Dear IAF Community,

The 70th International Astronautical Congress – IAC 2019, to take place from 21 – 25 October in Washington D.C., United States will feature on Thursday 24 October 2019, from 08:30 – 09:30 the 10th edition of the Next Generation Plenary on “Harnessing citizen science for the future of Earth Observation”.

In the field of Earth Observation, citizen science complements and assists with satellite, aerial or ground-based image interpretation and classification; it provides in-situ data for calibration and validation activities; and integration of satellite and citizen observations can fill data gaps. Moreover, science and technology continues to be of great interest to the worldwide public. Citizen science provides a pathway for outreach initiatives and engages the public’s interest and ingenuity. The role of citizen science in Earth Observation has revealed trends in applications, covering a diverse set of fields including weather, climate change, sustainable development, air quality monitoring, vector-borne disease monitoring, food security, flood, drought and natural perils’ monitoring, and land cover and land-use change, among other topics.

In line with the 70th IAC theme, “Space: The Power of the Past, the Promise of the Future”, the Next Generation Plenary panelists will share their ideas and work in innovatively incorporating crowdsourcing and citizen science into traditional workflows for the future of Earth Observation. The panelists will also address how they envision addressing challenges associated with new technology trends, data quality and the formulation of policies that will facilitate their work.

List of speakers:

Ufuoma Ovienmhada
Graduate Student, Space Enabled research group
MIT Media Lab

Sara Herrin
Representative
The GLOBE Program

Avid Roman Gonzalez
Senior Member
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Caroline Juang
Ph.D. Student
Columbia University

Fabiana Milza
COO and Co-Founder
IceKing GmbH

Click here to see the full programme of the #IAC2019.