A gathering for the Swiss remote sensing community taking place on September 4th-6th 2023, at SQUARE, St.Gallen.

The Swiss Remote Sensing Days (SRSD) is a gathering for the Swiss remote sensing community, initialized by the Swiss Commission on Remote Sensing. It is a platform to allow exchange among young and established researchers, active in the understanding of our environment and society through images acquired by a variety of sensors, from satellites in space all the way to drones and cameras in mobile phones.

During this three day event, young researchers (typically PhD candidates) will interact with senior researchers and present their latest results, as well as participate in community building activities, which will prepare them for active life in the area of remote sensing.

We are excited that the event will start in a few days! This website has been updated with all relevant information. If, however, you still have any questions, please feel free to reach out!

The official program is now available for download here! (You will receive a printed copy at the meeting, so there is no need to print it.)

The SRSD 2023 will be taking place:

• Date: September 4th-6th, 2023
• Location: SQUARE, Guisanstrasse 20, 9010 St. Gallen. SQUARE can be reached by bus or by foot. From the train station, you can take bus line 9 to Uni/Gatterstrasse (leaving on platform I) and then walk for 3 min. Walking from the train station takes approximately 25 min (be aware that there is currently construction going on on Winkelriedstrasse: you can still walk there, but please stay behind the barricades); also, keep in mind that St. Gallen is the city of stairs - there is a ~70m elevation difference between the two locations. A map of all important locations is available here.

• Physics:
• Radiative transfer modelling
• Sensor development:
• Passive systems (multi and hyperspectral cameras, thermal and microwave radiometers), active systems (SAR, LiDAR); drones, airborne sensors, satellite mission development.
• Data processing:
• Image correction (geometric, atmospheric, sensor non-uniformities), photogrammetry, sensor fusion, machine learning and deep learning, physical based information retrieval, hybrid approaches.
• Process modelling:
• Mechanistic modelling and data assimilation for various purposes (e.g. glacier retreat, urban sprawl, land-atmosphere exchange processes, vegetation-climate feedbacks).
• Application development:
• All aspects across Earth spheres, e.g. alpine studies, forestry, climate change, glaciology, urban studies, science-policy interface.

The official program is now available for download here!

In a nutshell, the program looks as follows: We are happy to announce the following keynote speakers for our meeting:

• Monday: Xiaoxiang Zhu, TUM: Data Science in Earth Observation for social good
• Tuesday: Marc Seifert, OroraTech GmbH: Fires, droughts, heatwaves - realtime thermal data for highly dynamic events
• Wednesday: Claudia Röösli, University of Zurich: How can research with satellite and remote sensing data be brought to application?

Research presentations will consist of 5-min lightning-style oral presentations and subsequent poster presentations to enable detailed discussions. Presenters, please bring a printed poster (any format will do, feel free to reuse already available posters) and a few slides for your lightning talk (pdf only, please). Please check the program to see when your presentation is scheduled.

Some logistic details:

• Our welcome dinner will take place on Sunday evening, starting at 18:30 at Brasserie LOK. The location will be within a short walking distance from the main train station. Every participant is invited to join us for some French haute cuisine in the heart of St. Gallen at no additional cost!
• On Monday night, we will have dinner at the foyer of the university library, which is located next to the SQUARE.
• Our social event will consist of a hike to Waldegg, which offers an amazing view of the Alpstein mountains and traditional Appenzell food. We will meet at the monastery in St. Gallen and hike to Waldegg, which takes approximately 2 hours (4 km in total distance one way, 300 m in elevation). Please be prepared for bad weather and and bring proper hiking shoes, raingear and a headlamp as we might be hiking back during dusk. Update: the weather predictions look rather benign, you might want to consider bringing a sunhat and sunscreen, as well. It is possible to shorten the hike with public transportation - options will be presented at the meeting. Please consult this map for more details on the hike.
• We will take lunches at the university mensa. Seating will be reserved for us and each participant will receive a voucher, allowing you to pick from a huge variety of meals.

Lunches and dinners listed above are all included in the participation fee, there will be no additional cost. We will try our best to accommodate all dietary restrictions (vegan/vegetarian, gluten-free options) in the menus served. Please provide your meal preference in the circulated spreadsheet document ahead of the meeting!

SRSD is an event for the Swiss community to share their science and results, but without the extra peer review burden of a traditional conference.

Therefore, we solicit abstract contributions corresponding to papers presented in 2022/23 at major remote sensing conferences or published in top tier remote sensing journals. Examples are IGARSS2022/23, the ISPRS congress, AGU/EGU, Remote Sensing of Environment, IEEE TGRS, etc.

If you are interested in a last-minute abstract submission, please contact the organizers!

The official registration window has closed but you may still register for the meeting for a short time on our registration website: https://srsd2023.wpcomstaging.com/. Please pick your appropriate rate, fill in the requested information and pay for your registration; note that you can only pay with a VISA/Mastercard and that registration fees are non-refundable. You will receive an invoice for your payment, but this may take a bit (we have to trigger this process manually and summer holiday season is coming up quickly). Registration is not limited to those who submitted abstract, so feel free to sign up today!

We recommend the following affordable locations for staying overnight in St. Gallen:

• Touchbed: single to multi-bed rooms, nicely located behind the monastry and next to a waterfall but still close enough to the train station; book here!
• David 22: simple hotel, close to the train station; book here!
• City Lodge: simple hotel, located in old town and close enough to the train station; book here!
• Jugendherberge St. Gallen: youth hostel with private rooms and multi-bed rooms, good public transportation connection to SQUARE (less than 30 min using the Appenzeller Bähnli and/or a variety of different busses); book here!

Also, please feel free to check out various hotel booking websites. If your budget is limited, please consider sharing your accommodation or investigate locations in nearby towns.

• SRSD 2022

In case of questions, please do not hesitate to contact the organizers: Michael Mommert and Damian Borth

We thank our sponsors for making this event possible: