Geoscience Gurus Gather at Pasadena Convention Center

As the flagship conference of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, IGARSS is a pivotal gathering for experts interested in disaster prevention, monitoring, and other Earth observation topics.

By Leslie Moreno

The International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) opened at the Pasadena Convention Center with a warm start, offering many tutorial sessions throughout the day. Researchers from around the globe flocked to the event’s pre-symposium tutorial lineup. 

One of Sunday’s noteworthy tutorials was “Deep Learning for Monitoring and Forecasting Natural Hazards with Earth Observation Data” presented by Nikolaos-Ioannis Bountos, Ioannis Prapas, Spyros Kondylatos, Maria Sdraka, and Ioannis Papoutsis from the Orion Lab at the National Observatory of Athens. This session provided valuable insights into utilizing deep learning methods for addressing natural disaster prevention.

Participants were introduced to data handling and state-of-the-art AI methodologies, tailored to tackle diverse natural hazards such as wildfires and earthquakes. The tutorial shed light on overcoming challenges such as data scarcity, label scarcity, and noisy labels through transfer learning, self-supervised learning, and domain adaptation approaches.  The tutorial session concluded by offering a glimpse into the field’s future, highlighting the impending challenges and potential avenues for further research. Participants departed the workshop armed with new tools, knowledge, and an enhanced understanding of the critical role.

AI and DL play a role in managing natural hazards

Given the rapid advances in DL and the abundance of freely available Earth observation data, this tutorial gave attendees the necessary skills to leverage these technologies effectively. As we confront increasingly frequent and severe natural hazards, the insights gained from this workshop will undoubtedly contribute to more effective monitoring, forecasting, and response strategies.

The Geoscience and Remote Sensing Seminar will continue at the Pasadena Convention Center from July 16th to July 21st, featuring several more workshops, speakers, and a collection of posters from researchers around the world.

Leslie Moreno is a B.S. Computer Science candidate with a Minor in Mathematics at University of Southern California.