The first international workshop on diagnosis of environmental health by remote sensing was held in the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications (IRSA) on December 23-24. Hosted by Center for Applications of Spatial Information Technologies in Public Health at IRSA, this workshop was sponsored by IRSA and the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology at Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences.  Nearly one hundred of professionals, representatives of the governmental agencies, and the industry from the United States, Japan, Finland, Thailand and China attended this event.

The Workshop focused on the themes involving spatial information technology and human health, remote sensing and environmental health, environmental health and ecological systems, and global environmental change and infectious diseases.

Prof. CAO Chunxiang, head of Center for Applications of Spatial Information Technologies in Public Health at IRSA, proposed the concept titled “diagnosis of onvironmental health by remote sensing”. She pointed out that the development of remote sensing and geographic information technologies provided new research models and methods for rapid diagnosis of environmental health in critical ecological areas. Using remote sensing technology, we can acquire large-scale, multi-temporal, high-accuracy environmental diagnostic parameters such as vegetation, water, soil, and air quality. Combining spatial information technology, remote sensing technology is used to analyze the temporal evolution of environmental health, identify the main factors affecting environmental health, and establish an objective assessment index system of ecological health.

This workshop collected plenty of information for the special issue of the International Remote Sensing General, and what's more, stimulated the creation of the cooperation platform for “diagnosis of environmental health by remote sensing” index system and the formation of a young interdisciplinary research team.