The 5th International Workshop on Diagnosis of Environmental Health by Remote Sensing (DEHRS) was held China’s Langfang on July 26-28, 2015. Some 300 experts and scholars from CAS and universities at home and abroad gathered to deliberate academic problems and key technologies related to "Diagnosis of Environmental Health by Remote Sensing".

This workshop was sponsored by the Center for Applications of Spatial Information Technologies in Public Health, and co-sponsored by the following four institutions: North China Institute of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Space Mechanics & Electricity, Collaborative Innovation Center of Remote Sensing Information Processing and Application in Hebei Province, and State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

CAS Academician SUN Jiadong sent a congratulatory message for this session of the general assembly. HAO Yulong, director of North China Institute of Aerospace Engineering, attended the opening ceremony and gave a welcome speech.

The keynote speeches focused on environmental health research, remote sensing technology and its applications on environmental health diagnosis. In addition, the major theme “Diagnosis of Environmental Health by Remote Sensing” is centered on five special topics: “Research on spatial information technology and infectious diseases forecasts and warnings”, “Multi-source remote sensing technology and environmental health”, “Regional application of spatial information technology”, “Sustainable development in the Belt and Road Initiative and spatial information technology” and “Haze governance and environmental health”.

Eleven experts were invited to give reports during the workshop. Prof. CAO Wuchun, from the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of Military Medical Science Academy of the PLA, gave a report titled “Environmental health and infectious diseases”. Prof. Kaneyuki Nakane, from Hiroshima University of Japan, delivered a speech titled “Evaluation of carbon budget in forest area using forest vegetation and its stand age analyzed by remote sensing data: The case study in Hiroshima Prefecture, west Japan”.

Dr. WANG Jinfeng, Vice President of the workshop, gave a lecture regarding “Disease Mapping”. Prof. Ranga Myneni, a famous scientist from Boston University, gave a report about “Seasonality of Amazonian Rainforests”.

Prof. CAO Chunxiang, President of the assembly and executive director of the Center for Applications of Spatial Information Technologies in Public Health, CAO summarized that, two-day communication and discussion has generated fruitful results. The number of conference academic advisory committee, the chairman, deputy chairman and members was up to 103 across 8 international organizations, 21 agencies and 31 domestic research institutes in the related fields. A total of more than 30 experts, scholars and graduate students won the assembly of four awards. DEHRS as workshop series, this workshop will speed up the development and expanding of the inter-discipline of “diagnosis of environmental health by remote sensing”, as well as promote the extensive applications in this field.

The 6th Workshop on Diagnosis of Environmental Health by Remote Sensing will be held in Shanghai in the summer of 2016, which will focus on frontier technologies and national strategic needs, talent team building as well as platform building with a final goal of building a "Earth remote sensing clinics".

Group photo of the 5th DEHRS.