Background
High-resolution thermal Earth Observation (EO) has been identified as a major observational gap in our rapidly warming climate. Land-surface temperature is a key variable needed for understanding and adapting to climate variability, managing water resources sustainably for agricultural production, mitigating health stress during heatwaves, predicting droughts, monitoring coastal and inland waters and addressing natural hazards such as fires and volcanoes.
For actionable information, Land Surface Temperature has to be measured with both high-resolution, to monitor management units such as single fields, and at sufficient temporal frequency. These requirements have been recognized by policy makers and international space agencies resulting in the preparation of a range of high-resolution thermal missions including TRISHNA (CNES/ISRO), LSTM (ESA/EC) and EAGLE-TIR (NASA) to be launched in coming years. The ECOSTRESS mission (NASA) is providing excellent precursor data for these upcoming missions. Further there is an increasing interest of New Space initiatives already launching smallsat missions and constellations for thermal observations with similar resolution.
Building on the ongoing cooperation between the space agencies, the main objective of this Workshop is to prepare for the availability of high-resolution thermal observations, strengthen synergies among the upcoming missions and to establish priority areas for future projects (e.g., the ESA Sentinel User Preparation initiative).
Objectives
- Assess the status of current and planned international high-resolution thermal missions for terrestrial and coastal applications
- Review the main related activities and projects in the relevant science and operational application areas
- Prepare the community for the use of the upcoming high-resolution thermal missions
- Strengthen international cooperation and coordination in the space and ground segment operation, calibration and validation, products definition & harmonization, data access and data exploitation
- Identify high-priorities topics for future R&D activities supporting the preparation of thermal EO applications
Main Topics
- Science and applications in different domains with single and multi-mission approach:
- Agriculture – irrigation, evapotranspiration
- Ecosystem & water cycle
- Urban heat islands & impact of heatwaves
- Hot temperature events – vulcanology/fires
- Monitoring of industrial activities
- Coastal and in-land waters
- Cryosphere
- Soil composition
- Algorithm development for atmospheric, anisotropic and topographic correction schemes/procedures
- Harmonisation of products and data formats as well as their possible standardization
- Harmonisation of pre-flight characterisation and in-flight cross-calibration of international missions
- Mission calibration and data validation plans, data quality assurance and uncertainty quantification
- International joint airborne and field campaigns for a range of surface types
- Coordination of data acquisition plans, including orbital phasing of international missions for improved revisit/coverage and establishment of longer time series
- Exploring synergies with other current and future space-based systems (e.g. US Landsat, Copernicus Sentinels, New Space)
- Coordination of research and training activities
Participation
The workshop participation is open, following a call for abstracts which will be reviewed by the Scientific Committee.
The workshop sessions will include oral presentations and discussion rounds.
Abstracts of 200 – 400 words for presentations are to be submitted by 2 November.
The official language of the workshop is English. No participation fee will be charged, however, participants will be required to purchase lunch vouchers upon registration for the duration of the workshop.
Participants are also expected to finance their own travel and accommodation expenses.
The intended audience includes international representatives from Space Agencies, scientists and applications experts active in the field of high-resolution thermal EO for terrestrial and coastal applications.
Abstracts
The Abstract submission interface is now open, and we invite you to submit your abstract HERE along with your
selection of the topic and type of presentation (oral or poster) proposed
Note: Abstract length should be at least 200 words and maximum 400 words (one A4 page, single space normally contains 400-500 words).
Information about the co-authors (name, last name, affiliation, contact email) is required.
Schedule and Deadlines
| Abstract submission opening | September 2026 |
| Abstract submission closure | 2 November 2026 |
| Notification of acceptance | 15 December 2026 |
| Issue of Preliminary Programme | 15 December 2026 |
| Registration Opening | 15 December 2026 |
| Registration Closure | 29 January 2027 |
| Issue of Final Programme | 9 February 2027 |
| Workshop | 9-12 February 2027 |
Organising Committee
Ana Bolea Alamanac
ESA
Itziar Barat
ESA
Bimal Bhattacharya
SAC/ISRO
Diego Fernandez
ESA
Philippe Gamet
CNES
Ferran Gascon
ESA
Simon Hook
NASA/JPL
Steven Hosford
European Commission, DEFIS
Benjamin Koetz
ESA
Sabrina Lodadio
Serco c/o ESA
Michel Massart
European Commission, JRC
Giuseppe Ottavianelli
ESA
Simon Proud
ESA
Irene Renis
Serco c/o ESA
Sara Venafra
ASI
Lorenza Versace
Olly Services for ESA
Simona Zoffoli
ASI
Scientific Committee
Emmanuelle Autret
IFREMER
Björn Baschek
Federal Institute of Hydrology
Wim Bastiaanssen
HydroSat & TU Delft
Francois Bernard
ESA
Joris Blommaert
VITO
Patrizia Buongiorno
INGV
Kerry Cawse-Nicholson
NASA/JPL
Roberto Colombo
Uni Milano
Steffen Dransfeld
ESA
Ignacio Fernandez
ESA
Adrian Garcia
ESA
Darren Ghent
University of Leicester
Javier Gorroño
University of Valencia
Radoslaw Guzinski
DHI GRAS
Gregory Halverson
NASA/JPL
Jippe Hoogeveen
FAO, Land and Water Divison
Glynn Hulley
NASA/JPL
Mark Irvine
INRAE
Adrian Kreiner
ESA
Gianluigi Liberti
ISMAR/CNR
Philippe Maisongrande
CNES
Kanishka Mallick
CESBIO/CNES
Ilias Manolis
ESA
Sébastien Marcq
CNES
Christopher Merchant
University of Leicester
Claudia Notarnicola
EURAC
Albert Olioso
INRAE
Madeleine Pascolini Campbell
NASA/JPL
Livia Peiser
FAO, Land and Water Divison
Stefano Pignatti
IMAA/CNR
Jean-Louis Roujean
CNRS/CESBIO
Laure Roupioz
ONERA
Dirk Schuettemeyer
ESA
José Sobrino
University of Valencia
Miguel Such Taboada
ESA
Zoltan Szantoi
ESA
Thomas Udelhoven
University of Trier
Espen Volden
ESA
Venue
ESA/ESRIN
Largo Galileo Galilei, 1
00044 Frascati,
Italy
Contact Info
For information regarding the submissions, author instructions, scientific committee related inquiries please contact:
eo4society.conf@esa.int
For information regarding the logistics, please contact:
events.organisation@esa.int