PREFACE: TECHNICAL COMMISSION V – YOUTH FORUM

Abstract. Capacity Building in promoting geospatial technologies and their applications has its significance in ensuring good governance and resources management at local, regional and global scales. To emphasize this strongly in young generation, the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) has been engaged for more than 16 years by having an exclusive Technical Commission on Education and Outreach elements. Every 4 years, this Commission has been addressing different aspects of geospatial technologies by setting up theme specific Working Groups (WGs). ISPRS Student Consortium (SC) is part of the Commission and promotes the profession to the youth. The Consortium serves as a platform of communication and information exchange among members, enabling professional networking and fostering collaborations.

The Technical Commission V (TC-V) on Education and Outreach (2016–2021) has constituted eight theme WGs with different roles and activities to work upon following areas (i) multi-tier training for all levels (ii) collaborative effort at national, regional and international level (iii) dissemination through distance learning mode and web-based resource sharing & (iv) use of best practices to implement through citizen science approach, open source tools & geo web services. These WGs have made significant contributions by engaging actively workshops and new scientific initiatives in past four years. TC-V with support of International Policy Advisory Committee conducted a full-day program on International Cooperation on Earth Observation.

I am happy to note that for XXIV Congress 2020, there were 33 submissions of research papers on Education and Outreach. Of these, 21 were submitted for Archives and 13 for Annals. These papers include several disciplines covering surveying, new methodologies in geoinformatics, robotic vision, citizen science in disasters bringing education to the capacity development in different disciplines. Besides these, a total of 13 papers were accepted from an initial total of 29 submissions under the Youth Forum track. All these papers were reviewed by selected experts. These papers include several disciplines covering surveying, new methodologies in geoinformatics mapping of urban landscapes, burnt area detection, morphological analysis of landslides, 3D reconstruction of buildings, classification and analysis of point clouds, applications of UAVs for aquatic vegetation and evaluation of existing image processing and interpretation techniques. The current research from the youth also demonstrate the increased use of multi-source imagery, mapping different landscapes using UAVs and the potential of 3D models.

We sincerely thank all the reviewers and acknowledge strong efforts made by Area Chairs to ensure quality of all accepted papers. We greatly appreciate the perseverance and dedication of the Scientific and Organizing Committee. We are confident that the present 2020 edition of ISPRS Congress Proceedings will serve as platform for discussion on the current research efforts on the Education and Outreach themes cutting across different disciplines.