You are cordially invited to the 9th Conference of the African Association of Remote Sensing of the Environment - AARSE2012. As you might be aware the AARSE 2012 Conference will take place from October 29 to November 2012 in El jadida, Morocco. This 9th session will represent a major event in the long series of internationally recognized AARSE conferences. AARSE 2012 takes place at a strategic moment, when Africa faces major pressing issues such as climate change impact, water scarcity, energy shortage, environmental stresses and food crisis, which affect citizens, business and the community at large. On all these challenges, Earth Observation can play a greater role in making up factual, precise and updated information for better decision-making.

The overall theme of AARSE2012 is: EARTH OBSERVATION & GEOINFORMATION SCIENCES FOR ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: GLOBAL VISION AND LOCAL ACTION SYNERGY.

Conference Sub-Themes:

• PROCESSING, INTEGRATION AND MODELING.
• ECOSYSTEMS MANAGEMENT, AND ENVIRONMENTAL APPLICATIONS
• RESSOURCES MAPPING & ASSESSMENT
• GEOHAZARDS AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT
• HUMAN SECURITY AND HEALT
• CLIMATE CHANGE VARIABILITY IMPACT

Conference Sub-Themes of a more operational nature are:

• Capacity-building: achievement and challenges
• Spatial Data Infrastructure, SDI
• Space Policy in Africa
• National and regional programs and projects, and Products

The Conference will include plenary and thematic sessions, poster and discussion sessions as well as side events on issues of interest to scientists, policy makers and resource managers in the public and private sectors.

Call for side-event Workshops

AARSE.2010 welcomes dedicated workshops -organized as pre- or post-conference events or as half-day events concurrent with the conference scientific programme (the latter in exceptional cases only). Workshops should present state-of-the-art research and cover the development, deployment and operational use of Earth observing systems both space- and airborne.

Workshop Summary Submission

Interested parties should submit a summary of the workshop they propose. The summary must include:

• Title of workshop;
• Relevant keywords;
• Full name and title, e-mail address, fax, telephone of workshop organizer(s);
• ¢ Short description of the workshop (maximum one page);
• Target audience;
• Proposed duration of workshop

The Workshop summary should reach the Chairman of the Scientific Committee, AARSE President: Jide Kufoniyi, by mail to jide.kufoniyi@aarse-africa.org  no later than 31 Jun 2012.

Workshop proposers will be notified of acceptance as soon as the requirements are fulfilled (see Workshop Policy below).

AARSE policy on workshops organized by 3rd parties in conjunction with AARSE 2012

Please be aware that the following policy of the AARSE Executive Council on workshops organized by other parties applies:

• Organizers of a pre-/concurrent-/post-conference workshop must pay a fixed amount of € 3000 to cover expenses for projector, venue, writing materials and microphone. Anything extra is to be borne by the workshop organizer.

However, organizers of a pre-/concurrent-/post-conference workshop who pay the conference registration fee for 8 of their participants, 2 months prior to the conference date, pay a fixed amount of € 1500 to cover costs of projector, venue, writing materials and microphone.