IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Award for Graduate Teachingfor inspirational teaching of graduate students in the IEEE
fields of interest.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate and honorarium

IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award for outstanding contributions in the field of information processing in relation tocomputer science.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, andhonorarium
IEEE Judith A. Resnik Award for outstanding contributions to space engineering, within the fields of interest of theIEEE.
• Award consists of bronze medal, certificate, andhonorarium
IEEE Robotics and Automation Award for contributions in
the field of robotics and automation.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, andhonorarium
IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award for outstanding
contribution(s) to the advancement of the design, practice,techniques, or theory in biologically and linguistically motivated computational paradigms including but not limited toneural networks, connectionist systems, evolutionary computation, fuzzy systems, and hybrid intelligent systems in whichthese paradigms are contained.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications
Award for outstanding contributions to the integration ofcomputers and communications.
• Award consists of bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE David Sarnoff Award for exceptional contributions toelectronics.
• Award consists of bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE William E. Newell Power Electronics Award foroutstanding contribution(s) to the advancement of powerelectronics.
• Award consists of bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award for exceptional
contributions to the development and/or advancement of standards in electrical and electronics engineering.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE Daniel E. Noble Award for Emerging Technologies
for outstanding contributions to emerging technologies recognized within recent years.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award for outstanding contributions
to communications technology.
• Award consists of bronze medal, certificate, andhonorarium

IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits
for outstanding contributions to solid-state circuits.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award for inspirational
teaching of undergraduate students in the fields of interest ofIEEE.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE Frederik Philips Award for outstanding accomplishments in the management of research and development resulting in effective innovation in the electrical and electronics
industry.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium
IEEE Photonics Award for outstanding achievement(s) in
photonics.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE Nikola Tesla Award for outstanding contributions to
the generation and utilization of electric power.
• Award consists of a plaque and honorarium
IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award for outstanding early to midcareer contributions to technologies holding the promise ofinnovative applications.
• Award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

9

FEATURE

SPECIAL SESSION HONORING
THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF KIYO TOMIYASU
AT IGARSS 2010 IN HONOLULU
Steven C. Reising, Colorado State University, US
Jón Atli Benediktsson, University of Iceland, Iceland

Introduction
Special sessions are organized for each year’s IGARSS
through an open proposal and selection process run by the
IGARSS Technical Program Committee, led by eachyear’s Technical Program Chair or Co-Chairs from the
Local Organizing Committee. Over the years, some sessions stand out as truly special sessions. These include
sessions to honor to a specific individual’s career of outstanding contributions to geoscience and remote sensing
as well as dedicated service to the IEEE and the profession. The “Special Session Honoring the Achievements ofKiyo Tomiyasu” at the 30th Anniversary IGARSS 2010 in
Honolulu, Hawai’i, USA is one example of such a truly
special session.
Kiyo Tomiyasu celebrated his 91st birthday on September 25, 2010. As an IEEE Life Fellow, his commitment
and loyalty to IEEE spans 70 years, from when he joined
the Institute of Radio Engineers, one of the predecessorsof IEEE, in 1941 as a student until today. In May 2010,
Dr. Tomiyasu was inducted into the IEEE Heritage Circle
to honor his lifetime of giving to IEEE. His involvementwith the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society(GRSS) began in 1980, when GRSS was formed as a reorganization of the Group on Geoscience Electronics, in existence since 1963. Dr. Tomiyasu served as the first GRSSAwards Chair. He has been an Honorary Life Member of
the GRSS and its Administrative Committee (AdCom)since 1999. He is currently an extremely active participanton the GRSS AdCom, attending nearly every meeting andworking tirelessly in between, particularly on the Constitution, Bylaws, Operations Manual, and on policies fornominations and elections.

Kiyo Tomiyasu grinning like a young lad after being greeted by the
Hawaiian girls upon entering the Welcome Reception for IGARSS2010 in the evening of Sunday, July 25.

Kiyo and Eiko Tomiyasu look on during the Special Session in his
honor at IGARSS 2010 as Paul Rosen presents a slide with the IEEE
Kiyo Tomiyasu Award.

10

Special Session
The Special Session in Honor of the Achievements of Kiyo
Tomiyasu was held on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 in the
Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawai’i, USA, from
1:35 pm to 3:15 pm. At the start time, Session Co-Chair
and VP for Technical Activities Steven C. Reising introduced the session by presenting brief highlights of Dr.
Tomiyasu’s biography, printed below as the last section ofthis article. Then Dr. Reising introduced the first presentation, entitled “Many Happy Returns: Reflections
Inspired by Kiyo Tomiyasu,” presented by Keith Raney of
the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Dr. Raney
reviewed some of the highlights of Kiyo Tomiyasu’s life,
from his days as a Caltech undergraduate in electricalengineering (Tomiyasu said, “When I arrived as a freshman at Caltech, I was a scared rabbit…”) to his M.S. at

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

Paul Rosen of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) presenting toKiyo Tomiyasu a plaque with a Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Imageand signed by JPL Director Charles Elachi.

Columbia and his Ph.D. student days at Harvard, during
which he met his wife Eiko Tomiyasu in 1946, and theymarried in 1947. Dr. Raney reviewed Kiyo Tomiyasu’s
myriad awards and honors, including his and Eiko’s
philanthropy and award initiation, featuring the Eikoand Kiyo Tomiyasu Endowed Professorship at Caltech
and the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award for early careerachievements.
In 1958, Townes and Schawlow invented the laser, it was
realized by Maiman in 1960, and beginning just a year afterward, from 1961–67 Kiyo Tomiyasu led the GE Laser Group,
publishing a seven-paper bibliography of laser and laser-device research in the IEEE Journal on Quantum Electronics
from 1965–68. To date, Kiyo Tomiyasu holds 20 U.S. patents(1956–72) and has published 95 refereed papers (1948–2010)
and one book [1]. His first patent (1958), entitled “Serrated
Choke System for Electromagnetic Waveguide”, is the invention that prevents potentially harmful microwave radiationfrom leaking through the seal of a microwave oven door, evenwhen an object is lodged between the door and the inside wallof the oven [2]. He received the GE Steinmetz Award in 1977
“for his work in microwave sensors and devices, which has
led to more effective satellite designs, and for his co-inventionof the high-brightness disc laser.” Dr. Raney, who worked for
the Canada Center for Remote Sensing from 1976–94 andwas responsible for the conceptual design of the RADARSAT
synthetic aperture radar (SAR), credited Kiyo Tomiyasu’s
1981 published paper on wide-swath SAR for providing theunderlying insights that were key to the sucess of the Canadian Space Agency’s RADARSAT [3]. Finally, Keith Raney
thanked Kiyo Tomiyasu for his many contributions and commented on his character, saying in part, “… and you have always maintained perspective, while being energetic, original,
gentle and generous.”

Session Co-Chair Jón Atli Benediktsson congratulating Kiyo Tomiyasu
and presenting him with a book entitled Mountains from Space byauthors from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and signed by 36
GRSS colleagues to thank himfor all of his research contributions andvolunteer service for geoscience and remote sensing.

Second, Prof. Reising introduced the presentation entitled “Communication Coding of Pulsed Radar Systems,”
given by Werner Wiesbeck of the University of Karlsruhe.
In his presentation Prof. Wiesbeck demonstrated how thetechnologies and processing of radar and communication
may be combined to produce an intelligent transportation
system allowing driver assistance, congestion avoidance,
dynamic route planning and other benefits. The implementation is partly based on using communication signal
coding, e.g. orthogonal frequency division multiplexing,
to create joint radar and communications systems. Prof.
Wiesbeck showed that this has been verified through measurements from vehicles at 24 GHz. Digital beamforming
is used for azimuth processing, and most importantly, one
system can accomplish both radar and communications
functionality.
Third, Prof. Reising introduced the presentation entitled “The Future of Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture
Radar” by Gerhard Krieger and Alberto Moreira of theGerman Aerospace Center (DLR). Dr. Krieger gave thepresentation, to which he added the subtitle, “A Tributeto the Pioneering Work of Kiyo Tomiyasu”. First, herelated the first civilian satellite using SAR, Seasat, toKiyo Tomiyasu’s 1978 tutorial paper in the Proceedingsof the IEEE on SAR and its applications to imaging of
the ocean surface [4]. Then he covered the history ofIEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201011

Shown after the special session, left to right, are GRSS President Alberto Moreira, Werner Wiesbeck, Gerhard Krieger, Paul Rosen,
Kiyo Tomiyasu, Eiko Tomiyasu, Keith Raney, Martti Hallikainen, Steve Reising and Jón Atli Benediktsson.

civilian space-borne SAR from 1978 to present, focusing on the myriad applications, including earthquakes,
volcanoes, glaciers and sea ice, ocean, land environment, subsidence, traffic, disasters and reconnaissance.
He focused on the “many ingenious ideas of Kiyo Tomiyasu”, including the implementation of bistatic radar using two satellites that Kiyo presented in an IEEE EASCON conference paper in 1978. This idea eventually led
to DLR’s TanDEM-X mission successfully launched inJune 2010. Dr. Krieger cited specific sentences of Kiyo
Tomiyasu’s 1978 conference paper that showed how
3-D imaging of the Earth could be accomplished using
formation flying of two SAR satellites. He then showeddata from the brand-new TanDEM-X missionand discussed new, future techniques, including the potential
for 4-D SAR imaging.
Session Co-Chair and GRSS Executive VP Jón AtliBenediktsson introduced the fourth presentation, “Kiyo
Tomiyasu, Co-Seismic Slip and The Krafla Volcano:
Reflections on InSAR and Earth Science” given by Paul
Rosen of the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr.
Rosen covered the latest results of applying interferometric
SAR for the benefit of earth science, especially to study
the effects of earthquakes and volcanoes, relating to Kiyo
Tomiyasu’s recent interest in the potential for earthquakes
to be scientifically predicted. It was also very timely to talkabout one of the volcanoes in Iceland.
At the conclusion of his presentation, Dr. Rosen presented
to Kiyo Tomiyasu a 11" 3 17" plaque with a satellite viewof Russell Crater Dunes on Mars, an 8-inch 3 12-inch image
from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, with the citation:“Presented to KiyoTomiyasu. With greatest appreciation
on your ninetieth birthday for a lifetime of innovation in remote sensing,”
12

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute ofTechnology,
Signed: Charles Elachi, Director.
Finally, Prof. Benediktsson introduced the final presentation, “Uncle Kiyo: GRSS Mentor and Corporate
Memory,” presented by Martti Hallikainen of Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland. Prof. Hallikainen included
a personal anecdote of his youngest daughter, Paula,
meeting Kiyo Tomiyasu for the first time at the AdCom
meeting in Helsinki, when she was six years old. She
immediately began calling him “Uncle Kiyo”, and thatappellation has lasted until her adult years. Then, in ahumorous tone, Martti Hallikainen provided the audience with many examples of e-mails that Kiyo Tomiyasu
has sent over the past 11 years to various GRSS AdCom
members. In these examples, Kiyo Tomiyasu was motivating AdCom members to apply the highest standards ofpractice and consistency with regard to our operations,titles of officers, nominations and elections. Prof. Hallikainen made it clear that Kiyo Tomiyasu still continues
sending these e-mails and keeping track of GRSS records[5] in 2010, marking a remarkable 70 years of involvement in and a lifetime of service to the IEEE.
At the conclusion of the five presentations in the Special
Session in Honor of the Achievements of Kiyo Tomiyasu,
on behalf of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Society, GRSS Executive VP Jón Atli Benediktsson presented Dr. Tomiyasu with a book entitled Mountains fromSpace: Peaks and Ranges of the Seven Continents by Stefan Dech, Reinhold Messner, Rudiger Glaser, Ralf-Peter
Martin of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), publishedby Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2005, 244 pages, with 148
cloud-free illustrations in full color, at image ranges of 15
miles from aircraft to 500 miles from satellites. The bookIEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

was personally signed by 36 colleagues and friends of Kiyo
Tomiyasu who are also prominent members of the GRSS.
Brief Biography of Kiyo Tomiyasu
Kiyo Tomiyasu was born in Las Vegas, NV, on September
25, 1919. Dr. Tomiyasu received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, CA, in 1940; the M.S. degree in communicationengineering from Columbia University, New York, NY, in
1941; and the Ph.D. degree in engineering science andapplied physics from Harvard University in 1948. In 1949,
he joined the Sperry Gyroscope Company, Great Neck,NY, as a project engineer. In 1955 he joined the General
Electric Microwave Laboratory, Palo Alto, CA, as a consulting engineer, and five years later he joined the General
Electric Research and Development Center, Schenectady,NY, where he was involved with lasers and microwave
projects. In 1969, he transferred to the General Electric
Valley Forge Space Center, Philadelphia, PA. There hebecame involved with microwave remote sensing of the
Earth using satellite-borne radiometers, scatterometersand synthetic aperture radars (SARs). During the late1970s, he published seminal journal papers on wide-swath
SAR that helped to form the basis of the Canadian Space
Agency’s successful RADARSAT. As a result of corporate
mergers, he became an employee of Lockheed Martin
Company. After 50 years with the heritage company, heretired in 2005. He and his wife, Eiko Tomiyasu, now
reside in Pomona, CA.
Dr. Tomiyasu is a Life Fellow of IEEE, with over 60 yearsof membership. He was President of the IEEE Microwave
Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) in 1960–61, andserved on its Nomination Committee and Awards Committee. He was the Editor of MTT Transactions in 1958–59, andGuest Editor of the May 1978 Special Issue on High Power
Microwaves. In 1973, he was elected as Honorary Life Member of MTT-S and of its Administrative Committee. He re-ceived the Microwave Career Award in 1980 and the MTT-S
Distinguished Service Award in 1987.
Dr. Tomiyasu’s involvement in the IEEE Geoscienceand Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) began in 1980, when
GRSS was established as a reorganization of the Group on
Geoscience Electronics of the Institute of Radio Engineers,which had been in existence since 1961. Dr. Tomiyasu led
the revitalization of GRSS awards in 1981 and became
its first Awards Chairman. He has been an Honorary Life
Member of the IEEE GRSS and its Administrative Committee since 1999. He received the IEEE Centennial Medal in1984 and the Third Millenium Medal in 2000. He donatedto and initiated the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award (which hecontinues to call the IEEE Mid-Career Award), an IEEE
Technical Field Award that recognizes early-to-mid career
contributions to technologies that show promise of innovative applications. In May 2009, at the IEEE International
Microwave Symposium in Anaheim, CA, Dr. Tomiyasu
was inducted into the IEEE Heritage Circle to honor a lifetime of giving to IEEE.
References[1] K. Tomiyasu, The Laser Literature: An Annotated Guide,
Plenum Press, New York, 1968, 172 pp.
[2] K. Tomiyasu, “Minimizing Radiation Leakage fromMicrowave Ovens,” IEEE Microwave Magazine, vol. 9, no. 1,
pp. 76–78, Feb. 2008.
[3] K. Tomiyasu, “Conceptual Performance of a Satellite
Borne, Wide Swath Synthetic Aperture Radar,” IEEE Trans.
Geosci. Remote Sensing, vol. GE-19, pp. 108–116. April 1981;
Correction, p. 171, July 1981.
[4] K. Tomiyasu, “Tutorial Review of Synthetic Aperture
Radar (SAR) with Applications to Imaging of the Ocean
Surface,” Proc. IEEE, vol. 66, pp. 563–583, May 1978.
[5] K. Tomiyasu, “History Page: GRSS KEY MEMBERS(1981–2009),” IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society
Newsletter, Cumulative Issue #150, pp. 28–29, March 2009.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

