The one-day Sierra Atlantic Geospatial Conference held at Hyderabad offered the 250 delegates, both individual and organisational users of Sierra Atlantic from across the country, a glimpse of the latest technology and trends in the fields of image processing, remote sensing and photogrammetry.

The conference served as a platform for Sierra Atlantic to showcase its current strengths and present its roadmap on geospatial services. Sierra’s partners in the geospatial arena, ITT, SARSCAPE and INPHO, showcased their skills, capabilities and future plans for the respective product lines.

The conference, the theme of which was ‘Imageries to Information’, started with a welcome note by Yeshwanth Reddy, Executive Director, Sierra Atlantic Software Services Ltd. He presented Sierra Atlantic’s offerings in the entire value chain of geospatial domain. He said Sierra Atlantic provides technologies in the fields of remote sensing, photogrammetry, aerial cameras and technical support and services in software application development, GIS consulting and spatial modelling.

Addressing the inaugural session, chief guest Brig R Siva Kumar, Head, NSDI & NRDMS, emphasised the importance of providing information through imageries. He said it is imperative for data generators/providers to make the image data available and accessible to the user.

Dr Shailesh Nayak, Director, INCOIS, in his keynote address, gave insights into the usage of geospatial technologies in the fields of oceanography and ocean management. He detailed the activities of INCOIS in giving away information about the potential fishing zones (PFZs) to the fishermen community on the Indian coasts. Talking about the tsunami early warning system being set up at INCOIS, he stressed the importance of space technology in the mitigation of natural hazards.

Josef Braun, Director Service and Support, INPHO GmbH, Stuttgart, in his keynote address, traced the history of the development of photogrammetry as a technology and provided insights on the photogrammetric system INPHO and its applications in the fields of 3D city modelling, cartography and digital photogrammetry.

Bernard Lawes, Technical Sales and Support Engineering Manager, ITTVIS, Asia-Pacific, presented the new product offerings in ENVI, particularly the Spatial Feature Extraction for high resolution imageries and the future product road map of IDL.

Dr Francesco Holecz, CEO, SARMAP, Switzerland, esmphasised the importance of SAR applications in Indian perspective for timely, reliable, tailor-made information (not data) at affordable costs and the SARMAP product solutions in this regard. The one-day conference felicitated eminent scientists and decision makers for their outstanding contribution in the field of geospatial applications.

Technical presentations then followed in two parallel sessions for remote sensing, image processing and photogrammetry. These sessions hosted special lectures from industry stalwarts in the fields of photogrammetry and SAR remote sensing applications followed by technical presentation by the users of ENVI, IDL and INPHO.

On the whole, the conference provided a platform to Sierra Atlantic community comprising of geographic information producers, users, academic institutions, service providers, technology developers and policy makers to interact and understand each other’s requirements.