The three-day school was organized by the IEEE GRSS Austria Chapter together with the IEEE Austria Section, co-organized by the IEEE GRSS Italy Chapter and the IEEE GRSS Poland Chapter. It was hosted by IT:U – Interdisciplinary Transformation University Austria, with Paris Lodron University Salzburg (PLUS) as partner. Participation was free of charge and places were awarded through a competitive selection: out of 172 applications from 49 countries, 36 people were selected, 12 of them with travel grants. On site, 31 participants worked with 14 speakers, joined by guests from the companies supporting the school.

Three days, one workflow

The programme followed a single workflow: observe, integrate, understand, act. Each day had its own theme: understanding the city, mapping risk, and building resilience. Seven of the thirteen sessions were hands-on, using Python notebooks, SNAP, QGIS, and Google Earth Engine. Participants combined optical, radar (SAR and InSAR), and thermal data with in-situ measurements and citizen-generated data to assess and reduce climate risk in cities: from flood mapping and damage assessment, through urban heat islands, to data cubes and digital twins.

Prof. Paweł Netzel of the University of Agriculture in Krakow led the session “Atmospheric Boundary Layer over Cities”. He showed how SODAR echograms can be converted into hourly convection and inversion labels, and how an LSTM model forecasts them up to six hours ahead from routine weather-station data. The method was applied to land-cover rasters of Wrocław, using PyTorch, ONNX, Numba, and plMapcalc.

What participants took home

• flood mapping: from Sentinel-1 scenes to flood-extent maps in SNAP and Earth Engine, plus AI-based approaches combining optical and SAR data,
• urban heat island: land surface temperature, spectral indices, and station data used to diagnose a real heat event, with its uncertainty stated,
• forecasting atmospheric boundary-layer states and enriching mobility data with satellite imagery, OpenStreetMap, and street-level photos,
• building analysis-ready Zarr data cubes from satellite climate products,
• their own project: each group prepared an idea and an implementation plan for applying the school’s methods in their own research.

Participants received a certificate equivalent to 1 ECTS credit. We thank the organizers from Austria and Italy for the collaboration and congratulate all participants. We are glad that IEEE GRSS Poland Chapter could help shape this event.

On May 20–22, students, doctoral students and young researchers from Poland and abroad met at the University of Agriculture in Krakow to share their research results and establish new collaborations under the theme “Innovation, Nature and the Future: A Shared Scientific Space”.

This year’s edition brought together many fields – from agriculture and forestry, through geodesy, remote sensing and GIS, to environmental engineering, biotechnology and renewable energy sources.

We thank all the participants, speakers and organizers from the Board of the Doctoral Students’ Council of the University of Agriculture in Krakow. We are glad that IEEE GRSS Poland Chapter could co-create this event.

See you next year!

On February 18–20, 2026, the international conference “The Machine Learning and Spatial Analysis with Free Open Source Software Conference 2026” (MLSpAnFOSS) was held in Krakow. The event was organized by the Faculty of Forestry of the Hugo Kołłątaj University of Agriculture in Krakow, in cooperation with the IEEE GRSS chapters in Poland, Austria and Germany and the OSGeo PL community.

This year’s edition focused on the use of machine learning in open-source software environments, the analysis of large data sets, and the application of artificial intelligence methods in geospatial analysis. Over three days, participants took part in a rich program that included plenary and paper sessions, a poster session and five specialized computer workshops.

Day 1: Federated learning The first day opened with a lecture by Dr. Paweł Netzel entitled “An introduction to federated learning”. During the paper sessions, the speakers (including Andrés Castillo Leitón, Paweł Netzel and Maciej Lipski) addressed topics such as the impact of GeoAI on territorial management and spatial regression in urban analysis. The afternoon was dominated by workshops introducing Python scripting (Jupyter) and the practical aspects of federated learning.

Day 2: Quantum computing and the poster session The second day of the conference was devoted to the technologies of the future. The introductory lecture “What is the quantum computation” was given by Artur Miroszewski. This was followed by a lively poster session presenting the results of environmental spatial analyses based on LiDAR, UAV and satellite data. Participants could also take part in a workshop on processing satellite remote sensing data on a quantum computer simulator.

Day 3: Canopy height models and GIS tools The last day brought further inspiring talks. The paper session covered, among other topics, the construction of a nationwide canopy height model (CHM) for southern Poland, the segmentation of geospatial data, and deep learning methods for ship classification in SAR imagery. The conference closed with workshops on the plMapcalc raster calculator and the tools of the GDAL library.

More information, including training materials from the workshops, is available on the official event website.

More information on the conference website (link)

SPSympo is an initiative with a long tradition, dating back to 2003. Since 2005 it has operated as a standalone conference, serving as a venue for the exchange of knowledge and experience through lectures, workshops and thematic sessions. The 2025 edition was special – the conference entered its third decade, combining tradition with a modern approach to signal research across many areas of application.

During this year’s SPSympo, the Chair of IEEE GRSS Poland Chapter, Prof. Paweł Netzel of the University of Agriculture in Krakow, led the tutorial "GeoPAT: Spatial and Temporal Pattern Analysis Using a Similarity Approach". During the session, participants learned the theoretical foundations of spatial and temporal pattern analysis and the capabilities of the GeoPAT tool – from search and clustering to segmentation and the analysis of categorical images and time series. The workshop was hands-on, allowing participants to understand how to apply this approach in scientific analyses and research projects.

We sincerely thank the organizers of SPSympo 2025 for the professional preparation of the conference, Prof. Krzysztof Kulpa – Honorary Chair of SPSympo 2025 – for his many years of commitment to the development of this event, and Prof. Paweł Netzel for an inspiring tutorial and for representing our community on the international stage.