13

GRSS, AN OBEDIENT SOCIETY,WITHOUT BORDERS
Kiyo Tomiyasu
IEEE Life Fellow
Pomona, California

With great humility, I appreciate the exceptional and memorable session held at IGARSS 2010 in Honolulu to celebrate my90th birthday. This occasion gave me an opportunity to recall
the events that occurred since 1979 when Professors Keith
Carver and Fawwaz Ulaby asked my advice on the formationof the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS), toreplace the extant Geoscience Electronics Society. I did not
expect nor anticipate at that time the phenomenal growth ofinterest and activities that ensued in the subsequent 31 years.
While pondering this, I encountered a 1995 paper by Professor
John Silber, President of Boston University, “Obedience to the
Unenforceable” an address delivered at a commencement.
Professor Silber gives credit to Lord Moulton (1844–
1921), a mathematician and British judge, who noted that

conduct, can be bound on one end by laws that can be enforced, and at the other end, personal freedom. In conducting
their activities GRSS professionals and scientists are in thisunenforced range.
The numerous papers published in our Transactions, andnumerous papers presented and posted at IGARSS, and talks
presented at GRSS Chapter meetings, our willingness to shareknowledge, and to teach and inform others of new analyses,
concepts, and to pass on knowledge for the benefit of the GRS
Society, are in this unenforced domain. The principles are
addressed in the IEEE Code of Ethics.
In performing these activities, our contributions to GRSS
and hence to IEEE, becomes open knowledge, that is, service
and knowledge without borders.

AN INTERVIEW WITH ALBERTO MOREIRA,PRESIDENT OF GRS-S
Paul E. Racette, NASA/GSFC, US

During the 2010 IGARSS in Honolulu, I had the pleasure totalk with Dr. Alberto Moreira, the Geoscience and Remote
Sensing Society president, about his career, the GRS-S andhis vision for Earth observations. What follows is an expanded
version of the interview originally published on www.
earthzine.org.
Dr. Alberto Moreira has a dynamic vision for remotesensing that is now, he says, in its golden age. And he seesthat the rewards of maturity also bring responsibility. “This isa living Earth. We have a responsibility to leave the Earth atleast in as good of condition as it is today.”
Dr. Moreira is a pioneer in research and developmentof high-resolution radar signal processing, innovative synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system concepts and associated techniques like radar tomography, digital beam forming
and advanced imaging modes. He received the B.S.E.E.
and the M.S.E.E. degrees, in 1984 and 1986, respectively,from the Aeronautical Technological Institute ITA, Brazil
and the Eng. Dr. degree (Honors) from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, 1993. In 2003, he received afull professorship from the University of Karlsruhe, Ger14

many, in the field of Microwave Remote Sensing. As its
chief scientist and engineer, Prof. Moreira managed from1996 to 2001 the SAR Technology Department of the Microwaves and Radar Institute at the German Aerospace
Center (DLR). Since 2001, he is the director of the Microwaves and Radar Institute at DLR. The Institute contributes to several scientific programs and space projects for
actual and future air- and space-borne SAR missions. Prof.
Moreira is the Principal Investigator for the TanDEM-X
mission led by DLR.
His personal interests are dynamic, too. He is SouthAmerican from Sao Jose dos Campos in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
He went to Germany for his PhD and met his wife, also a
Brazilian, in an art museum, an interest they share. His father
is an architect, plays the violin and paints and his mother is a
professional musician, from whom he learned to play the piano. He and his wife have two children, 12 and 14. His hobby,
begun when he was 17, is gliding a tow airplane without amotor in which he has participated in world championships.
“It’s incredible the flight of gliders, a very nice experience.
And this perhaps inspired me to work with space research.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

Alberto Moreira, IEEE-GRSS President at the IGARSS2010 Awards Banquet.

Alberto Moreira and IEEE President 2009 John Vig present Prof. Ya-Qiu Jin the2010 IEEE GRS-S Education.

When you fly you are like a bird and can see the groundbelow, just like remote sensing.”
Racette: How did you enter the field of remote sensing?
Alberto Moreira: My professor in Brazil told me if I
wanted to make good research in my field I should go toeither the United States, Europe, or somewhere else. I got
a scholarship from the German government and with that
I came to DLR, the German Aerospace Center, in ‘86, toearn a PhD in synthetic aperture radar. And this was a very
challenging time for SAR because at that time, a few people
had a deep understanding on how it works. Even the digitalprocessing algorithms that could deliver a very focused image were not well understood. And my task at DLR was todevelop a real-time algorithm for our airborne SAR. At thattime we had workstations that were very slow. It took twodays to process one SAR image, with some ten by ten kilometers. They had a request to have these in real-time. That
was the topic of my PhD to develop an algorithm for realtime airborne SAR processing. At the end of my PhD, thiswas implemented in the airborne SAR. We had twenty-eight
digital signal processors, dedicated computational units. We
could have SAR images in real-time with three meters resolution, and these were used for more than ten years during
innumerous airborne campaigns.
Racette: You’re now the director of the Microwaves andRadar Institute at DLR.
Alberto Moreira: This does not happen very often at DLR.
I made a sort of career at DLR at the start as a PhD student.
I was contracted as a researcher and then, after three years, I
was a group leader responsible for ten people. In ‘96, I got the
responsibility of a full department with some 35 people. Thenin 2001, I was very proud to be selected as the director of the
microwaves and radar institute. We are some 130 people. Our
institute is shaping the future radar missions of the German
space program. All the new radar missions in Germany arecoming from our institute.

Racette: Does that include the ESA, the ERS-1 and...
Alberto Moreira: We have made substantial contributionsin the conceptual analysis, the performance estimation andcalibration for all the ESA radar missions. For the Sentinel-1
we have a contract from industry for defining the calibration
algorithms of the mission. We have also had international
programs with NASA. Since the eighties we have been collaborating with JPL in the scope of the Shuttle Imaging Radar
missions SIR-C/X-SAR, and also SRTM. DLR has contributedwith the X-band radar systems for these missions. SIR-C/XSAR in ‘94 was a milestone in radar development because thiswas the first mission with three radars at three different frequencies. In 2000, with the SRTM [Shuttle Radar Topography
Mission] we had one radar from JPL, a C-band radar, and the
X-band radar from Germany, both for topographic mapping.
That mission was also again a milestone in remote sensing
because the topographic data from interferometric SAR measurements became a reference for the geocoding of remotesensing data and for several geoscience applications.
Racette: The TerraSAR-X is Germany’s first radar
satellite.

Alberto Moreira flies a German glider (ASW20, 15 m span) over theatlantic mountains in Brazil.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201015

First Digital Elevation model of TanDEM-X produced just 25 days
after launch. The picture shows the ice floes on the coast of October
Revolution Island. Due to the very large interferometric baseline
during the approximation phase of the satellites, the height accuracy
is as good as 30 cm.

Alberto Moreira: That’s a mission in a public-private
partnership between DLR and the German industry.
TerraSAR-X was launched in June 2007. Since then it issupplying high-resolution radar images for scientific andcommercial applications. TerraSAR-X is the fruit of consistent development of German radar technology overmany years and is an example of successful cooperation
with the German space industry. Our institute is responsible for the system engineering, radar instrument operationand calibration and is involved in a number of scientificproposals for data evaluation.
Racette: How many free flying SARs have been launched?
Alberto Moreira: We have a tremendous developmentin the radar area. Ten years ago, we had two satellites inspace: RadarSat-1 was one and the ERS-2. These were single
frequency, no polarization and so on. As of today we havefifteen spaceborne radars flying with different frequencies
and polarizations and this has been a huge development. The
great number of SARs in space is a prominent example of thegolden age of remote sensing.
Racette: Fifteen SARs?
Alberto Moreira: All SARs! In addition to ERS-2 and Radarsat-1, that are still operating, we have three CosmoSkymedsatellites, we have the ENVISAT/ASAR satellite, we have
ALOS/PALSAR, we have the TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, TECSAR from Israel, five SAR-Lupe satellites, and Radarsat-2.
So we have now indeed sixteen and a new era for SAR remotesensing!
Racette: So you are the Principal Investigator on the
TanDEM-X.
Alberto Moreira: In 2001 we started with the realization of TerraSAR-X satellite in Germany. And then in 2003,
the national call for the next Earth Observation mission after
16

TerraSAR-X was issued in Germany. I had the vision at thattime: our institute should submit a strong proposal for a firstinterferometric SAR mission with close formation flying because of the huge demand for digital elevation models with improved quality. In 2006, we were very happy that the German
Space Agency selected our mission proposal, TanDEM-X, for
implementation. That was a challenge: A lot of changes could
not be done as we would like because TerraSAR-X was almost
built and scheduled to be launched in 2007. We started indeed
in 2004-05 doing the kind of minimal changes in TerraSAR-X
in order to allow for a bistatic radar operation. TerraSAR-X waslaunched in 2007 and TanDEM-X now in June 2010.
Racette: So it just launched recently.
Alberto Moreira: Very recently, but our team at DLR is sostrong: three days after the launch, we produced our first radar
image! This is a world record, normally it takes a few weeks
or even months to have the first image. And just last week, 25days after the launch of TanDEM-X we were able to produce
our first DEM [digital elevation map] with a height accuracy of
about 30 cm. Still, with a big separation between the satellites,as they are flying three seconds behind the other, this is moreor less 20 kilometers. They have been approaching very slowly
and now they are just about 350 meters from each other!
Racette: What are the objectives of the TanDEM-X
mission?
Alberto Moreira: The primary objective is to produce a
new global digital elevation model with accuracy much better than what is currently available. Today what we have globally is about ten meters height accuracy. From SRTM we don’t
have the ice caps, we only have DEM data within ±60 degree
latitude because the shuttle could not cross the poles. With
TanDEM-X we will have global coverage of consistent quality
with horizontal spacing of about 12 meters and a height accuracy of 2 meters. For local areas, we can achieve accuracy thatis even better than one meter in the height. For example, last
week our first DEM had an accuracy of about 30 centimeters.
Because the separation is so big, the interferometer becomesvery sensitive. But we cannot map the whole Earth, for example the Himalayas, the Alps, or Rocky Mountains with accuracy of a few ten centimeters. That’s too sensitive: you lose
control of the topography. In the first year, we’ll map the Earthwith accuracy of about four meters. Then we’ll map it again thenext year with much higher accuracy. The two products will
deliver a high quality DEM with accuracy of about two meters.
Racette: Now, GEOSS is built around the nine societal
benefit areas. What are the societal benefits of TanDEM-X?
Alberto Moreira: Basically, the global DEM, is the firstgoal of TanDEM-X. With this product we make contributions
to the following 5 GEOSS benefit areas. One example is hydrology. Water flows according to the ground slope. If we use
the present-day DEM’s ten meters accuracy to simulate waterflow, then you can see how inaccurate water modeling can be.
Other benefit areas are disaster (e.g. high resolution 3D maps

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

of affected areas), climate (topographic maps of the polar caps
providing high-resolution information about the ice melting),
agriculture (biomass estimation of crop fields by using the innovative technique of polarimetric SAR interferometry) and ecosystems (monitoring of forest areas, aforestation and deforestation). We are also planning to produce global maps on land usechange since we are going to map the whole land masses twice.
Racette: How are you incorporating these radar data setswith GEOSS?
Alberto Moreira: We are working in one of the GEOSS
working groups that is also working with the SRTM DEM
and with the ASTER DEM. The TanDEM-X mission was
only possible because of a public-private partnership with theindustry. Our industry partners paid 30% of the cost of thespacecraft, and DLR the rest. We cannot open the whole DEM
to the scientific community on a global basis because otherwise you don’t have a commercial market for the industry.
We plan to make available to GEOSS a DEM with reduced
pixel resolution but with height accuracy much better thancurrently available. This is how we have established industry
partnerships so that we can do business as well as research andcontribute to GEOSS.
Racette: How do you see Earth Observation evolving?
Alberto Moreira: In the GRSS, we had a membership
growth of 41%, this is the highest of all IEEE’s 38 societies.
This is, in part, because what we do is fascinating. We canmeasure things from space that no one 20 years ago could
believe would be possible. We can measure the deformationsof the land surface with millimeter accuracy. We can measurebiomass from space, measure soil moisture and see how theice caps are melting with incredible accuracy. We can see how
sea level is increasing every year from space with millimeter
accuracy… and so on. The research that is driven by the scientific community is allowing a number of new applicationsin the commercial markets, services like oil spill monitoring,
environmental monitoring, ship monitoring in the northernareas during the winter, and services for precision farming.
Twenty years ago there was a claim that satellite measurements are not reliable. The problem was they did not haveinformation diversity, they did not have good accuracy, theresolution was poor. Today, this has changed. With nearly every mission launched, we are surprised because it can do morethan it was prescribed to do. We are in a golden age for remotesensing. Contributions of the GRSS can be seen in recently
launched missions such as SMOS, the CryoSat, and TanDEMX. These are all missions in which members of our Society
have made a significant contribution from the conceptual design, calibration, implementation and information retrieval.
The GRSS is a fascinating society and it has really been apleasure for me from the beginning. I have been a member
involved in the GRSS for about 20 years.
Racette: 1990 was my first IGARSS.
Alberto Moreira: Ok, well we were almost together.

