1st workshop on High Resolution Thermal EO in Frascati

It was a blast! The first international workshop on thermal remote sensing since many years was fully booked and received 300+ participants, as well as many people following sessions online! There were many important discussions and subjects popping up.

Here are some highlights

• Four major space agencies (CNES, ESA, ISRO, and NASA) cooperate while designing and building sensors in thermal missions. The approach “user should not need to care from which satellite does the pixel come from” was welcome by the user community. Three missions have a common acquisition mask, matching local times, and should provide a global daily coverage.
• Some harmonisation is still missing, however, such as agreement on image data formats and algorithms.
• New Space is emerging and becoming an important player in providing thermal satellite data. As many as 8 companies building satellite constellations presented their work and approach in the dedicated session “New Space for Thermal EO”. Here are some initiatives described in the conference:
  • High spatial resolution with global coverage (mostly long-wave IR) (e.g., HiVE from constellr)
  • Very high spatial resolution for targeted observations (e.g., Hotsat from Satellite Vu)
  • Global coverage with VNIR higher resolution (e.g., EarthDaily and HYDROSAT)
  • High temporal revisit (e.g., FOREST from Ororatech).

Hot topics in thermal remote sensing

• Superresolution and upscaling of thermal data
• Directionality of Land Surface Temperature Data
• Intercomparison of LST retrieval algorithms
• Data fusion

Different applications that appeared or were mentioned during the conference

• Evapotranspiration and vegetation health
• Urban heat
• Seat surface temperature
• Ice and snow temperature
• Pathogen detection
• Geology 
• Critical raw materials

There were also multiple presented cal/val sites available.

First day focused on missions: in the morning session there were updates on large missions from space agencies: LSTM, SBG, ECOSTRESS, TRISHNA in the session called “Harmonisation of international missions”.

In the afternoon New Space companies introduced their projects and solutions in the session “New Space for Thermal EO”.

The last session on that day was “Algorithm development”, and contained presentations with various LST&E retrieval algorithm comparison attempts.

Day 2 had focus on application of thermal imagery, with two sessions on agriculture, evapotranspiration and irrigation, one session on ecosystems and coastal regions, and the last session on urban environment and cryosphere applications.

And day 3 had a strong focus on understanding the imagery, with the first session on calibration and algorithms, and the second on international joint airborne campaign. Finally, the last session was a summary one, with discussion on where we want to go as a community.