I am in Vienna, Austria, just finished today attending the 3rd Joint International Symposium on Deformation Monitoring. Out of about 110 attendees, I was the only one from the US, and there was 1 person from Canada, none from South America, Africa, or Australia/New Zealand. I saw a friend here from the UK who said they were considering having the next one in North America, but at the end they announced the next one will be in Europe again, due to the apparent lack of interest from our continent.
Surely there is a lot of monitoring going on in the US, for me it is about 50% of my work. But, hard to believe there was no one here from USACE or any of the many other agencies that have this need. Actually, it was embarrassing. Same thing happens at FIG each year, very few US attendees. A lot of good sessions, and the chance to meet other surveyors. Especially useful since we don't have yearly ACSM conferences, which I always attended since I started in surveying 35 years ago.
John
I've done a little monitoring on earthen dams. Where was this conference advertised?
I think that was a problem...I only heard about it a month ago because I receive the FIG email newsletter. They definitely should have coordinated with ASCE, NSPS, AAGS to get the word out.
Holding the conference in Europe isn't exactly a great way to attract U.S. attendees. What'd you end up spending to get there, stay and come back? There aren't many public agencies that can spend that kind of money to send their staff members to conferences.
By the same token, if the conference were held in the U.S., I'd expect to see a bunch of U.S. attendees and not very many from other continents.
The reason for non-government US attendees is budgetary. Most agencies have severely cut travel budgets. Foreign travel is often seen as a boondoggle.
On the issue of training, I hope anyone interested in the five-day "2016 Airborne Gravimetry for Geodesy Summer School" signed up already. It is hosted by the US NGS and takes place in Silver Spring, MD. The deadline for regular registration was yesterday; if the class is not full there may be openings. Great topics, great instructors (including Professor Jekeli of OSU). Info is available here: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/GRAV-D/2016SummerSchool/
I would be interested in reading a couple of the papers listed, do you know if they are online anywhere?
Looking at where the cutting edge is sure does make a lot of the procedures I have seen look a touch old fashioned.
