SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SEEN FROM ABOVE: A FOCUS ON REMOTE SENSING

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SEEN FROM ABOVE: A FOCUS ON REMOTE SENSING

For the first edition of its annual international symposium, Sorbonne Sustainable Development, in partnership with the Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne (CES), the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), and the Labex Dynamite invites you to submit proposals and partake in an international conference centered on sustainable development.

This new edition will revolve around the many contributions remote sensing can make in tackling the various challenges of sustainable development.

The first edition will take place from December 5 to 7, 2022 and will be held across two venues: the Sorbonne and the Cité du Développement Durable. The conference will be held in English and French with participants in Paris or online if travel restrictions dictate. Two submission formats will be accepted: a poster proposal or a conventional proposal for 30-minutes-long presentations (20 minutes presentation and 10 minutes of questions & answers).

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> SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN TODAY’S WORLD

The first day, interdisciplinary by nature, will put the question of sustainable development into perspective given the particularly alarming context in which we now find ourselves. While the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report emphasises the need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in the next ten years, the war in Ukraine highlights the fragility of humanity when faced with the need to adapt rapidly. After two years of pandemic-driven strain, health care’s status as a common good and a pillar of sustainable development has never been so relevant. 

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What lessons should we take away from the Covid-19 crisis? How starting from this observation, can we react in a multidisciplinary way, put forward the results of our work, and above all convince people that we must act now?

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In order to respond to this global observation, all disciplines will be involved. A singular and collective diagnosis is needed more than ever at a time when the alliance of research skills is demonstrating its ability to contribute to the resilience-building process.

Against this backdrop, the arts will play a role of scientific coordination that is now widely considered at the international level.

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*Using an A0 sheet of paper, you will summarize the main steps of your approach: data, methodology and main results. You will have the opportunity to discuss the content of the poster with the audience and the experts present. You can find examples of posters via the following link: https://ur.umbc.edu/poster-presentation-examples/

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> REMOTE SENSING AS A TOOL FOR RESEARCH ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The second day will tackle issues tied to measurement and data, focusing on the role of satellite data in measuring the extent of the climate emergency. It is now possible to visualize the consequences of human development on territories and the environment in real-time but also retroactively looking at decades of human activity.

The data produced by satellites’ instruments allow us to monitor change in our climate and atmospheric disturbances, but also anthropogenic phenomena such as urban sprawl, agricultural expansion and deforestation at increasingly fine levels of resolution. Satellite data are used operationally by several international organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations or the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) (Institute for Environment and Sustainability), often in conjunction with space agencies (e.g. the European Space Agency (ESA) Earth Observation for Sustainable Development program) to provide freely available indicators for users who are not necessarily experts in the physics of remote sensing. In parallel, space agencies provide open access to remote sensing data at different levels of pre-processing to build on the raw radiometry to develop new applications.

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> THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF DATA USED TO ANALYZE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

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The third day, under the sign of social sciences and critical thought, will be devoted to the role of the methods used in the social sciences, within the perception of the socio-economic world and in the prioritization of subjects dealing with significant issues such as the environment.

From a critical examination of the world of numbers in which we live to that of the measurement and instruments that we use, this day will aim to define exactly what realities we measure and count, and even to take a critical step back from the theoretical constructions and statistical concepts that result from them.

OBJECTIVES

The objective of the conference is to question the very rich databases used today by the human, social and legal sciences as well as the biases induced by these quantitative approaches and how to best mitigate them.

More generally, it will attempt to settle on an epistemological view of how the sciences approach the SDGs and the environmental transition. Based on the results of our 2019 international conference «From perception to climate action», it will be accompanied by artistic interventions and workshops that will raise public and stakeholder awareness of the transition, the common good, and our relationship with Nature through image, sound, voice, etc.

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Sorbonne Sustainable Development is an association bringing together more than a hundred university researchers from all disciplines (humanities, economics and law), affiliated with the UN and established within the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, the first university to be fully COP certified and a member of the United Nations Academic Impact program, as well as Global Compact/PRME (a program linked to the Principles for Responsible Management Training).