On 6 April, AIR Director-General GUO Huadong was invited to the
UNESCO Beijing office to meet with UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for
Natural Sciences, Dr. Gretchen Kalonji. They discussed the progress of the
International Centre on Space Technologies for Natural and Cultural Heritage
(HIST) over the past year and the next steps to strengthen cooperation between
UNESCO and HIST, which is hosted at AIR, CAS.
Firstly, GUO thanked Kalonji for her attention to and support for
HIST’s work. He introduced HIST’s current stage of development since its
establishment in July 2011 and the preparatory work for the 1st International
Workshop on Space Technologies for World Heritage and the 4th International
Conference on Remote Sensing in Archaeology (ICRSA4), which will be hosted by
HIST and AIR. Both sides also exchanged views on the overall assessment of
the UNESCO category II centre. The preparation of the 35th International
Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment (ISRSE35) was also discussed.
Kalonji spoke highly of HIST’s progress and expressed that she would
seek to participate in ICRSA4 and the 2nd Session of the Governing Board of
HIST. She gladly accepted an invitation to write welcoming remarks for the
website of ICRSA4. Kalonji showed interest in the 1st International Workshop on
Space Technologies for World Heritage and inquired in detail about the
workshop’s scale, trainee resources, content, funding, and other matters. She expressed
her best wishes for thefuture workofHIST, ICRSA4 and ISRSE35.
Dr. Ramasamy Jayakumar, Programme Specialist at the UNESCO Beijing
office, WANG Xinyuan, Deputy Director of HIST, HONG Tianhua, Deputy Director of
HIST, and LIU Jie, Deputy Secretary-General of HIST, were also present.
Dr. Gretchen Kalonji presents the UNESCO Science Report to AIR Director-General GUO Huadong
Representatives from UNESCO and AIR at the UNESCO Beijing office
