An international exchange project was launched to promote the application of BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) between China and Mongolia, which was announced on September 8, 2020 at a video conference attended by some 10 participants from both countries including XU Guanqun from the China Association for Science and Technology, HAO Weina from the Academic Exchange Center of China Satellite Navigation Office, HOU Yan from the NavInfo Co., Ltd, as well as Mongolian counterpart, Dr. B. Bayartungalag, President of Mongolian Geospatial Association.

The opening ceremony of the International Training Workshop on BDS Technology and Applications in Belt and Road Countries was held in Beijing on 8 September 2020, which was attended online and offline by the embassy representatives from the Thailand, Belgium, and Ukraine, over 40 trainees from Nepal, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Pakistan, Bhutan, Mongolia, as well as Chinese representatives from relevant research institutions and companies.

A training workshop on “geospatial information applications for agricultural monitoring in Lower Mekong Basin countries” was held online from August 5 to 26, 2020, with the attendance of 47 people from the government agencies or research institutions of Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, hoping to learn essentials and technologies such as Earth observations for crop monitoring, agro-climatic and agronomic indicators preprocessing, thematic mapping, and field data collection.

An online training course on “Quantitative Remote Sensing Information Technology and its Applications” was held on August 3-7, 2020 in Beijing, attracting some 90 participants from the countries including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Mongolia, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand, and Turkey.

According to an announcement released yesterday from the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), GEO and Google Earth Engine (GEE) have planned to sponsor 32 projects from 22 countries, providing $3 million USD towards production licenses and $1 million in technical support from EO Data Science to tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges using open Earth data. Among the winning projects is the Land Degradation Neutrality Program hosted by the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (the Aerospace Information Research Institute now, or AIR for short).

The 7th Microsystems & Nanoengineering Conference and Young Scientists Forum was held via video conference on July 7-10, 2020. Hosted by the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the conference was broadcast live, bringing together 25,800 attendees online, a number far more than actual attendance in previous six conferences.