Students Encouraged to Attend ISPRS Prague Congress

Just like the Olympics, ISPRS Congresses are held only once every four years and they visit a different part of the world each time. Previous locations have included Vienna, The Hague, Ottawa, Istanbul, Beijing and Melbourne, to name but a few. The XXIII Congress will be held from 12-19 July 2016 in Prague, Czech Republic. Especially students and young professionals in photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information systems are encouraged to seize this opportunity to make new friends, form life-long connections and create memories of their first ISPRS Congress.

The next time you meet someone involved in the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), ask them, “What was the first ISPRS Congress that you attended?”. You are guaranteed to see their eyes light up and a smile cross their face, but be prepared to sit back and listen as stories unfold about an event that brings together geospatial experts from all eight ISPRS Technical Commissions. Just like the Olympics, ISPRS Congresses are held only once every four years in different parts of the world, including Vienna (1913), The Hague (1948), Washington, D.C. (1952), Lisbon (1964), Ottawa (1972), Rio de Janeiro (1984), Istanbul (2004), Beijing (2008) and Melbourne (2012), to name but a few. The XXIII Congress will be held from 12-19 July 2016 in Prague, Czech Republic. Students and young professionals of photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information systems should, as the expression goes, move heaven and earth to be there.

The ISPRS Student Consortium, established at the 2004 Istanbul Congress and representing more than 500 members from over 75 countries, has assisted Congress Director Professor Lena Halounova and her team in organising several youth activities. A Pre-Congress Summer School entitled ‘Natural Resource Management: from Data Processing to Web Publishing’ will be held from 5-10 July in Telc, a town in southern Moravia founded in the 13^th century at the crossroads of merchant routes. There, young scientists will join international experts in GIS and Lidar for lectures and hands-on exercises using popular software such as LAStools, FreeGIS and ArcGIS for geospatial data processing, analysis and open-source publication.

Congress activities will follow in Prague, from inspirational plenaries and informative technical sessions to exhibits of state-of-the-art geospatial technologies. A special Youth Forum will be held on 17 July featuring oral and interactive sessions organised by the Student Consortium, with awards for the best Youth Forum posters and papers. Sampling world-renowned Czech beer at the Young Scientists Ice-Breaker Party on 15 July and joining in with the outdoor soccer matches on 16 July will provide excellent opportunities for students and young scientists to make new friends, form life-long connections and create memories of their first ISPRS Congress.