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To meet the Asian new era of Remote Sensing

Chen Shupeng
(Chinese Academy of Sciences)


As a scientist working in the remote sensing field for many years, I feel greatly honoured to welcome all of you, our colleagues in Guangzhou, the beautiful city of south China. "It is the great pleasure to human being forever, whereas the exchange and coorperation in sciences and technology are always the motive force of progress of modern civilization.

I would extend warm congratulations to the 11th Asian Remote Sensing Conference. Since The first Asian Remote Sensing Conference held in Bangkok in 1980, the number of participates and countries has increased greatly. The Asian Remote Sensing Conference is held every year. The entrance to the 11th conference indicates the coming of the Asian Era of remote sensing. In today's Asia, we have been able to and will be able to successfully launch our own meteorological, communicational, oceanographically and resources satellites. More than 15 kinds of remote sensors have been developed, and some new high-technology, for instance, Image-Spectrometer and Image-Radar are being developed. We have built up not only a series of ground observation system based on aviation, balloon and rocket, but also networks of auto-observation station and geographic information system. Some experiment program on remote sensing application have been carried out in many regions supported by national or international argencies, and rich social and economical benefits have been achieved. Publications on remote sensing, such as atlases, journals, and dictionaries are colourful, the development of hardware and software systems on image processing has obtained great progress. A information service system is gradually forming. Now, we may say that we have the ability and possibility to make important contribution both to international cooperation projects on remote sensing for International Space Year, and for the program on Earth Observation System, and information services for developing countries.

We are gratified for the progress of remote sensing in the Asian region, but we must put our attention to the existing differences in development of technology from developed countries. In order to reduce the historical adverse effects of colonial war, we need to establish the regional cooperation system, so as to overcome the unbalance in regional development. For instance, there are over 10 ground receiving stations for Landsat data in Asia, which has resulted in excessive overlapping and duplication. Bilateral or multilateral regional cooperation should be strengthened in regional developments, for instance, the problem of flood control of international river basins such as in the Himalaya Mountain region, exploration of resources around the South China Sea Basin and in the arid region of Inner-Asia. The Asian remote sensing scientists should make more contribution to the world-wide scientific problems such as global change, urbanization, desertification, deforestation, and soil erosion. As a third pole, the Tibet Plateau has important influence on distribution of global climate, soil and vegetation. There are aboundant ancient cultural heritage in Asian, e.g. there are historic records over 5000 years in sunspot, earth quake and natural disasters etc.. The human civilization has created so deep influence on resources utilization and environmental impartment, I believe that based on our modern technology, scientific achievement and superiority in geographical region, we can make distinctive contributions to the world.

All the challenges and the chances are coming. I wish the conference all success.