Compared to mid- and high-latitude areas, the tropical and subtropical region, due to its special climate, presents an all-year-round cloudy and rainy climate feature with a very long rainy season and rich precipitation even in short-term dry season. Besides, natural disasters, such as typhoon, earthquake, tsunami and flood, occur frequently in this region because of its special meteorological environment. Therefore, simple use of optical remote sensing will be greatly limited in tropical and subtropical region. Multi-source remote sensing techniques, e.g. synthetic aperture radar (SAR), with their ability to work in all day and all weather conditions, have distinctive advantages in this region. Unfortunately, most countries located in the tropical and subtropical region are developing countries, who are constrained by limited capability of remote sensing technologies. Therefore, there is an urgent need to establish a comprehensive platform for discussion and promotion of advanced remote sensing applications in this region.

The 2^nd International Conference on Remote Sensing Applications in Tropical and Subtropical Areas was held by Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong from 8-10 December 2015. The main topics of the conference are Urban Environment, Tropical Rainforest, Atmosphere, Land Use/Land Cover Change, Oceanography, Natural Disasters, Clouds Handling, Coastal Environment. FIMO held the Special Vietnam Session in this conference. This session includes the following presentations:

• Field Informatics: Application of ICT to Environment Management and Disaster Mitigation
• Paddy rice extraction by using temporal satellite image and similarity index
• Comparison of several widely-used classifiers for land-cover using Landsat-8 images in Red Delta River: a case study in Tien Hai district, Thai Binh province, Vietnam
• Air pollution mapping from high spatial resolution satellite images: a case study in Hanoi
• Object based image analysis for mapping land-cover in Hue city for World culture heritage conservation

The following pictures are snapshots from the conference.

For futher information, please see at the URL:

 http://www.iseis.cuhk.edu.hk/rsatsa/Introduction.html

Opening Ceremony

Group photo

Kính gửi các thầy cô và các bạn FIMO,

Hôm qua ngày 3/12/2015 là kỷ niệm tròn 2 năm từ ngày thành lập FIMO.

Xin chân thành cảm ơn tất cả các thầy cô và các bạn đã giành thời gian để tham dự buổi tiệc nhỏ và ấm áp nhân dịp FIMO tròn 2 tuổi diễn ra tối qua 3/12/2015.

FIMO đã có những bước tiến trong 2 năm vừa qua nhờ vào sự đóng góp của các thầy cô, các anh chị em trong FIMO, các bạn nghiên cứu sinh, học viên cao học và sinh viên.

Với lịch sử phát triển của một tổ chức thì 2 năm là quá ngắn ngủi. FIMO đang giống như một đứa trẻ lên 2 tuổi, đang trong giai đoạn HỌC ĐI và HỌC NÓI. HỌC ĐI tức là chúng ta đang từng bước khẳng định hướng nghiên cứu phát triển cho đội ngũ FIMO, song song với việc xây dựng các nhóm nghiên cứu như SDI, Air Pollution Monitoring, Landcover/Landuse Change, Rice Monitoring, ProjectKit, Forest Fire Monitoring,…HỌC NÓI tức là việc cố gắng xây dựng thương hiệu FIMO trong lĩnh vực khoa học công nghệ bằng cách cố gắng nghiên cứu phát triển ra những sản phẩm chất lượng tốt, đột phá để có được lòng tin từ cộng đồng nghiên cứu, các đối tác và các nhà quản lý.

2 tuổi mới chỉ là bắt đầu, 5 tuổi mới là đi vững, nói sõi, 10 tuổi mới đọc thông viết thạo, 15 tuổi mới là thuộc làu kinh sử, 20 tuổi mới có chút công danh ở đời.

Xin cảm ơn tất cả mọi người đã đồng hành cùng FIMO.

Trân trọng.

On Thursday, November 30^th, 2015, FIMO had a birthday party to celebrate 2 members who were born in this month. This activity is frequently expressed concern, sharing, encouragement of centers with cultural and spiritual life of the members of the team; while creating opportunities for people to join the exchange, sharing and further tightening of solidarity. It includes:

• Nguyen Quoc Huy.
• Dinh Thi Dieu.

