In late November, the H2O Geomatics team embarked on a journey to Lisbon, Portugal, for Hydrospace 2023—a conference dedicated to pushing the boundaries of Earth Observation for water research and hydrology. Here's a snapshot of our whirlwind experience.
Our founder and scientific advisor, Claude Duguay, played a pivotal role at Hydrospace 2023. He co-chaired a session titled 'Novel Technologies and Future Missions: The Future of Water Cycle Research.' Additionally, Claude delivered an engaging oral presentation on 'Improving the Retrieval of Lake Ice Thickness with Radar Altimetry Data,' a collaborative effort with several researchers (Mangilli et al., 2023), including our research scientist, Justin Murfitt. Furthermore, Claude played a significant role as a co-author on two noteworthy projects: 'Altimetry for the Hydrology of Arctic Rivers' (Zakharova et al., 2023) and 'Satellite-Derived Multivariate Worldwide Lake Physical Variable Time Series for Climate Studies' (Carrea et al., 2023).
Beyond Claude's contributions, H2O Geomatics made its mark with four impactful presentations. Yusof Ghiasi presented on "Opportunities for Lake Ice Remote Sensing from Current and Future Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) Missions," revealing exciting possibilities in the field of lake ice research. Intern Samuel Johnston, under the mentorship of Claude Duguay and Justin Murfitt, brought a fresh perspective with "A Deep Learning Approach for Lake Ice Cover Forecasting," showcasing the potential of emerging technologies in ice cover predictive modeling.
Our poster presentations were equally compelling. Research Scientist Amir Chegoonian's presentation on 'RAWSIW: A Novel Remote Sensing Workflow for Water Quality in Small Inland Waters' introduces a novel method for retrieving water quality information, promising significant advancements in this critical area. Meanwhile, our Data Scientist Jaya Sree Mugunthan introduced "A Convolutional Neural Network for the Classification of Lake Surface Conditions from SAR Altimetry Waveforms," offering an advanced AI-based approach to interpreting and classifying lake surface conditions.
Overall, Hydrospace 2023 provided H2O Geomatics with a platform to share our contributions, engage with the global community, and gain valuable insights. The connections made and shared vision for the future leave us inspired and ready for the next chapter.