Importance of Remotely Sensed Data for Decision Support to Be Discussed

Redlands, California -- July 16, 2008 — Dr. Bradley Doorn will keynote the ESRI Remote Sensing and GIS Summit being held August 3 in conjunction with the 2008 ESRI International User Conference (ESRI UC) at the San Diego Convention Center in California. The ESRI UC is the largest conference in the world devoted to geographic information system (GIS) technology and draws approximately 13,000 of the company's software users from more than 120 countries.

Dr. Doorn serves as the director of International Production Assessment Division and remote sensing program manager for the Office of Global Analysis (OGA) in the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). He is also president-elect of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS).

Serving in his role at USDA, Dr. Doorn manages the United States' largest satellite imagery contract for an operational program, the Global Agricultural Monitoring (GLAM) partnership program. GLAM was established with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the University of Maryland. The purpose of the program is to integrate NASA's moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and products into an existing decision support system (DSS) operated by the Production Estimates and Crop Assessment Division (PECAD) of FAS. "While GLAM focuses on agricultural monitoring programs, the principles for using remotely sensed data and applications are transferrable to other industries and applications," says Doorn.

Dr. Doorn has worked extensively with universities, the Department of Defense (DOD), NASA, the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and other government agencies to improve operational access to existing satellite information. He served more than nine years on active duty as a U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) topographic officer and five years in private industry as a manager and specialist in remote sensing, GIS, and mapping for numerous engineering and environmental projects.

For more information about the summit, as well as the ESRI UC, visit www.esri.com/rsgissummit. If you have any questions, please contact Mark Cygan at 909-793-2853, extension 1-2333.


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