Racette: IGARSS this week has been phenomenal. Congratulations to you and the organizers who have done a great
job for arranging IGARSS’s 30th anniversary. The society has
had significant influence and impact on the development of
remote sensing and the geosciences. What are some of thehighlights of the society’s contribution that you see?
Alberto Moreira: One nice example is the monitoring ofearthquakes and volcanoes. This year at IGARSS we have had
several sessions dedicated to remote sensing of volcanoes andearthquakes. What we are seeing today is incredible. We canobserve the volcano’s inflation and deflation over decades using satellites. In the early 1990’s came the first results of applying interferometry to study volcanoes. This research field
on interferometry is something that was born from the GRSS
community that has led the field over the past two decades
and still does today. Today, we can observe the inflation of the
volcanoes with centimeter accuracy. Earthquake is a bit morechallenging because the movement is much more sensitive.
We need to detect movements with millimeters accuracy. Thisis but one of the many, many examples I could give.
Racette: The GRSS membership has broad diversity interms of international participation. However women and minorities are still underrepresented in the society. What is thesociety doing to address underrepresentation?
Alberto Moreira: Well we are a very international society,with half our membership existing outside the US, and also
our Administrative Committee is comprised of 18 people ofwhom more than half come from outside the US. Our international representation stems from the nature of our work – thisis global and this is outstanding. We have a minority program,
we have student programs and we support the participation of
more women in our society. For example, yesterday we had ayoung professional luncheon and there were more or less 60
or 70 participants, all young, and at each table with ten people
there was one senior member of the society and I had the pleasure to be at a table and with me there were 7 women and 2
men. This particular event is a good example of bringing students, women students, the future generation, into our Society
and I think these efforts will very much improve our Society.
Racette: What do you see are the top technical challenges
to address over the next decade?
Alberto Moreira: Well we need to separate the technicalchallenges into categories such as lidars, imaging optical sensors,radars, and also microwave radiometers. In all these measurement areas we need to move in the direction of data continuity.
Whether we are mapping long-term processes or short term, themeasurements will only become reliable if there are data available over long periods. Radars, for example, digital beam forming
represents the future technology, allowing a much better performance, swath width and resolution than existing systems. Microwave radiometers are moving towards the concept of synthetic
aperture. The optical, high resolution, and several hyperspectral
sensors are just coming out with an incredible number of bands.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201017

One most important part is that these technologies must
become affordable – remote sensing must be affordable. The
cost of the satellites must become cheaper. We have good examples from Europe over the last few years where the industry makes offers much below the cost cap set by the funding
agency. This is a revolution and I hope that in this way we canafford these new technological developments. We need solutions where the next generation of technology has a heritage
from the past. We need a road map for 20 years ahead, so we
can plan the heritage from one technology to another without
big jumps that are usually associated with high risks and costs.
Then technology development becomes affordable.
Racette: ESA just recently hosted the Living Planet Symposium. Do you view the Earth as a living entity?
Alberto Moreira: The Earth is dynamic. Every minute,every second something is changing on the Earth. Humanbeings make the Earth much more dynamic. This is a challenge because Earth’s processes are rather complicated andthey interact with each other in ways we do not understand.

One big challenge is to guarantee that we have sustainable
development. The Earth is so fragile that if we don’t care,future generations will have less chance for a better life
than we have. And this we cannot afford. Sustainable development is an agreement between countries, every nation
has a responsibility to make sure that they are taking care of
the water resources. Every individual has this responsibility. This is a living Earth. We have a responsibility to leave
the Earth in at least as good of condition as it is today.
Alberto MoreiraIEEE-GRSS President, German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Microwaves and Radar Institute
P.O. Box 1116
82230 Wessling/Oberpfaffenhofen
GERMANY
Phone: + 49 8153 28 2305/2306
Fax: + 49 8153 28 1135
E-mail: alberto.moreira@dlr.de

GEOSCIENCE DEPENDS ON GEOSPATIALINFORMATION STANDARDS
Siri Jodha Khalsa, University of Colorado, US
George Percivall, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), US

Early in their studies, science and engineering students learn
the importance of using a consistent set of units – typicallythe International System of Units (SI). The meter is the base
SI unit of length and without an accepted definition andmethod for realization of the meter, science would be impossible. Standards bodies – for the meter this is the International
Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) – enable worldwide
uniformity of measurements and their traceability to the SI.
Similar to standards for measurements, information standards are fundamental to the progress of science. Usage ofinternationally accepted standards allow scientists to reliably
access and review data and information gathered by other scientists in order to advance the knowledge of our world.
Science advances in part by working with current standards
to arrive at conclusions based on those accepted standards. Science also advances by reconsidering accepted standards, offering new axioms, and working towards a view of the world basedon new standards. In either paradigm, the need for well definedand realized standards is vital to the progress of science.
Geospatial information standards provide the basis forcommunicating data, information and hypothesis about ourworld. In specifying earth location basic units of length suchas the meter must be placed within a framework of accepted18

standards for coordinate reference systems (CRS). CRS standards from the International Organization for Standardization(ISO) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) allow us
to unambiguously place data in a geospatial context. Thesestandards are based on the mathematics of coordinate systems
and the realization procedures of Geodesy.
Geospatial information not only involves coordinates, butalso the attributes of the environment at the specified location.
The attributes that are used to describe the environment require more interpretation than do spatial coordinates. Geospatial information standards address attributes in the categories
of Observations, Features and Coverages. International standards for each of these types of attributes allows for differing
perspectives of the world, mainly distinguished by the complexity of the abstract model associated with the perspective.
Observations are closest to actual measurements. While traditional GIS systems, with a heritage in map-making, model theworld in terms of geometric objects (points, lines, polygons,etc), with associated attributes, features, in contrast, are primarily typed by their conceptual significance within a specific application-domain. Features allow for a more involved
semantic world-view as the basis for the attribute. Coverages
return values for all locations in a spatio-temporal domain andIEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

the domain is often discretised or sampled onto a grid. Again,
clear definitions and methods for realizing these standards forgeographic information are critical for clear communicationand scientific progress.
Not only does geospatial information need to be defined
based on internationally accepted standards, it must also beshared through mechanisms that enable unambiguous and automated transfer within the distributed information systems
that underpin our scientific research infrastructure. Standards
for discovery, access and processing of geospatial information
have been defined and realized. Just as the Internet has madeinformation dramatically more useable, standards for interoperability1 of geospatial information and allow for better andmore comprehensive science.
So how do international standards for geospatial information get developed and adopted in communities of practice?
This is a complex process involving many scientists and engineers using the standards as well as the organizations that develop and maintain the standards. Two sessions at the IGARSS2010 addressed the development and application of geospatial
information standards specifically for the geosciences.
IGARSS 2010 Session: International
Open Standards for Geosciences –Standards Development
Use of international open standards for geospatial information and services is increasing as the geoscience community
participates in both the application and development of thestandards. This first session included three papers describing
some of the organizations currently working to develop andadvance the adoption of international standards.
THE IEEE COMMITTEE ON EARTH OBSERVATIONSSTANDARDS WORKING GROUP

Siri Jodha Khalsa; University of Colorado
Steven Browdy; OMS Tech, Inc.
The IEEE Committee on Earth Observations (ICEO)
Standards Working Group (ISWG) is an international bodyworking to further the use of international standards in thedevelopment of the Global Earth Observation System of
Systems (GEOSS). It was formed by the ICEO in 2006 witha primary aim of helping to establish a process for reaching
agreement on standards and other practices for achieving
interoperability among components contributed to GEOSS.
1

ISO 2382-1. “The ability for a system or components of asystem to provide information portability and interapplication, cooperative process control.” Interoperability, in thecontext of OGC standards, is software components operating
reciprocally (working with each other) to overcome tediousbatch conversion tasks, import/export obstacles, and distributed resource access barriers imposed by heterogeneous processing environments and heterogeneous data.

The ISWG is exemplifying, within the GEOSS context, theuse of international standards in carrying out its work, as wellas advocating the use of standards within GEOSS communities of practice through the close cooperation between the
ISWG and the GEOSS Standards and Interoperability Forum(SIF). Standards usage and interoperability within GEOSS
continue to improve as GEOSS evolves through a series ofArchitecture Implementation Pilot programs, which include
a growing number of participants every cycle. The ISWG, in
support of the SIF, is reaching out to various GEOSS tasks
that are developing domain taxonomies and ontologies, in order to help guide the evolution of semantic interoperability
for the GEOSS. The ISWG also works closely with the IEEE
Standards Association and its Standards Coordinating Committee 40 – Earth Observations to guide the development of
new standards to help GEOSS realize its goals.
OPEN GEOSPATIAL CONSORTIUM (OGC)
STANDARDS FOR THE GEOSCIENCES

George Percivall; Open Geospatial ConsortiumStandards from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) andother organizations are the basis for successfully deploying aseamless, distributed information infrastructure for the geosciences. This paper in the session described how OGC standards, deployment architectures and interoperability initiatives have been developed and apply to the geosciences.
Many of the standards now adopted by the OGC consensus
process are the result of innovative processes in the OGC
Interoperability Program.
The OGC is an international not-for-profit voluntary industry consensus standards organization that provides a forum
and proven processes for the collaborative development of
free and publicly available interface specifications (open standards). OGC open standards have been implemented broadly
in the marketplace and are helping to foster distributed andcomponent technology solutions that geo-enable web, wireless, and location based services as well as broader government and business IT enterprises worldwide. OGC works
closely with standards organizations and consortia in the technology community.
OGC standards were developed with requirements fromthe geosciences. Those OGC standards are now widely implemented providing interoperability for the geosciences.
GEOSS, INSPIRE AND GMES,
AN ACTION IN SUPPORT (GIGAS)Paul Smits, European Commission – Joint Research Centre
GIGAS (An Action in Support of GEOSS, INSPIRE and
GMES) was a European Commission funded project to coordinate, align and institutionalize standards development andadoption across regional and international initiatives, namely
GEOSS (mentioned above), INSPIRE, the Infrastructure for
Spatial Information in the European Community, and GMES,

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201019

the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security. The latter
is a Joint initiative of the European Commission and European
Space Agency and like INSPIRE is a legislative instrument.
Three standardization organizations were also involved in the
GIGAS project: OGC, ISO’s Technical Committee on geographic information, TC 211, and the European Committee forStandardization (CEN) Technical committee on geographic
information, CEN/TC 287. Interoperability through the adoption of standards is at the core of GEOSS, INSPIRE and
GMES, which provide complementary approaches to similargoals and objectives. However, there are important differencesin the related architectures and approaches to the promulgation
and adoption of common standards. A goal of GIGAS was tocharacterize these differences and make targeted recommendations for each initiative, as well as for the participating standardization organizations, with the purpose of increasing harmonisation. GIGAS also provided a framework for Europe’s contribution to the GEOSS Standards and Interoperability Forum.
IGARSS 2010 Session: International
Open Standards for Geosciences –Standards Applications
This second session discussed some of the latest advances in
implementing open standards for access, processing and presentation of sensor information to communities that include
researchers, policy makers and general public. The five
papers discussed current developments and the need for standards for types of observations including climate variables.
Discussion by the session participants is resulting in additional feedback to standards bodies (OGC, ISO, etc.) to further advance the standards.
AIR QUALITY COMMUNITY EXPERIENCES
AND PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNATIONALINTEROPERABILITY STANDARDS

Stefan Falke; Northrop Grumman
Erin Robinson; Washington University in St. LouisThe air quality community includes a broad range of organizations across government, academia and industry addressing
various components of the air quality system, including nearreal time monitoring of air pollution concentrations fromsurface, aerial and satellite sensors, forecasting of air quality
conditions, and retrospective analysis of air quality. These
activities have generated multiple projects and information
systems that address different aspects of air quality scienceand management. The community has recognized the valueof interoperability among these projects and systems and iscollaborating in the use of international standards for dataand information exchange in developing information networks across these systems. This paper described recent
efforts and experiences in the use of web standards andanticipated next steps in the evolving air quality community
information infrastructure.
20

In general, the air quality interoperability efforts have foundsuccess in using existing web standards to achieve a base levelof interoperability but have enhanced their ability to share anduse information across systems by extending the standards tomeet community-specific requirements. As the community
gains experience in how to implement and tailor the standards
they will develop best practices that can be shared across the
air quality community and more broadly to other interoperability communities for evaluation and potential integration
with the formal standards development processes.
ONEGEOLOGY: A PRAGMATIC APPROACH
TO INTERNATIONAL STANDARDSIan Jackson; British Geological Survey
OneGeology is a global venture to increase the accessibilityof geological map data. Geological survey organizations from
113 countries are currently participating in OneGeology andto date 41 of those are serving geological data through a
dedicated web map portal. The reason for the success of
OneGeology since its inception in February 2006 lies in its
four unifying goals: make existing geological map data web
accessible; transfer know-how to the developing world; accelerate the progress of an emerging geoscience data interchange standard; use OneGeology to raise the public profile
and understanding of geoscience.
It is perhaps not readily apparent to most who haveheard about OneGeology that one of the project’s four key
aims is to accelerate the development of standards. The
project has taken a different, pragmatic, approach to doing
this – instead of focusing on the development of the standards themselves it decided to be a vehicle for applying,communicating and disseminating standards, and perhaps
just as importantly, illustrating graphically the benefits thatstandards bring when they are in place and also how the absence of standards impedes interoperability and completeness of information.
The simple goal of OneGeology is to unlock an existing science resource and make it shareable. To some it may
seem that OneGeology is not very ambitious and, in a research sense, its achievements rather mundane. However,to draw that conclusion would be to fail to comprehend thescale of the technical, logistical, cultural and political challenges of a project that attempts deployment internationallyand especially into the developing world. Perhaps also it
would seriously underestimate the importance of sharing,
applying and disseminating our science and taking a pragmatic approach to developing and promulgating the standards to do that.
OPEN STANDARDS IN THE INTEGRATEDOCEAN OBSERVING SYSTEM (IOOS)

Jeff de La Beaujardière; National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

The Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) is a US
interagency project led by the National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration. The goal is to provide sustained observational data and model outputs regarding theopen ocean, coastal waters, and Great Lakes in the formats, rates, and scales required by scientists, managers,
businesses, governments, and the public to support researchand to inform decision-making. Starting in 2008, IOOS
began implementation of a Data Integration Framework(DIF) to enable the evaluation of interoperability specifications, to demonstrate the feasibility and value of providing
integrated ocean observations, and to provide the beginnings of initial operating capability for a nationwide IOOS
data management capability. The initial scope of the DIF
included three data assembly centers (DACs), four customers, and seven observed properties, and has since broadened further.
The Data Integration Framework project identified three
general classes of scientific information to target first –in situ feature data, gridded coverage data, and images ofdata – and recommended a web service and an encoding
convention to be used in each case. These recommendations were intended to standardize a small number of data
access methods and thereby to enable a single client application to obtain data from multiple providers, and to harmonize the representation of data from different providers.
These services can be established either instead of or in
addition to prior arrangements between individual providers and customers.
UNITED STATES NATIONAL AERONAUTICS
AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION (NASA) USE
OF INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS FOR UAVS

