Claire Redmond, Ian Hand and Caroline Kiely recently attended the 8th Irish Earth Observation Symposium which has held in Maynooth University. The aim of the event was to enable colleagues to present their work, to learn about new EO developments and to network and meet new people in the industry. This year’s theme was “New Opportunities in Earth Observation”. Below is an extract of Claire and Caroline’s experiences of the day.
Various industry experts, representatives and scholars spoke about their work and how the emergence of large volumes of EO data and changing EO technologies are changing work practices in the rapidly evolving realm of the digital age.
Keynote speakers focussed on how technology is changing rapidly but what is important is how this technology is being used to organise the large volume of data that exist so that it becomes universally accessible. An interesting note was how local and national problems can now be solved by global resources. The introduction of an increasing amount of lower cost satellites was discussed and how the benefits of this can change the use of EO data from not just mapping but monitoring also. With some satellites orbiting the earth several times a day, there is a constant stream of data being received around the globe with high resolutions of 1 metre. Video capabilities are now being addedd to satellites creating many more applications for all sectors of industry and socitey.
There was also a round table discussion with all the key note speakers and it was interesting to share different viewpoints about the main problems and challenges that are faced within the Earth Observation community, such as creating a data hub in Ireland so that EO data is widely available and easy to access.
Dr. Waldemar Krebs from the Geospatial Division of Trimble Navigation presented an interesting workshop on the use of eCognition for land classification. UAV demonstrations were carried out, showcasing the altitudes and ranges of the various technologies that could also be seen on display at the symposium. A workshop presented by Valdid Vanags was very interesting in demonstrating the use of the Riegl UAV LiDAR Sensor VUX–1 and how the data collected from this sensor can be processed in a GIS. Gary Delvin from the Discovery Programme in Dublin presented the findings of the 3D Icons project ‘Remote Sensing and Ireland’s Iconic Archaeology’ in which Remote Sensing techniques were used to digitally document and create 3D models of Irish archaeological monuments.
Overall, it was an interesting symposium, highlighting the developments in the EO industry in recent years and how Ireland is and should be embracing these changes. It was evident that there is a very large EO community in Ireland that would like to see EO data become more accessible nationwide; it will be interesting to see if EO development in Ireland experiences any great advances in the coming year.