👥 Who from our team could you meet?

• Paweł Netzel, Chair of GRSS Poland, spoke about the activities of IEEE and the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, encouraging young researchers to get involved in the GRSS community.
• Igor Pawelec, Secretary of GRSS Poland, presented research on the evaluation of segmentation algorithms for detecting standing dead trees from aerial orthophotos.

Our information booth attracted a great deal of interest – we talked with doctoral students, students and researchers about the potential of geospatial data and the opportunities for collaboration with GRSS.

The GRSS workshop gathered 11 participants and was an opportunity for joint learning and for sharing experience in data analysis and Python programming.

We thank the organizers of ICYR 2025 for the invitation and the great atmosphere – it was an important step in building a strong community for our chapter.

See you at our next events!

The event will take place on June 3–5, 2025 at the Faculty of Forestry of the University of Agriculture in Krakow and will bring together young researchers from Poland and abroad, creating a unique space for sharing experience, presenting research results and establishing scientific collaboration.

🔍 What has GRSS Poland prepared?

• An information booth, where you can talk with us about remote sensing, spatial data and our activities
• A presentation of GRSS Poland’s activities, addressed to young researchers from various disciplines
• Thematic workshops, to be announced soon!

Our presence at ICYR is part of a broader mission to support the scientific community and the development of geospatial data analysis skills.

More about the conference:
ICYR 2025 – Official conference website

We invite you to visit our booth and take part in the event. See you in Krakow!

On May 21, 2025, a workshop entitled “Sharing Spatial Data Using OGC Services”, organized by the Polish GRSS chapter, was held at the Faculty of Forestry.

The instructor was Paweł Netzel, DSc, Associate Professor, who introduced the participants to the world of web services.

The event was attended by students, researchers and professionals working with spatial data. The workshop was hands-on and focused on the server side of data sharing using free and open-source software (FOSS). Participants got to know the GeoServer application, created their first maps and published them via OGC services.

Thank you all for taking part – this is just the beginning!

Follow the upcoming initiatives organized by GRSS Poland and the Faculty of Forestry of the University of Agriculture in Krakow!

Faculty of Forestry on Facebook

From the very beginning, we have focused on concrete actions, collaboration between universities, and the promotion of modern technologies in geoinformation and remote sensing. We have held our first events, many new members have joined us, and the calendar for the coming months is already filling up!

What have we done so far?

• plMapCalc workshop at the 11th Wrocław GISDay 2024
  November 21, 2024 – together with OSGeo Poland and universities in Wrocław, we organized a workshop entitled “Is a calculator enough to work with spatial data?”.
  Instructors: Paweł Netzel, DSc, Associate Professor, and Jacek Ślopek, PhD.
  Participants learned about the practical capabilities of the plMapCalc tool.
• We have gained new members
  32 members have already joined the chapter – welcome aboard!

What’s next?

• Crop Phenology Monitoring with Multi-Temporal SAR Data: polarimetric and dynamic perspectives
• OGC from the Ground Up – Hands-on Workshop
• MIGARS 2025 – Machine Intelligence for Geoanalytics and Remote Sensing (details coming soon)

Thank you for being with us – it is thanks to you that we can keep going with even greater momentum.

The Board of IEEE GRSS Poland Chapter

On November 21, as part of the events held at three Wrocław universities (Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences and the University of Wrocław) during the 11th Wrocław GISDay 2024, a computer workshop entitled "Is a calculator enough to work with spatial data?" took place.

The session, organized with the support of IEEE GRSS (Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society) and OSGeo Poland, was held in the Geographic Information Systems Laboratory of the Department of Geoinformatics and Cartography. The workshop was led by Paweł Netzel, DSc, Associate Professor (Hugo Kołłątaj University of Agriculture in Krakow) and Jacek Ślopek, PhD, of the Department of Geoinformatics and Cartography.

The workshop participants (students of Wrocław University of Science and Technology and the University of Wrocław) could explore the capabilities of plMapcalc – an open-source raster calculator that can effectively support geoinformatics specialists in their everyday spatial data processing tasks.

The launch of the Polish GRSS chapter is a special moment for us. It marks the beginning of a new space for researchers, practitioners and students from all over Poland, where a passion for remote sensing and geospatial analysis meets the exchange of knowledge, inspiration and collaboration at the highest level.

This achievement would not have been possible without the commitment and cooperation of GRSS members in Poland and the support of the international community. Special thanks go to Silvia Liberata Ullo (Europe Liaison for GRSS), Francesco Mauro (GRSS Region 8 Coordinator), Tianlin Wang (GRSS Chapter Coordinator) and Subit Chakrabarti (Director of Global Activities, IEEE GRSS). Their invaluable help and support were the foundation of this success.

On October 25, 2024, the kick-off meeting of the Polish GRSS chapter was held, during which organizational matters were discussed and the chapter officers were elected. The Board began its term on November 1, 2024 and will serve until December 31, 2026. Paweł Netzel, DSc, Associate Professor at the University of Agriculture in Krakow, was elected Chair of the chapter. Prof. Krzysztof Kulpa, DSc, PhD, Eng. holds the position of Vice-Chair, Krystyna Michałowska, PhD, Eng. was elected Treasurer, and Igor Pawelec, MSc Eng. was entrusted with the role of Secretary.

The meeting was attended by 15 people. Thank you all for your support and commitment! We also extend our sincere thanks to the Election Committee, composed of Radosław Jeż, PhD, Eng. and Tomasz Berezowski, PhD, Eng., for the efficient conduct of the election.

This is only the beginning of our activities – we will soon be announcing planned events, workshops and initiatives that will bring together the scientific and technology communities from all over Poland! Please follow our official website and social media to stay up to date!