Donald Sullivan; National Aeronautics and Space
Administration
The paper described the evolution and adoption of international standards in the operation of sensor packages carriedon NASA Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The author
was the architect and chief software engineer for communication on each of these UAVs. While early UAVs utilizedLine Of Sight (LOS) communication links for sensor command and control (C&C), the General Atomics Altus was
the first with over the horizon (OTH) C&C. Inmarsat geosynchronous satellites provided the communication capability. Subsequently, the General Atomics Altair marked
the introduction of OGC standards usage, the OGC Web
Map Service (WMS) Interface Standard. The currently
operational General Atomics Ikhana OTH C&C via geosynchronous satellites, but it marks a major deployment of
numerous OGC services, including the OGC Sensor
Planning Service (SPS), WMS, Web Coverage Service(WCS), and Web Notification Service (WNS) interface
standards. Additionally, this was the first integration with

the NASA EO1 satellite SPS, and the tasking by theNorthrop Grumman/Washington University, Saint Louis
OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) wrapper on a Smoke
Plume/Fire Model.
The paper concluded with a discussion of the ongoing effort building a standards-based sensor web on the Northrop
Grumman Global Hawk, connecting all 11 onboard instruments through a PostGIS database backend running a suite ofservices, primarily defined by OGC standards. The backend
mirrors a similar database aboard the aircraft.
A DISTRIBUTED DATA SYSTEM FOR
INTERDISCIPLINARY ECOSYSTEMSERVICES MODELINGMin Feng; Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural
Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chengquan Huang; University of Maryland
Zhiliang Zhu; U.S. Geological Survey
Currently, there is much interest in developing ecosystemmodels to forecast how ecosystem services may change underalternate land use and climate futures. The knowledge basefor ecosystem services is broad, and is often derived fromdiverse scientific disciplines. Building the required interdisciplinary models is especially challenging, because the dataneeded for ecosystem simulations are from different disciplines. These data must be interoperable in order for them tobe used together, and be accessible from remote locations for
distributed models. Additional difficulties include inconsistent data structures, formats and metadata, and limitations on
computing, storage, and connectivity. Existing geospatial
databases, data sharing systems, metadata systems, and modeling systems cannot meet the needs of interdisciplinary
ecosystem service simulations for several reasons. First, theshared data, metadata, and models within such systems are
generally designed for use on standalone computers or withinclosed networks, not for extensive sharing and integration of
resources for interdisciplinary ecosystem simulations.
Further, the systems designed to share the resources are typically built using inconsistent data formats and model coupling methods. Hence, the resources are often not interoperable and are not directly accessible to support the collaborations needed to address interdisciplinary ecosystem studies.
This paper proposed an architecture for sharing and integrating resources for interdisciplinary ecosystem services
studies. Data from various sources, including satellite images, field observation, and other data types, are collected andstored in databases. Although different databases may be used
to house different datasets, geospatial data services and metadata services are established to provide a consistent data access interface. The data services are compliant with OGC standards, such as WMS, WCS, and Web Feature Service (WFS).
Metadata generated through metadata services will be compliant with ISO 19115/ISO 19139 geospatial metadata standards.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201021

A DISTRIBUTED LIDAR PROCESSING
MODEL BASED ON OWS AND BPEL

Lingjun Kang; Fuzhou University
Qunyong Wu; Fuzhou University
Ying Yuan; Xiamen University of Technology
LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) has gained more andmore popularity for its ability to construct detailed digital
elevation models, build 3D surface features and extract
topographic parameters. However, current LIDAR processing systems tend to be centralized for several reasons.
First of all, shorter acquisition cycles and larger volume
point cloud datasets require excellent computing and storage ability for efficient post-processing. Secondly, from asoftware engineering perspective, workflow-like processing requires processing step separation for better maintenance and reuse. Thirdly, a universal interface for LIDAR
data is necessary for lowering public threshold of accessing
LIDAR data. To tackle these problems, this paper proposeda distributed LIDAR processing model, which abstracts LIDAR processing procedure into sequential steps, and consequently realizes these steps with GRASS modules andencapsulates them with an OWS (OGC Web Service) standard interface, and, finally, chains OWS with the de facto
workflow language BPEL.
The paper proposed a LiDAR Markup Language (LML),
understood as GML-based geometry part plus LAS-based
non-geometry part. OGC’s GML (Geography Markup Language) is a meta-language for modeling geographic object.
The point type in GML is utilized to model geometry portion of LiDAR cloud point. LAS is standard exchange format
defined by ASPRS (American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing). Standard attributes defined in LAS will
help to tackle semantic heterogeneity of current LiDAR data.
Currently LAS is a binary format instead of an XML-basedformat, which is suitable for data exchange on the Internet.
Standard attributes defined in LAS are used for the nongeometry portion of a LiDAR cloud point.
This paper demonstrated the feasibility of a distributed
LiDAR process model, which when compared to the traditional model, provides advantages in three aspects. First ofall, LiDAR data is serialized as LML and separated from theprocess node. This improves data interoperability and sharing.
Secondly, each process module is encapsulated as service anddeployed on a different machine. This improves both processmodule interoperability and computing resource utilization.
Thirdly, LiDAR workflow benefits concurrent computing
model supported in BPEL.

22

Conclusions
These two sessions at IGARSS described how standards forgeospatial information are being developed and highlighted
several areas where they are being applied.
Applying international standards is a combination of policy and practice. Many organizations now require the use ofstandards in funded research and development projects – thisis the policy part. The organizations recognize that in order torealize the highest benefit and lowest life cycle cost from theirinvestments, adherence to standards is the most cost effective approach. But policy alone is insufficient. Communities
of practice must develop and use what become international
standards. The examples provided in these IGARSS 2010 sessions show how several geoscience communities are using
established geospatial information standards and advancing
beyond the current standards and feeding their experiences
back into the standards development process.
To adequately study and address the broad global issues that confront society interoperability of informationin the geosciences is necessary. Seamless discovery andaccess of relevant information from data providers aroundthe world is achieved through standards-based protocols
and metadata. Too much of researchers’ time has traditionally been spent on locating data and many times there
are datasets that satisfactorily fit the need that go undiscovered. Access to geoscience data in a fashion similar to
documents on the World Wide Web dramatically reduces
the time spent finding and evaluating data. Accuracy andprecision of scientific data and information are achieved
only through agreements about the data itself and how it
is stored.
Without accepted geospatial information standards andmethods for realization of the standards, progress in the geosciences would be impossible. Internationally accepted standards allow scientists to reliably review data and information
gathered by other scientists in order to advance the knowledgeof our world.
References
IGARSS 2010 sessions: http://www.igarss2010.org/Papers/
PublicSessionIndex3_MS.asp?Sessionid=1042
http://www.igarss2010.org/Papers/PublicSessionIndex3_
MS.asp?Sessionid=1043
ICEO Website: http://ieee-earth.org/
ISO/TC211 Website: http://www.isotc211.org
OGC Standards: http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

NEW REMOTE SENSING MISSIONSTANDEM-X: CLOSE FORMATION ACHIEVED
Manfred Zink, TanDEM-X Ground Segment Project Manager,
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany

TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation
Measurement) opens a new era in spaceborne radar remotesensing. A single-pass SAR interferometer with adjustablebaselines in across- and in along-track directions is formed byadding a second (TDX), almost identical spacecraft to
TerraSAR-X (TSX) and flying the two satellites in a closely
controlled formation. With typical across-track baselines of
200–400 m a global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with 2 mrelative height accuracy at a 12 m posting will be generated.
TDX was launched on June 21st into the TSX orbit but
at an along-track distance of 16000 km. After drifting to
20 km distance the monostatic commissioning phase of
TDX was successfully performed in less than 3 months. On
October 14th TDX was maneuvered into close formation(horizontal/vertical separation 360/400 m, mean alongtrack distance 0 m) with TSX. First DEMs in bistatic operation have been generated already indicating the improvements compared to SRTM.
The TanDEM-X Spacecraft
The TDX satellite is a rebuild of TSX
with only minor modifications. This
offers the possibility for a flexible
share of operational functions forboth the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X
missions among the two satellites.
During the last phase of the TerraSAR-X spacecraft development, theSAR instrument design was extended
to allow exchange of synchronization
pulses to support coherent operationof both SAR instruments during bistatic operation. Six sync horns oneach satellite provide a quasi-omnidirectional coverage. An additional
propulsion system based on highpressure nitrogen gas is accommodated on TDX. This cold gas systemprovides smaller impulses than thehydrazine system on both satellites(which is used for orbit maintenance)and supports formation flying by fineorbit control of the TDX satellite. The

Figure 1. TDX and TSX flying in close formation.

TDX solid state mass memory capacity is 768Gbit which isdoubled compared with TSX to support the collection of theenormous amount of DEM data.

Figure 2. First SAR image acquired by TDX over the northern region of Madagascar only 3.5
days after launch.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201023

Figure 3. First bistatic DEM acquired by the TanDEM-X mission
over Mount Etna on October 15th, 2010.

The TDX satellite is designed for a nominal lifetime of
5 years. Predictions for TSX based the current status of system resources indicate at least one extra year (until the endof 2013) of lifetime, providing the required 3 years of joint
operation.
The Ground Segment
The missions TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X jointly sharethe same space segment consisting of the TSX and TDX
satellites orbiting in close formation and are operated using
a common ground segment, that was originally developed
for TerraSAR-X and that has been extended for the
TanDEM-X mission. Specific new developments aredescribed in the following.

The spatial baseline between the TSX and TDX is derived
at mm accuracies from on-board GPS measurements taken by
the two-frequency IGOR GPS receivers.
A key issue in operating both missions jointly is the different acquisition scenarios: whereas TerraSAR-X requests
are typically single scenes for individual scientific and commercial customers, the global DEM requires a global mapping
strategy. This strategy has also to account for the current formation flying geometry which, in turn, depends on the orbit
parameters selected and for any given orbit configuration permits generating a digital elevation model only within a certain
latitude range.
The two satellites will downlink their data to a global network of ground stations: Kiruna in Sweden, Inuvik in Canada,
O’Higgins in the Antarctic, and Chetumal in Mexico. The
global acquisitions for digital elevation model alone will absorb a data volume of more than 350 terabytes. After a brief
quality check, the data will be recorded on tape and shipped to
DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen for processing and archiving.
The entire processing chain is a new TanDEM-X specificdevelopment. However, it consists of individual modules
which strongly benefit from the TerraSAR-X and the Shuttle
Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) heritage. Major design
drivers result from the acquisition strategy which requires the
combination of several (global) coverages and application ofmulti-baseline processing techniques based on supporting intermediate products. Absolute height calibration will rely on
globally distributed reference elevation data provided by thelaser altimeter from the NASA ICESat mission.

Figure 4. DEM of Eyjafjalla Vulcano in Iceland that has been active in spring 2010.
24

Close Formation Flight
An orbit configuration based on a helix geometry
has been selected for safe formation flying. The
helix like relative movement of the satellites along
the orbit is achieved by combination of an out-ofplane (horizontal) orbital displacement imposedby different ascending nodes with a radial (vertical) separation imposed by the combination ofdifferent eccentricities and arguments of perigee.
Since the satellite orbits never cross, the satellites
can be arbitrarily shifted along their orbits. This
enables a safe spacecraft operation without thenecessity for autonomous control. Cross- andalong-track baselines ranging from 200m to 10km
and from 0 to several 100km, respectively, can be
accurately adjusted depending on the measurement requirement.
Although the passive stability of the Helix orbit prevents collisions in principle, a number of
mechanisms have been introduced in the satellite
design to safeguard against collision and mutual
illumination risks:IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

• In addition a safe mode based on the magnet torquers
for attitude control was introduced on both satellites.
Unlike the hydrazine propulsion system, employing
the magnet torquers for attitude control will not lead toany orbit deviation. To complement this additionalsafety feature, the ground operating concept has been
modified to ensure that the ground segment can
respond swiftly enough to any problems on the spacesegment.
• To avoid mutual illumination, exclusion zones havebeen defined, orbit segments in which one of the twosatellites is not allowed to transmit radar pulses.
Moreover, the synchronization link between the twosatellites can be used to check each other’s operating
status. If the sync signals received do not exceed predefined thresholds it is assumed the partner satellite has
problems and the radar transmission will be immediately suppressed. Lastly TDX is equipped to receive
telemetry data from TSX and to react on any nonnominal operating status.
Mission Status
In the first few weeks after launch the along-track distance
was reduced from 16000 to 20 km and TDX was alreadymaneuvered into a Helix orbit with 1.3 km horizontal separation. Thereby the movement due to the Earth’s rotation
during 3 seconds (corresponding to 20 km distance) was
compensated and the same ground tracks as TSX wereachieved to facilitate cross-calibration between the two
SAR systems.
The subsequent monostatic commissioning phase wasdedicated to calibration and performance verification andrevealed calibration accuracies and overall performance of
the TDX SAR system and its products as good as for TSX.
Comprehensive testing of the various safety measures has
been performed in parallel to check-out activities on the new
ground segment elements. In a Formation Flight Review early
October “green light” was given for entering the close formation, which was achieved on October 14th. Bistatic DEMs
are being acquired since then (see Figs. 3 and 4). With TDX
delivering identical single SAR product quality as TSX, theTerraSAR-X Mission is running operationally on both satellites since October 25th. That means that user orders for highresolution SAR data will be acquired by either TSX or TDX
whereby the selection is performed by the mission planningdepending on the available resources and by considering criteria like the exclusion zones.
The bistatic commissioning phase of the TanDEM-X mission is running in parallel and is currently planned to be finalized in December. Global DEM acquisitions will start after an
extensive test and verification program in the coming weeks
has been successfully completed.

