The Bridge

Page 23 here - a short article published in the Maynooth Alumni magazine on the SFi project. The Bridge goes out to alot of people (do they do a print version? I'm not sure), and always good to get a mention anywhere.

Two TV appearances this year, a photo with a minister, three newspapers/magazines and a radio interview on Tuesday about my work with Santa - this showbiz lifestyle of mine!

Shame I'm just a poor Post-Doc.

Happy Christmas and New Year to everyone!

See you in 2015.

Santa's Official Scientist

Remote sensing has lots of uses - forestry, coastal, agriculture, engineering, marine - but lets face it, it's really all about Christmas. I had a short article published in the, 'Science of Christmas' supplement in the Irish Independent last week. The link is here if you are interested in reading how Santa uses remote sensing to find people's houses.

IIS SCS merger

I posted a while back about a proposed IIS/SCSI merger. At the Extraordinary General Meeting in the Davenport hotel, Friday 29th November 2014 - 70 IIS members (roughly 25%) voted on the merger. This was easily the best turnout for an AGM or EGM that I have seen since the days when the AGM used to follow on in the evening from Survey Ireland. Great to see too, it was an important vote - easily the most important vote.

The Vote

The result was surprising. Off the top of my head I think the final tally was: 68 for the merger, 1 against and 1 abstention. That is about as unanimous as you could ever hope for. One of the worries I had was that it would be a 51/49 split but thankfully that didn't happen. The night was also a celebration of the IIS's 25th anniversary to it served a dual-function.

IIS Commission

What does that mean for the IIS commission on Remote Sensing? I honestly don't know but I hope to propose it to the board of the Geomatics division of the SCSI in the new year. Now that we have the clarity that was missing due to the question mark over the future of the IIS we can start to get something done. 

So what does this mean for me?

Much higher membership costs for one thing. Almost double what I currently pay if I opt for Fellow of the SCSI and Fellow of the RICS. And that's IF I get the academic discount. I need to look into that. If I don't I'm looking at nearly €850. Do I need to be a chartered surveyor in research and lecturing? That remains to be seen, I'll probably pay it for the first year at least.