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Modelling & Advanced Techniques
MAT SIG Annual Report 1997-1998
The emphasis of research and teaching in remote sensing has tended to be application specific (for example, remote sensing applied in geology, oceanography, archaeology, soil survey, biogeography, and so on). Many of the advances currently being made in remote sensing are, however, in modelling (which advances our understanding of spatial forms and spatia-temporal processes) and in the development and implementation of new techniques (which advance our ability to use our understanding to achieve some specific objective). The RSS MAT SIG was formed out of a perceived need to parallel the emphasis on application specific research with a second emphasis on cross-disciplinary research directed specifically at developing and disseminating new models and techniques.
The world wide web RSS MAT SIG home page is available at http://www.soton.ac.uk/-pma/rssmatsig.html. The MAT SIG home page includes:
- An introduction
- Aims and objectives
- MAT SIG committee
- How to join RSS MAT SIG
- News
- Hot links (to other WWW sites).
This page serves two purposes primarily to introduce the MAT SIG and to disseminate information on coming events. It is intended to add a third utility: a page of members, their interests and their email addresses to facilitate contact and interaction.
Last year the MAT SIG ran two successful sessions. First the MAT SIG ran a special session of RSS97 at Reading on fuzzy classification in remote sensing, chaired by Dr. Nick Drake of Kings College London. See pages 393-459 of the RSS97 proceedings for papers resulting from the meeting. 111e meeting was a big success, with much interest from delegates and Nick directing affairs in an informal, but informative way.
Second, the MAT SIG ran a session at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) annual conference this year hosted by Kingston University at the University of Surrey. The session was chaired by Nick Tate and myself and included papers on a variety of topics related to Geostatistical and Geospatial Techniques for Remote Sensing of Land Surface Processes. It was good to see remote sensing at the RGS-IBG again. Selected papers from the session will be published as a special issue of Computers and Geosciences.
Following the RSS96 and RSS97 MAT SIG special sessions there will be a third special session this year at the University of Greenwich. It promises to be a thriving session with twenty papers (oral and poster) in total chaired by Phillip Lewis of UCL. The focus of the session will be a split between fuzzy approaches on the one hand and BRDF related research on the other. The session is scheduled for Friday 11th September, so make sure you are around to take part!
The committee will meet at this year’s RSS98 conference. If you would like to join the committee then please contact Peter Atkinson before then by email on
Several activities (including the session at RSS98) are planned for the coming year, but what the SIG actually does depends on what you want. So if you would like to see a particular event happen please contact Peter Atkinson.
Peter Atkinson