Scientific Exploitation
Beyond the generation of a global TanDEM-X DEM as theprimary mission goal, local DEMs of even higher accuracy
level (posting of 6 m and relative vertical accuracy of 0.8 m)
and applications based on Along-Track Interferometry (ATI)
like measurements of ocean currents are important secondary
mission objectives. Along-track interferometry will also allow
for innovative applications to be explored and can be performed by the so-called dual-receive antenna mode on each of
the two satellites and/or by adjusting the along-track distance
between TSX and TDX to the desired value. Combining bothmodes will provide a highly capable along-track interferometer with four phase centers. The different ATI modes will e.g.
be used for improved detection, localization and ambiguity
resolution in ground moving target indication and trafficmonitoring applications. Furthermore TanDEM-X supports
the demonstration and application of new SAR techniques,with focus on multistatic SAR, polarimetric SAR interferometry, digital beam forming and super resolution.
TanDEM-X has an ambitious time schedule to reach themain mission goal. After the commissioning phase, the first two
years are dedicated to the global DEM acquisitions, followedby six months of additional acquisitions to cover difficult terrain. The baseline geometry in these first years is optimized for
DEM performance. If the baselines are suitable, a limited number of scientific acquisitions can be included already during thisphase. After the DEM acquisitions even larger baselines can be
adjusted for higher accuracy DEMs on local scales and for the
exploration and demonstration of scientific experiments.
The science proposal submission for data requests is available over the TanDEM-X Science Service: http://tandemxscience.dlr.de/. More information about the TanDEM-X mission is available under http://www.dlr.de/hr/tdmx.
Acknowledgement
This article has been prepared with contributions by DLRs
TanDEM-X Team comprising more than 100 colleagues from
the Microwaves and Radar Institute, the German Remote
Sensing Data Center, the German Space Operations Center,and the Remote Sensing Technology Institute.
TanDEM-X is being implemented as a public-private partnership between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Astrium GmbH, with funding from the German Federal Ministry of
Economics and Technology (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft
und Technologie, BMWi). DLR has developed the mission concept and the ground segment and is responsible for planning andmanaging the mission, controlling the two satellites, generating
the digital elevation model and coordinating the scientific exploitation of TanDEM-X products. Astrium built the satellites
and is sharing the costs of development and operation. As withTerraSAR-X, Infoterra, a subsidiary of Astrium, is responsible
for the commercial exploitation of TanDEM-X data.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201025

REPORTS

GRS-S PUBLICATIONS AWARDS PRESENTED
AT IGARSS 2010 BANQUET
Publications Awards Committee: Martti Hallikainen (Chair),Roger Lang, Klaus Seidel, Tat Soon Yeo, Tony Freeman
The IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society’s 2010
Publications Awards were presented at the IGARSS Awards
Banquet on Thursday, July 29 in Bishop Museum, Honolulu,
Hawaii, USA. Bishop Museum was founded in 1889 by
Charles Reed Bishop in honor of his late wife, Princess
Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last descendant of the royal
Kamehameha family. The Museum was established to housethe extensive collection of Hawaiian artifacts and royal family heirlooms of the Princess, and has expanded to include
millions of artifacts, documents and photographs about
Hawaii and other Pacific island cultures. Today, Bishop

Figure 1. Bishop Museum was the venue for the Awards Banquet.

Museum is the largest museum in the state and the premiernatural and cultural history institution in the Pacific. The
Awards Banquet was hosted by IGARSS’10 General
Co-Chairs Karen St. Germain and Paul Smits together with
TPC Co-Chairs Paolo Gamba and David Kunkee.
The following awards were presented by GRS-S President
Alberto Moreira and GRS-S Awards Co-Chair Martti Hallikainen during the dinner:• Transactions Prize Paper Award• Letters Prize Paper Award• Symposium Prize Paper Award• Symposium Interactive Prize Paper Award• Three Student Prize Paper Awards• Chapter Excellence Award.
IEEE GRS-S Transactions Prize Paper Award
The GRS-S established the Transactions Prize Paper
Award to recognize authors who have published an exceptional paper in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote
Sensing during the past calendar year. When selecting thepaper, other factors considered are originality and clarity ofthe paper. Prize: Certificate and $3000, equally divided
between the authors.
The 2009 Transactions Prize Paper Award was presented
to Simon Yueh, Steve Dinardo, Ahmed Akgiray, RichardWest, Don Cline, and Kelly Elder with the citation:
For a very significant contribution to the field of endeavor of the IEEE GRS Society in the paper entitled “Airborne
Ku-Band Polarimetric Radar Remote Sensing of Terrestrial Snow Cover,” coauthored by Simon Yueh, Steve
Dinardo, Ahmed Akgiray, Richard West, Don Cline, and
Kelly Elder, and published in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. 47, No. 10, pp. 3347–3364,
October 2009.
Simon H. Yueh received the Ph.D. degree in ElectricalEngineering in January 1991 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a postdoctoral research associate
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from February to August 1991. In September 1991, he joined the Radar
Science and Engineering Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He was the supervisor of radar system engineering and algorithm development group from 2002–2007. HeFigure 2. IGARSS’10 main organizers (from left) General Co-Chairs
Karen St. Germain and Paul Smits with Technical Program
Committee Co-Chairs David Kunkee and Paolo Gamba.
26

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

became the deputy manager of Climate, Oceans and Solid
Earth section in July 2007, and was promoted to the section
manager in March 2009. He is also serving as the instrument
scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aquarius mission for global sea surface salinity
observations. He has been the Principal/Co-Investigator ofnumerous research projects, including the polarimetric windradiometer research; airborne scatterometer project for hurricane wind measurements; Passive/Active L-band Sensor(PALS) project; NASA Instrument Incubator Project for a
mission concept using a large mesh-deployable antenna forsoil moisture and ocean salinity sensing; the airborne polarimetric radar (POLSCAT) for ocean wind velocity measurements; the POLSCAT/Cold Land Processes Experiments(CLPX-1 and -2) in 2002–2004 and 2006–2008; the Advanced Component Technology lightweight dual-frequency
antenna feed project; the Aquarius PALS High Wind Campaign in 2009; the POLSCAT-CLPX3 experiment in 2009–2010. He is leading the development of Snow and Cold Land
Processes mission concept at JPL. He has authored four bookchapters and published more than 150 publications and presentations. He received the 2002 IEEE GRSS Transaction
Prize Paper award, the 2000 Best Paper Award in the IEEE
International Geoscience and Remote Symposium 2000, andthe 1995 IEEE GRSS Transaction Prize Paper award for apaper on polarimetric radiometry. He received the JPL Lew
Allen Award in 1998 and Ed Stone Award in 2003. He is
an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience andRemote Sensing and is the Fellow of IEEE.
Steve J. Dinardo received the B.S.E.E degree from California State University, Los Angeles in 1983. In 1978, hejoined NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Pasadena,
CA. At JPL he has been involved in various projects, including very long base interferometry (VLBI), mobile
VLBI, orbiting VLBI, GPS receiver development and international GPS service. From, 1995 through 1997, he was responsible for the deployment of the JPL aircraft polarimetric wind radiometers (WINDRAD) on NASA’s DC-8 andP-3. He successfully coordinated the Hurricane Ocean Wind
Experiment, sponsored by NASA and NPOESS, resulting
in the first airborne Ku- Band scatterometer and multifrequecy polarimetric radiometers flights over hurricanes. He
has also been responsible for development and deploymentof JPL’s aircraft rain radar and a 94-GHz cloud profilingradar on NASA’s DC-8. He built the JPL Ku-band polarimetric scatterometer (POLSCAT), deployed on the NCAR
C-130, for the first successful demonstration of polarimetric wind scatterometer technique. He has been responsible
for the deployment of POLSCAT and WINDRAD on the
DC-8 to support the NASA Cold Land Process Experimentin 2002–2003. He is currently involved in the developmentof low noise microwave radiometers and radar systems foraircraft and spacecraft for remote sensing of soil moistureand ocean salinity and GeoStar Geosynchronous microwave
sounding instrument. Mr. Dinardo is a Senior Engineer at
JPL, and a member of the IEEE.
Ahmed Akgiray received the B.S. degree with honors
in Electrical Engineering at Cornell University in 2005, and
M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, in 2007, with a thesis entitled “Calibration of Jicamarca Radar Using F-region Incoherent Scatter
For Measurements of D-region Backscatter RCS.”
He, then, joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where hehas worked from May 2007 to present. His responsibilities
included radar/radiometer data processing and hardware engineer for the landing radar of the Mars Science Laboratory(due to be launched in 2011). He is currently working on Soil
Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) satellite RF hardware
development in addition to lead test engineer role on a subassembly of MSL landing radar.
Richard West received the Ph.D. degree in ElectricalEngineering in 1994 from the University of Washington,
Seattle. His Ph.D. thesis applied dense medium scattering
theory to the analysis of passive microwave measurementsof Antarctic snow. In 1995, he started working in the Radar
Science and Engineering section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. He has
worked on the development of algorithms for the processing
and calibration of data from the NASA Scatterometer, andfrom SeaWinds on QuikScat. In 1999, he began working withthe radar instrument on the Cassini Mission to Saturn, andbecame the deputy task manager in 2002. From 2002 through2004, he coordinated a small team that developed software
for radar sequence generation and for data processing. During the Cassini Prime Mission from 2004 through 2010,
he worked on all aspects of instrument operations including planning the science observations in coordination withthe science team, designing the radar command sequences, and processing/calibrating the data received. In 2009

Figure 3. Simon Yueh and Steve Dinardo received the Transactions
Prize Paper Award from GRS-S President Alberto Moreira (right)
and Awards Co-Chair Martti Hallikainen (left).

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201027

he started working on radar backscatter processing for the
Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) project. His researchinterests include electromagnetic scattering theory, the applications of active and passive microwave data to problems inremote sensing and planetary science, and the developmentof new techniques/technology to enable more capable remotesensing missions.
Donald W. Cline is Chief of the Hydrology Laboratory
for NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS). He received
the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in Geography from the
University of Colorado in 1989, 1992, and 1995. He wasformerly the Director of the NWS National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center. Prior to joining NOAA
in 1998, he completed post-doctoral positions with the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Arizona, the School for Environmental Science andManagement at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
and the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado. He has developed and taught courses in
Surface Water Hydrology, Snow Hydrology, Geographic
Information Systems, and Remote Sensing. His scientificand technical interests include hydrologic remote sensing,hydrological modeling, geospatial terrain analysis, andCryospheric science. Dr. Cline is a member of the American Geophysical Union.
Kelly Elder recieved his BA from the University of Colorado, Boulder (1985), and his MA and PhD from the Universityof California, Santa Barbara (1988 and 1995). He is currently
a Research Hydrologist with the Rocky Mountain Research
Station, US Forest Service, in Fort Collins, Colorado. He is
also the Scientist in Charge at the Fraser Experimental Forest,
Fraser, CO. His research focuses on snow, forest hydrology,
climate and avalanches.
IEEE GRS-S Letters Prize Paper Award
The GRS-S established the Letters Prize Paper Award torecognize the author(s) who has published in the IEEE
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters during the calendar
year an exceptional paper in terms of content and impact on
the GRS Society. If a suitable paper cannot be identified fromamong those published during the calendar year, papers published in prior years and subsequently recognized as being
meritorious may be considered. When selecting the paper,
originality, impact, scientific value and clarity are factors
considered. Prize: Certificate and $1500, equally divided
between the authors.
The 2009 Letters Prize Paper Award was presented toDavid Lary, Lorraine Remer, Devon MacNeill, Bryan
Roscoe, and Susan Paradise with the citation:
For a very significant contribution to the field of endeavorof the IEEE GRS Society in the paper “Machine Learning
and Bias Correction of MODIS Aerosol Optical Depth,”authored by David Lary, Lorraine Remer, Devon MacNeill,
28

Bryan Roscoe, and Susan Paradise, and published in IEEE
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Vol. 6, No. 4. pp.
694–698, October 2009.
David Lary is an atmospheric scientist interested inapplying computational and information systems to facilitate discovery and decision support in Earth System Science. David Lary completed his education in the United
Kingdom. He received a First Class Double Honors B.Sc.
in Physics and Chemistry from King’s College London(1987) with the Sambrooke Exhibition Prize in Natural
Science, and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Chemistry from the
University of Cambridge, Department of Chemistry while
at Churchill College (1991). His thesis described the firstchemical scheme for the ECMWF numerical weather prediction model. He then held post-doctoral research assistant and associate positions at Cambridge University until
receiving a Royal Society University Research Fellowshipin 1996 (also at Cambridge). From 1998 to 2000 he held ajoint position at Cambridge and the University of Tel-Aviv
as a senior lecturer and Alon fellow. In 2001 he joined
UMBC/GEST as the first distinguished Goddard fellow inearth science. Between 2001 and 2010 he was part of various branches at NASA/GSFC including the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, the Atmospheric Chemistry
and Dynamics Branch, the Software Integration and Visualization Office, and the Goddard Earth Sciences (GES)
Data and Information Services Center (DISC) at NASA/
GSFC. In 2010 he moved to the William B. Hanson Center
for Space Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. His
contributions have been recognized by his peers through:Invited contributions to the Royal Society, National Academies, and CDC, two dedicated EGU symposia sessions,four prestigious fellowships, five editorial commendations, six NASA awards, and eighty publications with overa thousand citations in the peer-reviewed literature.

Figure 4. George Komar received the Letters Prize Paper Award on
behalf of David Lary, Lorraine Remer, Devon MacNeill, Bryan
Roscoe, and Susan Paradise, from GRS-S President Alberto Moreira(right) and Awards Co-Chair Martti Hallikainen (left).

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

Lorraine A. Remer came to the NASA/Goddard Space
Flight Center in 1991, employed by Science Systems andApplications Inc. until 1998 when she became a civil
servant. Currently she is a Senior Physical Scientist in the
Climate and Radiation Branch of Goddard’s Laboratory for
Atmospheres. Dr. Remer leads the Decadal Survey Aerosol-Clouds-Ecosystem (ACE) Aerosol Subgroup of the Science Working Group, is a Member of the EOS-MODIS andCALIPSO science teams and was a member of the Global
Aerosol Climatology Project science team. She was thelead author of the executive summary of the U.S. Climate
Change Science Program (CCSP) report on aerosols and climate, and a contributing author to the United Nations interim and final reports on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution. She has been involved in field campaigns including the
Smoke/Sulfate, Cloud And Radiation (SCAR) experiments,
the Tropospheric Aerosol Radiative Forcing Observational
Experiment (TARFOX), the Israeli Desert Transition Zone
experiment, the Puerto Rico Dust Experiment (PRiDE), theChesapeake Lighthouse Airborne Measurements for Satellites (CLAMS), the Intercontinental Chemical Transport
Experiments (INTEX) including MILAGRO and the Arctic
Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellite (ARCTAS). During these deployments
she served as a member of the forecasting team, lead platform scientist for the ER-2 and daily mission scientist.
Devon MacNeill is currently employed by Avid Radiopharmaceuticals in Philadelphia, PA. She interned with
Dr. David Lary at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center through the DEVELOP Program from September 2008 through April 2009.
The project focused on validating aerosol optical depth data
(AOD) from the MODIS instrument, determining the factors affecting AOD data, and correction of bias with machinelearning techniques. Devon graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland in May of 2009.
Bryan Roscoe graduated with a Bachelors of Science in
Computer Science and Math from Salisbury University in2008. During the writing of this paper, he was working as a
DEVELOP intern for Dr. David Lary at Goddard Space Flight
Center. Bryan now works for Hawk Institute for Space Sciences. He currently supports NASA’s EOSDIS project as a
subcontracted Software Engineer.
Susan Paradise is a senior software engineer for the Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) project at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory. She leads the Aerosol/Surface softwaredevelopment and analysis team. She also led the developmentof the Aerosol Measurement and Processing System (AMAPS)
code used for analysis and comparisons of spacecraft andground aerosol data, such as MISR and AERONET. She has
25 years of experience in software development and analysis
on remote sensing projects observing Earth’s atmosphere.