The party was organized in the staff canteen of UET (University of Engineering and Technology). Guests in attendance included Prof. Pham Van Cu, Dr. Bui Quang Hung (Vice Director of FIMO Center), Dr. Nguyen Thi Nhat Thanh (Office Manager of FIMO Center).

This is some pictures from the party:

Prof. Pham Van Cu send FIMO gift to Mr. Nguyen Quoc Huy

Prof. Pham Van Cu send FIMO gift to Mrs. Dinh Thi Dieu

All member of FIMO in the party

All member of FIMO in the party

 Phan Van Trong

From 16-18 November 2015, the 1^st steering committee meeting of the TORUS project was held at the University of Toulouse 2 Jean Jaures, France. FIMO attended the meeting as a one of key members of the project.

Initiated and driven by Dominique Laffly, geographer, university professor and member of GEODE laboratory, TORUS is one of eight French projects selected among the 120 selected for more than 575 candidatures. The project is financed by the European Union in the framework of Erasmus + Capacity Building. This program funds “transnational partnerships between educational institutions and organizations, training and youth programs in order, promoting cooperation and development”. TORUS funded for 3 years, gathered around the University of Toulouse 2 Jean Jaures, the international school of information processing sciences (EISTI, Pau campus), University of Ferrara in Italy, university Brussels Vrije in Belgium, Vietnam national University in Hanoi, the Nong Lam university of Ho Chi Minh and two Thai institutions: Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Pathumthani and Walailak university in Nakhon Si Thammarat.

The ambition of TORUS? Develop research on cloud computing in the environmental sciences and promote its education in the countries of South East Asian partners.

Schematically, cloud computing consists of pooling hardware and software resources via the Internet. It reduces the costs of processing and storage of information in a simplified environment accessible to all. It is also an operational response to the generalized problems of Big Data – also today major issue of Computer Science. This simplification and cost reduction offer methodological possibilities not previously explored (e.g. test many models, including in the area of Big Data for data reduction to compare their relevance). The strategy of the project that aims to organize thematic workshops and practical workshops applied to the environment is a real innovation that responds to demand now clearly identified with our partners. Still little teaching, cloud computing, recent paradigm of computer science, requires a major theoretical investment before being mobilized by the practice on concrete projects. Projects that will have at heart to strengthen the links between education, research and environmental engineering. TORUS is responding to regional priorities set in the framework of ERASMUS + projects. Besides the theoretical and requested practical skills TORUS develop the specifications for future Masters level training with our partners and publish two reference books (education, scientific), and also deliver practical solutions deployed at three basic levels of cloud computing (infrastructure, platform and software) in the partner countries with computer hardware funded by the project.

Beyond the capacity building in the field of research, our project has the merit to positioning our disciplines into a major issue of contemporary science, namely how to be able to respond to this new computing paradigm – yet already older than 15 years – without necessarily being prepared, move from a “traditional computing model-based world to mathematical research to find a pattern in the data” (Wikipedia). We are betting that this is a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary ideally we will succeed. Geography, geosciences and environmental sciences in general can not ignore it. There is urgency in the context of the evolution of computer technology and the ever-increasing volume of data in the context of threats against our climate and sustainable development of the planet, in the context of the need to reduce just as much as bridging the technology gap between north and south, in the context of universal free access to data (open data) – when these are funded by public funds – and free software (open source). At the option of the specializations of teams, TORUS addresses the following environmental themes to develop on cloud computing: erosion, urban air pollution and Southeast Asia atmospheric pollution, melting permafrost that causes the accelerated release of soil organic carbon in the atmosphere, alert systems of environmental hazards such as forest fires, prospective modeling of socio-spatial practices and land use, web fountains as geo-portal of geographical data.

Tomorrow is today already, be prepared for, besides that we should anticipate future IT tools, there is much to bet that these new paradigms will open us many innovative scientific horizons at the heart of our problematics. Let us dare!

The meeting of the TORUS project