HOW TO PROMOTE REMOTE 
SENSING - THE ASIAN EXPERIENCE 
BRUCE C. FORSTER 
School of Surveying and 
Centre for Remote Sensing 
University of New South Wales 
Sydney 
Australia 
ABSTRACT: 
Over the past decade there has been a substantial 
increase in research applications of remote sensing in 
the Asian region, stimulated in part by the establishment 
of the Asian Association on Remote Sensing in 1980 
and the Association's annual conferences. A regular 
plenary session at these conferences has been on "How 
to Promote Remote Sensing in Developing Countries" 
contributed to by delegates of the member countries and 
international delegates. This paper summarizes the 
major themes resulting from these sessons to assist 
other regions in developing a similar growth in remote 
sensing expertise. 
KEYWORDS: Promote, Remote Sensing, Asia. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
The Asian Association on Remote Sensing was formed 
in 1980 to overcome what was seen as a lack of 
opportunities for Asian scientists to cooperate and 
present the results of their work. Since then an annual 
conference has been conducted in various countries of 
Asia, which has been a major stimulant to the growth of 
an understanding and the application of remote sensing 
in the Asian region. Over the past twelve years virtually 
every Asian country, including countries of Australasia, 
have joined the Association, while a number of non - 
regional countries have joined as associate members. 
Over this period there has also been a substantial 
growth in remote sensing staff and facilities. For 
example there are now over twenty national programs 
and centres, and numerous sub - centres, and over 
10,000 scientists and application specialists in various 
sectors. During this period three countries, India, China 
and Japan have launched remote sensing satellites, and 
ten ground receiving stations have been established. 
In recent years as part of the Association's annual 
conference, a plenary session on "How to Promote 
Remote Sensing in Developing Countries" has been 
conducted. This has been contributed to by senior 
scientists and application specialists from countries of 
the region and other regions. The paper summarizes 
the discussions of these meetings, firstly with regard to 
the problems that need to be overcome and secondly 
with regard to positive measures to promote remote 
sensing. 
2. PROBLEMS 
Many of the problems discussed by speakers at the 
sessions covered a commonality of areas. In general 
these were related to: 
* environmental issues 
* educational issues 
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* financial issues and 
* promotional issues. 
Within the Asian region there are an estimated 200 
million people who are undernourished. Because of the 
magnitude of this problem many short - term solutions 
have been implemented that in the long term have been 
seen to be ecologically incorrect. Many of the 
environmental problems such as floods, desertification, 
climate change cross national borders, have not been 
effectively addressed due to lack of inter - country 
cooperation. It has also been common for solutions 
developed in other regions to be applied in the Asian 
region, with at times, disastrous results. 
For the transfer of remote sensing technology to be 
effective, education and training are required at a 
number of levels. While a range of training programs 
have been offered in the Asian region, they have not 
produced staff operating across the full spectrum of 
activities ranging from research to technical support, 
which has led to a lack of indigenous capabilities in 
direct and supportive roles in the use of remote sensing. 
To some extent the middle level application roles have 
been addressed, but the areas of technician and 
technical support and, at the other extreme, the level of 
research scientist, have not been addressed. Often the 
important area of field support and field data acquisition 
cause projects to be delayed or to provide only limited 
data, in addition many manufactures have provided 
equipment, particularly image analysis equipment, 
without adequately training support staff. Long delays 
are often experienced when systems malfunction. 
With the limited number of research scientist being 
trained an insufficient nucleus of scientists exists to 
further develop remote sensing technology to support 
the needs of a particular country. Once external support 
is removed the technology stagnates and is not renewed 
by indigenous research. While application scientists 
have been relatively well catered for in the region, even 
here the training has not always addressed the 
application problems of the region, but has transferred 
solutions more appropriate to problems in Europe or 
North America. 
In many cases while data and staff are available the use 
of remote sensing has been hindered by institutional 
problems. These can relate to institutional 
arrangements, institutional procedures and infrastructure 
that are not appropriate to the application of the new 
technology. Many bureaucrats are suspicious of remote 
sensing technology due to its oversell during the 1970's, 
and in addition their concept of data needs and data 
collection methods for their departments were developed 
in a pre - remote sensing, and their is little stimulus to 
change these attitudes, or indeed little opportunity to do 
so. In many cases the institutional arrangements are