IEEE GRS-S Symposium Prize Paper Award
The GRS-S established the Symposium Prize Paper Award
to recognize the author(s) who presented at the IEEE
International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium(IGARSS) an exceptional paper in terms of content andimpact on the GRS-S. In selecting the paper, other factors
considered are originality, clarity and timeliness of the paper.
The published versions of the papers in the Digest shall also
be evaluated. Prize: Certificate and $1250, equally divided
between the authors.
The 2009 Symposium Prize Paper Award was presented
to Xiao Xiang Zhu, Nico Adam and Richard Bamler withthe citation:
For a very significant contribution to the field of endeavorof the IEEE GRS Society in the paper entitled “Space-Borne
High Resolution Tomographic Interferometry,” coauthored by Xiao Xiang Zhu, Nico Adam and Richard Bamler,
and presented at the 2009 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, July 2009 in Cape Town, South
Africa, IGARSS´09 Proceedings.
Xiao Xiang Zhu received the Bachelor degree in spaceengineering from the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), Changsha, China, in 2006. She received
the Master (M.sc.) degree in Earth Oriented Space Scienceand Technology (ESPACE) from Technische Universität
München (TUM), München, Germany, in 2008. Since May
2008, she has been a Full-Time Scientific Collaborator with
the Remote Sensing Technology, TUM, and pursues her Ph.D.
degree on differential SAR tomography using TerraSAR-X
data. Her work is part of the project team “Dynamic Earth”
which was established in the International Graduate Schoolof Science and Engineering (IGSSE), TUM, as a result of theGerman excellence initiative in 2007. In October/November

Figure 5. Recipients of the Symposium Prize Paper Award Xiao
Xiang Zhu (second from left), Nico Adam (right), and Richard
Bamler (second from right) with GRS-S President Alberto Moreira(in the middle) and Awards Co-Chair Martti Hallikainen (left).

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201029

2009, she was a guest scientist at the Italian National ResearchCouncil (CNR) – Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of
the Environment (IREA), Naples, Italy. In 2009, he ranked
the third place at the student paper competition of the Joint
Urban Remote Sensing Event, Shanghai, China. Her main research interests are signal processing field with applications
to spaceborne SAR data, in particular SAR tomography anddifferential SAR tomography.
Nico Adam received the Diploma degree in electricalengineering and telecommunication science from the University of Rostock, Germany in 1995. He has been with theGerman Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, since
1995, where he leads the SAR Interferometry team at DLR’s
Remote Sensing Technology Institute. His research interests
include signal and image processing in the persistent scatterer
interferometry framework and the development of algorithms
and software for advanced remote sensing radar systems.
Richard Bamler received his diploma degree in electricalengineering, his doctor of engineering degree, and his “habilitation” in the field of signal and systems theory in 1980,
1986, and 1988, respectively, from the Technische Universität
München (Germany).
He worked at that university during 1981 and 1989 on optical signal processing, holography, wave propagation, andtomography. He joined the German Aerospace Center (DLR),
Oberpfaffenhofen, in 1989, where he is currently the Directorof the Remote Sensing Technology Institute. Since then heand his team have been working on SAR signal processing
algorithms (ERS, SIR-C/X-SAR, Radarsat, SRTM, ASAR,
TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X), SAR calibration and product validation, SAR interferometry, phase unwrapping, estimation
theory and model based inversion methods for atmosphericsounding (GOME, SCIAMACHY, MIPAS, GOME-2) andoceanography.

Figure 6. Charles Werner received the Interactive Session Prize
Paper Award on behalf of Mihai Tanase, Maurizio Santoro, Juan dela Riva, and Fernando Pérez-Cabello, from GRS-S President Alberto
Moreira (right) and Awards Co-Chair Martti Hallikainen (left).
30

In early 1994 Prof. Bamler was a visiting scientist at Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in preparation of the SIC-C/XSAR missions, and in 1996 he was guest professor at the University of Innsbruck. Since 2003 he holds a full professorshipin remote sensing technology at the Technische Universität
München.
His current research interests are in algorithms for optimum information extraction from remote sensing data withemphasis on SAR, SAR interferometry, persistent scatterer
interferometry, SAR tomography, and GMTI for security
related applications. He and his team have developed andare currently developing the operational processor systems
for the German missions TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, and
EnMAP.
Richard Bamler is the author of more than 160 scientificpublications, among them about 40 journal papers, a book on
multidimensional linear systems theory, and several patents
on SAR signal processing.
IEEE GRS-S Interactive Session Prize Paper Award
The GRS-S established the Interactive Session Prize Paper
Award to recognize the author(s) who posted at the GRS-S
Symposium (IGARSS) an exceptional paper in terms of content and impact on the GRS-S. In selecting the paper, otherfactors considered are originality, clarity and timeliness ofthe paper. The published versions of the papers in the Digest
shall also be evaluated. Prize: Certificate and $1250, equallydivided between the authors.
The 2010 Interactive Session Prize Paper Award waspresented to Mihai Tanase, Maurizio Santoro, Juan de laRiva, and Fernando Pérez-Cabello with the citation:
For a paper with exceptional merit and posted in the Interactive Session of the International Geoscience and Remote
Sensing Symposium IGARSS’09 “Backscatter Properties ofMultitemporal TerraSAR-X Data and the Effects of Influencing Factors on Burn Severity Evaluation, in a Mediterranean Pine Forest,” and coauthored by Mihai Tanase,
Maurizio Santoro, Juan de la Riva, and Fernando Pérez-Cabello, and presented at the 2009 International Geoscience andRemote Sensing Symposium, July 2009 in Cape Town, South
Africa, IGARSS´09 Proceedings.
Mihai A. Tanase received the engineering diploma inforestry from “Stefan cel Mare University”, Suceava, Romania in 1999, the diploma in economy from Bucharest
Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, in2004 and the M.Sc. degree in Environmental Managementfrom the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean
Agronomic Studies, Paris, France, in 2007. Currently heis with the Department of Geography at the Universityof Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain. He is PI for ERS and TerraSAR-X projects and participates in K&C Initiative as
co-investigator. His research includes the use of remote

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

sensing for forest characterization. His current activity is
focused on the use of SAR and interferometric SAR data
for fire severity estimation and vegetation recovery monitoring after forest fires.
Maurizio Santoro (M’04) received the M.S. degree inaerospace engineering from the University “Federico II,”
Naples, Italy, in 1998, the Lic. Eng. degree from the Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden, in 2001,
and the Ph.D. degree from Friedrich-Schiller-University,
Jena, Germany, in 2003. From 2004 to 2005, he held a postdoctoral position at Friedrich-Schiller University. Since 2006,
he has been a Project Scientist at GAMMA Remote Sensing
AG, Gümligen, Switzerland. His main duties include SAR
and interferometric SAR data processing, and applications of
SAR interferometry for land cover mapping. He is involved as
Principal and Co-Investigator in several international projects
on the use of Earth observation data for land cover mappingand monitoring. His main research interests include characterization of land cover using SAR and interferometric SAR
data, and retrieval techniques of forest biophysical parametersfrom SAR data.
Juan de la Riva received the PhD degree in Geography
in the University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, in 1994. He
is currently a professor of Regional Geographic Analysis
in the University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain. He coordinates the GIS and Remote Sensing Master Course. He focuses his research on the study of forested areas and theapplication of GIS and remote sensing techniques. He ismember of the GEOFOREST research group and he has
worked in different management studies in mountain areas,
as well as in several research projects – FIRERISK, EROFUEGO, LIGNOSTRUM, RS-FIRE, PIR-FIRE – related toforest fires (post-fire environmental dynamic and risk modeling) and biomass estimation.
Fernando Pérez-Cabello received the PhD degree inGeography in the University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain,in 2001. He is currently a professor contracted doctor of
Regional Geographic Analysis in the University of Zaragoza,
Zaragoza, Spain. He focused his research on the analysis of
the environmental dynamic of burned areas, by means of fielddata and remote sensing and GIS techniques. He is memberof the GEOFOREST research group and he has worked atsome national research projects – FIRERISK, EROFUEGO,
LIGNOSTRUM, RS-FIRE, PIR-FIRE – concerning to themonitoring of burned areas, fire risk cartography and modeling of physical variables.
Student Prize Paper Awards
A total of three prizes were presented including two GRS-S
Student Prize Paper Awards (third and second prize) and,for the third time, the IEEE Mikio Takagi Student Prize(first prize).

GRS-S Student Prize Paper Awards

The GRS-S Student Prize Paper Award was established torecognize the best student papers presented at the IEEE
International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium(IGARSS). It is believed that early recognition of an outstanding paper will encourage the student to strive for greaterand continued contributions to the Geoscience and Remote
Sensing profession. The award shall be considered annually.
Ten high-quality papers were preselected by the Student
Prize Paper Awards Committee in cooperation with theTechnical Program Committee. At IGARSS 2009 in Cape
Town the students presented their papers in a special session
on Tuesday morning and a jury, nominated by the GRS-S
Awards Co-Chair, evaluated and ranked them for the awards.
The Third Student Prize paper Award was presented to
Amanda Mims with the citation:
For the paper “WindSat Retrieval of Ocean Surface
Wind Speeds in Tropical Cyclones.”
Her advisor is Christopher Ruf from the University ofMichigan.
Amanda Mims received the B.S.E. degree in Earth systems science and engineering in 2009 and is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in atmospheric science, both from the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research interests
include microwave remote sensing and retrieval algorithms toderive ocean wind vectors from passive instruments, particularly WindSat. Her focus is algorithms for atmospheric clearing under intense precipitation, using tropical cyclones as test
cases. She is a student member of the Institute of Electricaland Electronics Engineers, the American Meteorological Society and the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society.
The Second Student Prize Paper Award was presented
to Wei Di with the citation:
For the paper “Multi-view Adaptive Disagreement Based
Active Learning for Hyperspectral Image Classification.”
Her advisor is Melba Crawford from Purdue University.

Figure 7. Recipient of the Student Prize Paper Award Amanda Mims
with GRS-S President Alberto Moreira (right) and Awards Co-Chair
Martti Hallikainen (left).

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201031

2010 IEEE Mikio Takagi Student Prize

Figure 8. Recipient of the Student Prize Paper Award Wei Di with
GRS-S President Alberto Moreira (right) and Awards Co-Chair
Martti Hallikainen (left).

Wei Di is a PhD student in Civil Engineering and Computational Science and Engineering (CS&E) in Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. She is advised byProfessor Melba Crawford, and works in Laboratory for
Applications of Remote Sensing in Purdue University. Her
research interest is in machine learning and pattern recognition for hyperspectral data analysis, especially on active
learning for hyperspectral image classification. She wasawarded by the Lynn Fellowship from CS&E interdisciplinary program in Purdue University which aims to offer
computational specializations for students across Science,
Engineering, and Agriculture, etc. Before she joined Purdue
University in 2008, she earned her B.S degree in Communication Engineering in 2005, and M.S. degree in Control
Theory and Engineering in 2008 from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, respectively.

Figure 9. The IEEE Mikio Takagi Student Prize recipient Brent
Williams with GRS-S President Alberto Moreira (right) and Awards
Co-Chair Martti Hallikainen (left).
32

The IEEE Mikio Takagi Student Prize was establishedin 2006. It is to recognize a student who has presented an exceptional paper at the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Symposium (IGARSS).
The 2010 IEEE Mikio Takagi Student Prize waspresented to Brent Williams with the citation:
For the paper “Scatterometer Image Reconstruction from
Aperture-Filtered Samples.”His advisor is David Long from Brigham Young University.
Brent A. Williams received the B.S. degree in electricalengineering from Brigham Young University, Provo, UT,
in 2005. He recently finished his dissertation titled “Signal
Processing Methods for Ultra High Resolution Scatterometry’’ and will receive the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineeringfrom Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, in August 2010.
From 2005 through 2010 he has worked in the Microwave
Earth Remote Sensing Laboratory exploring ultra high resolution ocean wind scatterometry and image reconstruction. He
is currently at the Jet Propulsion Lab continuing research inscatterometry. Mr. Williams has several publications including 3 journal articles (2 currently in review) and 5 conference
papers. He received the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Interactive Session Prize Paper Award for a paper
submitted to IGARSS in 2006, and received the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Mikio Takagi Student
Prize Award at IGARSS in 2007. Mr. Williams is a member ofIEEE and Eta Kappa Nu.
Chapter Excellence Award
The GRS-S established the Chapter Excellence Award torecognize excellence in a GRS-S or Joint Local Chapter demonstrated by exemplary local GRS-S activities during the

Figure 10. Grégoire Mercier (second from right) and Jocelyn
Chanussot, (second from left), who received the Chapter ExcellenceAward for the French Chapter, with GRS-S President Alberto
Moreira (right) and Awards Co-Chair Martti Hallikainen (left).

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

Figure 11. Kiyo Tomiyasu (right) with GRS-S President Alberto
Moreira.

previous year. The award is considered annually and presented only when a deserving Chapter is identified. The
selection criteria are quantity, quality, breadth and significance of activities and technical meetings during the previous
calendar year, active participation of members in IGARSS
and other GRS-S sponsored activities, and membership
growth during the past three years. A Chapter that receives
the GRS-S Chapter Excellence Award is not eligible toreceive it again within the next three years. The Award consists of a Certificate and an honorarium of $1,000 to be used
for Chapter activities.
The 2010 Chapter Excellence Award was presented to
the French Chapter with the citation:
For excellence as a GRS-S Chapter demonstrated by exemplary activities during 2009.
The award was received by Grégoire Mercier (present Chapter Chair) and Jocelyn Chanussot (previous Chapter Chair).
Congratulations to All 2010 Award Recipients
The GRS-S Awards Committee would like to thank theevaluators of IGARSS’10 technical sessions and the
Editorial Boards of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience andRemote Sensing and IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Letters, and the GRS-S Student Prize Paper Awards
Committee for their valuable inputs to the awards process.
We would also like to encourage all GRS-S members to

Figure 12. IGARSS’10 General Co-Chairs Karen St. Germain (left)
and Paul Smits with IGARSS’11 General Chair Motoyuki Sato,
Yoshio Yamaguchi, Ya-Qiu Jin, and Masanobu Shimada.

actively participate in nominating the GRS-S Major Awards
including the Distinguished Achievement Award, theOutstanding Service Award and the Education Award. As a
new feature, GRS-S members can nominate papers also forjournal awards. Please see instructions on the GRS-S
Home Page.
Additional Highlights at the Awards Banquet
Kiyo Tomiyasu into IEEE Heritage Circle

Kiyo Tomiyasu (LF’85), who in 1941 joined the Institute ofRadio Engineers, one of IEEE’s predecessor societies, isbeing inducted into the IEEE Heritage Circle to honor his
lifetime giving to IEEE. He was congratulated (a bit late) on
the occasion of his 90th birthday.
Best Wishes for a Successful IGARSS 2011
The General Co-Chairs of IGARSS 2010, Karen St. Germain
and Paul Smits, turned over the responsibility for the IEEE
International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium to
IGARSS 2011 General Co-Chair Motoyuki Sato and his
team, with best wishes for a successful symposium in Sendai,
Japan, August 1–5, 2011.
We hope to see you in Sendai at IGARSS 2011!

