Welcome

Welcome

Welcome to the ISRS 2026Matsunaga_photo

Greetings to Remote Sensing scientists, data users, and service providers in Asia and all over the world.

As the General Co-Chair of the International Symposium on Remote Sensing (ISRS) 2026 and the chair of the Local Organizing Committee of ISRS 2026, I would like to welcome all of you to ISRS 2026 to be held in Matsue, Japan, in May 2026. This will be the third in-person ISRS in Japan, after Narashino (2013) and Nagoya (2017).

The first ISRS was held in 2012 by the Korean Society of Remote Sensing (KSRS). And it began to be held in rotation among Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, based on an agreement in 2012 with KSRS, the Chinese Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (CSPRS) and the Remote Sensing Society of Japan (RSSJ). Although we had difficult times due to COVID-19 pandemic, ISRS has grown to gather more than three hundred in-person participants and become a very important platform to foster communications among Asian remote sensing friends especially in younger generations.

Nowadays, Remote Sensing is considered as the extremely important technology for both human and nature. We need this technology to assess the impact that natural disasters have had on human society, to assess the impact that human activities have had on the nature, and to develop and improve countermeasures against them.

Remote Sensing has also represented a new “blue ocean” of business opportunities, driven in part by the rise of the small satellite constellations and artificial intelligence to extract information and knowledge from the data. We are all aware that every year, numerous new services utilizing remote sensing data are announced. You will witness the latest advancements of such services in Asia at ISRS 2026.

ISRS 2026 will be held in Matsue City, Shimane Prefecture, located in western Japan. Matsue City is renowned for its long history and original culture, and we hope it will provide a valuable opportunity for all ISRS 2026 participants to experience Japanese culture distinct from that of famous Tokyo or Kyoto.

Matsue City is also located between two of Japan’s representative brackish lakes: Lake Shinji and Lake Nakaumi. On a personal note, early in my research career, I conducted satellite and aerial surveys of algae blooms in these lakes many times. I fondly recall the late 1990s, before drones or satellite constellations existed, when my collaborators and I painstakingly conducted water quality surveys scheduled monthly with the overpasses of Landsat and SPOT satellites. I hope all ISRS 2026 participants will also enjoy the beauty of the local nature (and foods ) woven by the rivers, brackish lakes, and sea.

Hope seeing you soon in Matsue.

Tsuneo Matsunaga
General Co-Chair of the ISRS 2026
Chair of the Local Organizing Committee of ISRS 2026
Director, Satellite Observation Center, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan