Fifty years of GIS and Remote Sensing at COGS.

This June 10-13, 2024, Halifax is hosting the 45th Canadian Society for Remote Sensing (CSRS) annual conference. I have been invited to present a keynote talk. Below, I have a call for contributors to my keynote address.

Currently, I am preparing an abstract and undertaking background research.

I have divided the topic into three parts:
a) the history from my perspective;
b) current programs and projects at COGS;
c) speculation on future technology and their application.

I have had the opportunity to discuss history with John Wightman. For the current programs, I am able to meet with faculty responsible for GIS, RS and data analytics. For future directions, I will connect with my network of contacts in the education community, industry and applied research.

Within this context, I consider the conversations by John Wightman with researchers at CCRS, as well as input from Roger Tomlinson and Ray Boyle to have happened between 1974 and1980. In 1980, I moved to Nova Scotia, with Heather and a young family, to teach in the Scientific Computer Programming (SCP) program. My relationship with COGS continued until 2011. There were several breaks, in Indonesia, California, England, Ontario and British Columbia, I retired as Senior Research Scientist at the Applied Geomatics Research Group (AGRG) in Middleton, at the Annapolis Valley campus of the NSCC.

Since my retirement, I have maintained my life-long interests in Geography and Geographic Information Science. This includes a blog, under the title ernestblairexperiment.wordpress.com, with over 550 posts to date.

Over the next few months, I will appreciate any feedback through my blog —
in particular, the trends in teaching and research, both from a Remote Sensing and GIS perspective.

My plan is to provide Amy Mui at CSRS with an abstract, later this month.

Postscript

I should be remiss if I did not mention that my colleague and blog partner, Edward Wedler. He was a Remote Sensing instructor at COGS in the ‘80’s.

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Micro-adventure: West Inglisville

Heather and I snowshoed up through our property to the West Inglisville road on South Mountain. We returned back down to Paradise on Hwy #201 and home. These were excellent conditions for snow-shoeing — fresh snow on a hard crust.