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

Martti Hallikainen

33

REPORT ON THE GNSS-R10 WORKSHOP
Antonio Rius, GNSS-R ’10 Co-chair, Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya / ICE-CSIC
Estel Cardellach, GNSS-R ’10 Co-chair, Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya / ICE-CSIC
Adriano Camps, GNSS-R ’10 Co-chair, Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya / CRAE-UPC
Manuel Martín-Neira, Conclusions Panel Co-chair, ESA/ESTEC
Valery Zavorotny, Conclusions Panel Co-chair, NOAA
Stephen T. Lowe, Conclusions Panel Co-chair, JPL
Introduction
In the past years, reflectometry of opportunity signals such as
those from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS-R)
has stood as a technique with a great potential for remotesensing applications. This article reports the last edition of
the GNSS-R series of successful workshops that was held at
the Universitat Politènica de Catalunya, Barcelona (Spain)
during October 21st and 22nd, 2010.
The workshop was organized by the Institut d’Estudis
Espacials de Catalunya, sections ICE (Space Sciences Institute) from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC),
and CRAE (Aerospace Research Center) from the Universitat
Politècnica de catalunya (UPC).
The workshop logo (Figure 1) was inspired in famous catalan architect Gaudi’s broken tiles.
The workshop was attended by 58 people from 14 different countries. It was run as a single session. A total of 29 oralpresentations were included in the six plenary sessions on:• Future and Planned Missions, chair: Salvatore D’Addio,• Applications: Altimetry, chair: Stephen T. Lowe,• Receivers and Systems, chair: Martin Unwin,• Applications: Scatterometry, chair: James L. Garrison,• Applications: Land, Cryosphere, Atmosphere, chair:
Valery Zavorotny, and• Simulators and Simulations, chair: Georg Beyerle.
In addition, 9 interactive presentations were included
in a lively poster session on Thursday afternoon, which
also included demos of software simulators (from Starlab
and UPC), hardware exhibit (from ICE/CSIC and UPC),a stand from SPIRENT… while enjoying some food andbeverages.
Seen from the last workshop, held at ESTEC on September
24th–25th, 2008, the GNSS-R community seems to be much
more mature and consolidated. The main advances are summarized below:• Ground-based and airborne field experiments (from aircrafts and zeppelin) over the ocean, land, dry snow, andice were presented.
• New algorithms have been developed and tested for
altimetry, ice monitoring, soil moisture, corrections to
L-band microwave radiometry over the ocean to improve
34

Figure 1. GNSS-R ’10 logo [designed by E. Cardellach].
http://congress.cimne.com/gnss-r10/.

sea surface salinity retrievals, scatterometry, wind speed
and direction…
• A number of satellite opportunities were announced
aboard small satellites (e.g. PAU instrument aboard
INTA’s MicroSat-1) or aboard the ISS (International
Space Station).
• The synergy with existing satellite radio-occultation
systems has been further exploited.
• Receiver and simulator development has made very good
progress, and flight-quality receivers are being built thatare capable of processing the signals from the about 100
GNSS transmitters that will likely be in orbit soon.
• Novel applications of GNSS reflectometry are being
attempted, such as soil moisture monitoring, vegetation
height retrieval, surface’s topography, ice sounding, andship detection, or the deconvolution of the DelayDoppler Map (DDM) so as to dramatically improve thespatial resolution of these techniques.
On Thursday evening, all participants were invited to enjoy the evening while having dinner in a typical restaurant at
the famous Las Ramblas of Barcelona.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

N. RODRÍGUEZ]

Figure 2. Dr. Zavorotny presenting the new results from his
experiments.

Figure 3. Hardware and software exhibit during the poster session.

Workshop Conclusions
A conclusions session panel was chaired on Friday afternoon
by Manuel Martín-Neira (ESA), Valery Zavorotny (NOAA),
and Stephen Lowe (JPL) to summarize the main findings of
the workshop, and the road map for the coming years.
The main conclusions of the two-day workshop, asreported by the session chairs, are summarized below:

This technique was put forward by ESA in 1993, but only
recently demonstrated in the laboratory and in an experimentfrom a bridge. In general, attendees backed the potential ofthis concept and recognized the results of its experimental
demonstration. The advantage of the technique in terms of its
superior altimetry accuracy over the use of clean replicas ofopen access codes is now well established. The advantage ofenabling the use of restricted access signals was also acknowledged. The inter-satellite cross-talk, only studied at a preliminary level, was a subject identified for further analysis.
It was also noted that the price to pay for this technique
is a bigger antenna and an associated higher instrument cost.
This instrument will not be inexpensive, but it offers altimetry, potentially down to the 5-cm accuracy scientists request
over a wide field of view, scatterometry, and other retrievals,
a fact that should be considered in deciding on ESA’s In-Orbit
Demonstration mission. Moreover the cost of the instrument
on a space mission is not especially critical. The fact thatsome applications, such as Tsunami warning and hurricane
search, cannot be done with other concepts should also be
considered.
An interesting proposal of applying this technique not only
for reflectometry, but also for radio-occultation measurements
was also suggested at the workshop.

A. CAMPS

The interferometric processing technique and its
advantages for altimetry applications:Figure 4. From left to right Dr. Valery Zavorotny (NOAA), Dr. ManuelMartín-Neira (ESA), and Dr. Stephen Lowe (JPL) chairing the conclusions
panel on Friday afternoon.

White paper on GNSS reflectometry:

Back in April 2006 a draft of a White Paper on GNSS Bistatic
Ocean Altimetry was being prepared by some members of
the GNSS-R community, but it was never finished. During
this GNSS-R10 workshop it was thought that this was a goodtime to continue and to publish it. Steve Lowe (JPL) will takethe initiative to send the draft to volunteers who want to add
something. Timeline: by IGARSS 2011 in Sendai where there
will be a session on GNSS-R.
Why is the GNSS-R community not
involved in the ocean altimetry group?

At the same time of the GNSS-R10 workshop, a meeting of
the ocean altimetry community was taking place in Lisbon,
and so, the question above was posed. The meeting in Lisbon
focused on the need for long-term stability of satellite tracks.
There was a general consensus that the ocean altimetry community might be very interested in some realistic simulation

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201035

E. CARDELLACH

Figure 5. Group picture of the GNSS-R ’10 attendees at UPC Campus Nord, with Salvà i Campillo sculpture in the back.

results of GNSS-R altimetry that could be then presented atthat community in their meeting of next year, for example.
The use of continuously-operating GPS
networks to retrieve soil moisture,snow depth, and vegetation:

Geodesists, geophysicists, and surveyors have installed over
10,000 high-quality (dual-frequency, carrier phase) GPS
receivers around the world. The number of sites will inevitably grow. The operation and maintenance of these sites is
supported by state and federal agencies, and the data arefreely available on the Internet. Although geodetic receivers/
antennas were designed to suppress reflected signals, it has
been demonstrated that the signal-to-noise ratio data recordedby these receivers are sensitive to soil moisture, snow depth,
and vegetation changes. These ground-based reflection data
have a spatial footprint that is intermediate to satellites and insitu sensors. The GNSS-R community has an opportunity totake a leadership role in evaluating these geodetic GPS data
for environmental sensing. The soil moisture data, in particular, are valuable for validation of SMOS and SMAP. The
snow data are essential for management of water supply andflood control systems. Estimates of vegetation state are36

required for climate modeling and validation of satellite estimates of land surface conditions. We should talk to geodesists, who have the networks of sensors, and the hydrologists,
who have the requirements.
Measurements with radiometers
and GNSS-R on sea-surface roughness:

Several presentations and posters of the workshop weredevoted to measurement of sea surface roughness with
GNSS-R to be used for correcting the brightness temperature observed by L-band radiometers such as SMOS,
Aquarius, or SMAP. This area was identified as of special
scientific interest.
Following these discussions it was mentioned that Chris
Buck (ESA) is trying to organize a session on GNSS-R during
IGARSS-2011, Sendai (Japan), August 1st–5th, 2011.
Jim Garrison, from Purdue University, US proposed to use
the Microrad approach for the following GNSS-R workshops,
that is, to have dedicated workshops every 2 years alternating
the venue between US and Europe, and he offered his University as venue for GNSS-R ‘12 workshop, and to include othersignals of opportunity as well.
See you in Purdue in 2012!

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

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IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

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Figure 7. NPOESS Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) design andbuilt by ITT that provides detailed atmospheric temperature andmoisture observations for weather and climate applications.

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ITT serves commercial and government customers, domestically and internationally, in earth and space science, Departmentof Defense, intelligence, and commercial aerospace, with oneof the widest ranges of capabilities in the remote sensing andnavigation industry. A legacy of expertise and imagery leadership allows ITT to deliver against specific needs.
ITT is committed to the design, manufacture and deliveryof premier quality products via a workforce dedicated to environment, safety and health excellence.
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1500 New Horizons Blvd.
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Sue Wirth

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Figure 9. ITT designed and built the imaging payload for thecommercial space imagery satellite – Worldview-2.

For Remote Sensing and GPS Payloads
1919 W Cook Rd
Fort Wayne, Indiana 46818
Phone: 260 451 6258
About ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation is a high-technology engineering and manufacturing company operating on all seven continents in threevital markets: water and fluids management, global defense
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Headquartered in White Plains, N.Y., the company reported
2009 revenue of $10.9 billion. www.itt.com

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201039

(President’s Message continued from page 3)
At the end of this year I will be finishing my term as President of GRSS. In the following I would like to recapitulate
some of the highlights of this year.
1) We started 2010 with a number of important tasks for ourSociety, including the final preparations for IGARSS in
Honolulu. IGARSS this year was a fantastic success anda most special event for our society: We commemorated
the 30th anniversary of IGARSS. We had about 2000
participants, many young people, a great deal of networking among the participants, excellent plenary andtechnical oral sessions, very dynamic interactive poster
sessions, several highlights like the Technical Committees
and Chapters Luncheon, Young Professionals’ Luncheon,Awards Banquet, and a most pleasant social program ina unique venue. This IGARSS has set a very high standard for future IGARSS conferences. With our membership promotion at the GRSS booth we awarded 123 free
one-year GRSS memberships to conference participants.
We received over 600 responses to a web-based surveythat was sent to all IGARSS participants as well as to
GRSS members. From this feedback we have prioritized
a number of items to be implemented at future conferences. Thanks to all the participants of this survey that
helped us with their inputs and suggestions to continuously improve future IGARSS conferences.
2) In the beginning of the year we implemented a new website (www.grss-ieee.org) in order to provide more information and to continue improving services to our members and to the international remote sensing community. With this new web site we are achieving a muchhigher hit rate. A number of new features have been
implemented on our web site, including a version formobile phones, new features for educational services,
live broadcast of selected oral presentations during conferences, Facebook and LinkedIn groups, a new distinguished speakers program and a calendar of events.
3) We had a successful review of our youngest journal,
J-STARS (Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth
Observations and Remote Sensing), that started at the
beginning of 2007. (All IEEE journals are reviewed every
5 years.) J-STARS now exceeds the nominal page count of
400 per year and has became a well-established journal in
the publication portfolio of GRSS, together with TGRS
and GRSL. Prof. Ellsworth LeDrew, the founding editor of
J-STARS, will be finishing his term at the end of 2010 anda new Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Jocelyn Chanussot, has been
appointed for a 3-year term, 2011–2013. Ellsworth willfurther serve J-STARS for the next 3 years in the positionof Deputy Editor-in-Chief. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate both colleagues for their appointments and to wish them great success in the next 3 years.
404) During 2010 we had six new GRSS Chapters approvedin the following locations: Brazil (Student Branch
Chapter), South Africa (Joint Chapter), China (Nanjing
Section), Australia (Joint Sections Chapter), Gambia,
and Canada (Joint chapter reorganized with GRSS and
OES). Other chapter initiatives are being undertaken in
India, Alaska, Croatia, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey andBrazil. The chapters provide an excellent opportunity to
network with colleagues and experts in a local member
community. If you are not yet involved in chapter
activities, please check our web site for the GRSS
Chapter point of contact nearest to your home city.
5) This year a new AdCom structure has been implemented, and the necessary changes have been made in theConstitution and Bylaws of GRSS. This was an important step for our Society in order to have our internal
operations better reflect the focus of our activities. We
have implemented a new portfolio with a Vice-Presidentof Publications. Activities under this portfolio include
the governance of our journals (TGRS, GRSL and
J-STARS) and symposia publications, as well as of
future publications. Prof. Wooil Moon has been appointed
as Vice-President of Publications for 2010. In the same
meeting we approved the increase in the number ofissues per year for our Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Letters (GRSL) journal from 4 to 6, starting in 2011.
6) In April we appointed a new editor for our Newsletter,
Prof. Lorenzo Bruzzone. Lorenzo started very quickly
in his new position and took the full responsibility for
the June issue of the Newsletter. Already with his second issue, the September issue of the Newsletter
achieved a record number of pages. A concept for transition into a magazine was presented by Lorenzo to the
GRSS AdCom during its November meeting. The
AdCom endorsed his concept, which foresees a transition into a magazine in the next 2–3 years.
7) In June we received final approval from the Technical
Activities Board (TAB) of IEEE for our two newawards: GRSS GOLD Early Career Award and J-STARS
Prize Paper Award. The first awards will be presented in
2011. GRSS has a total of 12 awards to recognize theoutstanding achievements and volunteer service of oursociety members. For more information please refer tothe web link http://www.grss-ieee.org/about/awards/.
8) During 2010 we have supported 10 conferences with technical co-sponsorship: International Conference on
Geoinformatics, ASARS – Art, Science and Applications ofReflectance Spectroscopy Symposium, IPIN – International
Conference on Indoor Position and Indoor Navigation,
Whispers – Workshop on Hyperspectral Image andSignal Processing, SpaceWire conference, AtmosphericIEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

Figure 1. Administrative Committee of the GRS Society during the July AdCom meeting. All volunteers!

