Beyond the Frontiers: Expanding our Knowledge of the World

On behalf of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society and the IGARSS 2011 Organizing Committee, we are pleased to invite you to Sendai, Japan for IGARSS 2011. Sendai hosts a famous summer festival “Tanabata”, or “star festival”, every August. Only once a year Vega and Altair can meet in the sky, but only if it is not raining. On the last day of IGARSS2011, a large fireworks festival will take place near the conference venue, which will be the start of Tanabata for 2011. We will celebrate in hopes of a clear sky for Vega and Altair.

To enjoy glittering stars in the sky, we must keep the atmosphere and the earth clean. It is our task to observe the earth’s environment, and it is the work of geoscience and remote sensing technology to aid us in this task. We cannot touch the stars, but we can explore them by remote sensing technology. We are surrounded by many different types of frontiers. Remote sensing is a technology that can expand our knowledge beyond these frontiers. We can observe the earth’s environment on a global scale, beyond that which can be seen through our own eyes. Subsurface sensing that is applied below the surface of the ground and the ocean, and even beneath the surface of man-made construction, provides us with knowledge of the unknown world. Boundaries between countries have no meaning when the earth’s environment is observed by remote sensing technology. In addition to the observation, technologies to store and utilize the information are also quite important for earth’s environment. We hope IGARSS2011 will provide you with the opportunity to think about how we can expand our frontiers. We look forward to seeing you in Sendai in August 2011.

IGARSS2011 General Chair
Motoyuki Sato