Transmission Models Conference, PRRS – Pattern
Recognition in Remote Sensing Workshop, Workshop on
GNSS Reflectometry, URSI Commission F Microwave
Signatures and ICMARS – International Conference on
Microwaves, Antenna, Propagation & Remote Sensing.
GRSS also provided technical co-sponsorship and support
to the very successful IEEE GRSS GOLD (Graduate of theLast Decade) Conference held in Livorno, Italy during
April 2010. In July during our AdCom meeting, Quebec
City, Canada, was selected to host IGARSS 2014. The next
three IGARSS conferences will be held in Sendai, Japan(August 1–5, 2011), Munich, Germany (July 22–27, 2012)
and Melbourne, Australia (July 21–26, 2013).
9) This year GRSS has established a task force to enhance
our globalization initiatives and to better prioritize thefocus of our membership activities. Remote sensing isan emerging technology that is not yet well represented
by the GRSS membership in several countries. We haveseveral initiatives (workshops, chapters, tutorials, technical co-sponsorship for Specialty Symposia, travel
fund support, etc.) to increase our activities and representation in Latin America, Africa and the Asia-Pacificregion. Prof. Tony Milne is leading this task force andis the point of contact for Society members who would
like to seek support for new activities in these regions.
10) GRSS has developed and promoted Community Remote
Sensing over the last year to illustrate how the Internet,
social networks, and other technologies will change thefield of remote sensing by augmenting our traditional centralized satellite and aircraft data sources with citizensupplied information and analysis. GRSS has promoted
this new field by identifying and spotlighting projects fromaround the world that are contributing to the advancementof Community Remote Sensing. Dr. Bill Gail, Director of
Corporate Relations for GRSS and member of the IGARSS2010 core team, has initiated this idea and developed the
IGARSS Community Remote Sensing Project, the socalled Geo-Wiki project, which is a global network ofvolunteers that would like to help improving the quality ofland cover maps. More details and the results of this interesting project can be seen at http://igarss.geo-wiki.org/.

Our Society is performing very well and is considered as
the premier society in remote sensing. I would like to recognize the outstanding work of innumerable volunteers thatare contributing to GRSS. Our society operations are led bya team of 18 elected members with voting rights (AdCom)and is operated with the support and full engagement ofmany other members: ex-officio members (e.g. the Editorsin-Chief of our journals), committee chairs (e.g. technicalcommittees), i.e. in total some 50 GRSS members. All arevolunteers! You can see many of them in the picture abovethat was taken during our July AdCom meeting. Of course,
we have many more volunteers in our society: We have over1000 reviewers supporting the paper selection process of
IGARSS, we have more than 50 scientists and engineers who
participate in the IGARSS Technical Program Committee
meeting every year, we have more than 400 members that
support the review process of our journals, we have some 50
Associate Editors that are engaged in our journals and muchmore. The success of the activities of GRSS is the result of
the hard work of its members and many other contributors
in the international remote sensing community. One of themost important aspects of remote sensing is the nature of ourwork; we are performing research on issues related to environmental monitoring, sustainable development, climatechange, understanding Earth’s dynamic processes, etc. Considering this unique nature of our research field, the key roleof our remote sensing community for its development, andthe golden age that we have entered, Earth remote sensing isundoubtedly one of the most fascinating and most importantresearch fields of all disciplines.
It has been a sincere pleasure and honor for me to serve theGeoscience and Remote Sensing Society during this year. I
look forward to further supporting our unique community inthe years to come. Finally, I would like to warmly commend
to you our new President, Prof. Jon Benediktsson, who willtake over duties on January 1, 2011.
Sincerely,
Alberto Moreira
President 2010
IEEE GRSS
alberto.moreira@dlr.deIEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201041

CALL FOR PAPERS
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing Special Issue on ESA’s Soil
Moisture and Ocean Salinity Mission — Instrument Performance and First Results
Focus
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Mission was launched in November 2009 andhas since provided soil moisture and ocean salinity data on a global scale. Soil moisture observations will further our knowledge
about processes in the water and energy fluxes at the land surface whereas ocean salinity measurements will aid the characterisation of global ocean circulation and its seasonal and inter-annual variability. SMOS observations will also provide informationon the characterisation of ice and snow covered surfaces and the sea ice effect on ocean-atmosphere heat fluxes and dynamics.
In support of the scientific requirements a novel technology was implemented: The payload of SMOS consists of theMicrowave Imaging Radiometer using Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) instrument, a 2-D interferometric radiometer operating at L-Band (1.4 GHz, 21 cm), measuring the brightness temperature emitted from the Earth at L-band over a range ofincidence angles (0 to 55º) across a swath of approximately 1000 km. The main challenge for MIRAS has been to achieve
the finest spatial resolution ever with a space-borne L-band radiometer over a wide swath. MIRAS is a truly novel instrument which synthesises a large aperture from a two-dimensional array of small passive microwave radiometers.
During the first year in orbit the focus has been on the calibration of the MIRAS instrument and the validation of the data,
which will be the focus of this special issue. Hence we would like to invite contributions covering the following topics:• Calibration and performance of the MIRAS instrument• First results of calibration and validation and scientific studies using SMOS data, including results from in-situ andairborne campaigns, retrieval algorithm development and activities under ESA’s Announcements of Opportunity fori) SMOS calibration and validation, and ii) scientific studies• Contributions focussing on assimilating SMOS data into predictive models and developing new products based on
SMOS data.
Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors should follow the regular guidelines of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing(TGRS), as listed in the back cover of the Transactions. Authors should submit their manuscripts electronically to http://
mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tgrs. Instructions for creating new accounts, if necessary, are available on the login screen.
Please indicate in your submission that the paper is intended for the Special Issue by selecting “ESA’s SMOS Mission” fromthe pull-down menu for manuscript type. Questions concerning the submission process should be addressed to tgrs-editor@
ieee.org. For this Special Issue, authors are encouraged to contribute to the voluntary page charges.
Guest Editors of the SMOS Special Issue are

Susanne Mecklenburg
European Space Agency

Yann Kerr
Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la BIOsphère(CESBIO), FRANCE

Jordi Font
Institut de Ciences del Mar (ICM), CSIC, SPAIN

Manuel Martín-Neira
European Space Agency, ESA-ESTEC

Inquires concerning the Special Issue should be directed to:
Susanne Mecklenburg
SMOS Mission Manager
European Space Agency
Tel: ++39 06 94180 695
susanne.mecklenburg@esa.int
Submission Deadline: March 31, 2011, with final publication in the May 2012 issue.
42

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

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IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Society Newsletter • December 2010

2nd International Conference onSpace Technology
September 15-17, 2011
Royal Olympic Hotel, Athens, Greece
Greek Space Agency (GSA)

ESA-EUSC-JRC 2011
Image Information Mining:
Geospatial Intelligence from Earth Observation
March 30 - April 1, 2011
JRC - Institute for the Protection and Security of
the Citizen, Ispra - Varese (Italy)
European Space Agency
European Union Satellite Centre
European Union Joint Research Centre

General Chair: Prof H Suess, DLR, Germany
Program Chair: Prof N Uzunoglu, MFOL,Greece
North America Liaison Chair:Prof. Roger King, USA
Abstract submission (2 page) and industrial
demos/exhibitions:
30 January 2011
Notification of acceptance:15 March 2011
Full paper deadline: 5 June 2011
The proceedings will be listed to IEEE Xplorer
Web address:
http://www.icspacetechnology.com/
More Information:Maria Petrou, petrou@iti.gr

ISIDF2011:
The 2011 International Symposium on
Image and Data Fusion

ESA-EUSC-JRC 2011Chair:
M. Datcu, DLR -German Aerospace Center
Short paper (4 pages, IGARSS format) submission:
Follow instructions on
http://earth.eo.esa.int/rtd/Events/2011_ESA-EUSC-JRC/index.html
https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=esaeuscjrc2011

Register:
Within February 16, 2011
(online registration will be activated in early January 2011)
Registration fees:
Free of charge (up to available seats)
Web Address:

http://earth.eo.esa.int/rtd/Events/2011_ESA-EUSC-JRC/index.html

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August 9-11, 2011
Tengchong, Yunnan Province, China$XJXVW
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3URI)HOL[<DQRYVN\,((()HOORZ&RQWULEXWLRQ6XEPLVVLRQISIDF2011 Chair:Prof. Jixian Zhang (President of Chinese Academy ofSurveying and Mapping; Chair of ISPRS WG VII/6)&DPHUDUHDG\SDJHSDSHUVE\$SULO
HPDLOWR\XOL\DDQV#\DQGH[UX\DQRYVN\#LFRPXD

Abstract submission:
Before February 28, 2011
Full paper submission:
Before June 30, 2011
Email: isidf2011@casm.ac.cn
Web Address:
http://isidf2011.casm.ac.cn

3XEOLFDWLRQV&RQIHUHQFH3URFHHGLQJVERRN&',(((;SORUHDQGH[WHQGHGYHUVLRQVRIWKHVHOHFWHGSDSHUVLQWKH,QWHUQDWLRQDO-RXUQDORI0LFURZDYHVDQG:LUHOHVV7HFKQRORJLHV KWWSMRXUQDOVFDPEULGJHRUJPUI IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

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45

UPCOMING CONFERENCES
6HHDOVRKWWSZZZWHFKH[SRFRPHYHQWVRUKWWSZZZSDSHUVLQYLWHGFRP
Name:
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E-mail:URL:
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Name:
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International workshop on Multi-Platform/MultiSensor Remote Sensing and Mapping (IWMRSM)
January 10–12, 2011
Xiamen, China
Prof. Ayman F. Habib
habib@geomatics.ucalgary.ca
http://www.mpmsrsm2011.org/
Seventh conference on Image Information Mining
March 3–April 1, 2011
Ispra, Italy
Dr. Roger Kingrking@cavs.msstate.edu
http://earth.eo.esa.int/rtd/Events/2011_ESA-EUSCJRC/index.html
Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event
April 11–13, 2011
Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM),
Muenchen, Germany
http://www.pf.bv.tum.de/jurse2011/

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Geoinformatics 2011
June 16–18, 2011
Shanghai, China
Dr. Xinyue Ye
xye@bgsu.edu
www.geoinformatics2011.org

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25th International Cartographic Conference
July 3–8, 2011
Paris, France
http://www.icc2011.fr/

Name:

6th International Workshop on the Analysis of MultiTemporal Remote Sensing Images (Multitemp2011)
July 12–14, 2011
Trento, Italy
Prof. Lorenzo Bruzzone
multitemp2011@disi.unitn.it
http://multitemp2011.org/

Dates:
Location:Contact:
E-mail:URL:
Name:

2011 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS2011)
August 1–6, 2011
Sendai, China
http://igarss11.org/

Dates:
Location:
URL:

URL:

Earth Observation for Global Changes (EOGC 2011)
April 13–15, 2011
Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM),
Muenchen, Germany
http://www.eogc2011.tum.deName:Dates:
Location:Contact:
E-mail:URL:

2011 IEEE Radar Conference (RadarCon ‘11)
May 23–27, 2011
Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Dr. James Stiles
jstiles@ittc.ku.edu
http://www.ieeeradarcon11.org/

Dates:
Location:Contact:
E-mail:URL:

The 2011 International Symposium on Image andData Fusion (ISIDF2011)
August 9–11, 2011
Tengchong, Yunnan Province, China
Dr. Yu Zengzengyu@casm.ac.cn
www.isidf2011.casm.ac.cn

Name:
Dates:
Location:
E-mail:URL:

3rd Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal
Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing
June 8–10, 2011
Lisbon, Portugal
info@ieee-whispers.com
http://ieee-whispers.com/

Name:
Dates:
Contact:
E-mail:URL:

Pattern Recognition in Remote Sensing Workshop
August 10, 2011
Dr. Nicolas H. Younan
younan@ece.msstate.edu
http://www.iapr-tc7.org/prrs10

Name:

Name:
Dates:
Location:Contact:
E-mail:URL:

5th Recent Advances in Space Technologies (RAST2011)
June 9–11, 2011
Istanbul, Turkey
Dr. Okyay Kaynak
okyay.kaynak@boun.edu.tr
http://www.rast.org.tr/

XXX URSI General Assembly and ScientificSymposium of International Union of Radio Science(URSI GASS 2011)
August 13–20, 2011
Istanbul, Turkey
ursigass2011@ursigass2011.org
http://www.ursigass2011.org/

Name:
Dates:
Location:

46

Name:

Dates:
Location:
E-mail:URL:(continued on page 48)

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010

Now...

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IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 201047

7KH,QVWLWXWHRI(OHFWULFDODQG(OHFWURQLF(QJLQHHUV,QF
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(UPCOMING CONFERENCES continued from page 46)
Name:Dates:
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48

The 3rd International Microwaves, Radar andRemote Sensing Symposium (MRRS-2011)
August 25–27, 2011
Kiev, Ukraine
Dr. Yuliya Averyanova
yuliya-ans@yandex.ru
http://ieee.nau.edu.ua/index-22.html

Name:

Advanced RF Sensors and Remote Sensing
Instruments Workshop
September 13–15, 2011
Noordwijk, The Netherlands
Dr. Martin Suess
Martin.Suess@esa.int
http://conferences.esa.int/

Name:

International Conference on Space Technology(ICST 2011)
September 15–17, 2011
Athens, Greece
Dr. Maria Petrou
Maria.petrou@imperial.ac.uk
http://www.icspacetechnology.com/

Name:

Dates:
Location:Contact:
E-mail:URL:

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Dates:
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E-mail:URL:

Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR2011)
September 26–27, 2011
Seoul, Korea
Prof. Youngkil Kwag
ykwag@kau.ac.kr
http://www.kiees.or.kr/
14th International Conference On Ground Penetrating
Radar (GPR2012)
June 7–9, 2012
Shanghai, China
Dr. Xiongyao Xie
xiexiongyao@tongji.edu.cn
www.gpr2012.org
39th Scientific Assembly of the Committee on
Space Research (COSPAR) and Associated Events(COSPAR 2012)
July 14–22, 2012
Mysore, India
cospar@cosparhq.cnes.fr
http://www.cospar-assembly.org

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Newsletter • December 2010