CFP: Data & sustainable development

Sustainable developpement seen from above: a focus on remote sensing

For the first edition of its annual international symposium, “Sorbonne Développement Durable” (SDD) in partnership with the Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne (CES), l’Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), and the Labex Dynamite (LabEx) invites you to submit proposals and partake in an international conference centered on sustainable development. This new edition will revolve around the many contributions remote sensing can make in tackling the various challenges of sustainable development. 

The first edition will take place from December 5 to 7, 2022 and will be held across two venues: the Sorbonne and the Cité du Développement Durable. The conference will be held in English and French with participants in Paris or online if travel restrictions dictate. Two submission formats will be accepted: a poster proposal1 or a conventional proposal for 30-minutes-long presentations (20 minutes presentation and 10 minutes of questions & answers).

Sustainable development in today's world

The first day, interdisciplinary by nature, will put the question of sustainable development into perspective given the particularly alarming context in which we now find ourselves. While the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report emphasises the need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in the next ten years, the war in Ukraine highlights the fragility of humanity when faced with the need to adapt rapidly. After two years of pandemic-driven strain, health care’s status as a common good and a pillar of sustainable development has never been so relevant. 

What lessons should we take away from the Covid-19 crisis? How starting from this observation, can we react in a multidisciplinary way, put forward the results of our work, and above all convince people that we must act now? 

In order to respond to this global observation, all disciplines will be involved. A singular and collective diagnosis is needed more than ever at a time when the alliance of research skills is demonstrating its ability to contribute to the resilience-building process. Against this backdrop, the arts will play a role of scientific coordination that is now widely considered at the international level.

Remote sensing as a tool for research on sustainable development

The second day will tackle issues tied to measurement and data, focusing on the role of satellite data in measuring the extent of the climate emergency. It is now possible to visualize the consequences of human development on territories and the environment in real-time but also retroactively looking at decades of human activity. The data produced by satellites’ instruments allow us to monitor change in our climate and atmospheric disturbances, but also anthropogenic phenomena such as urban sprawl, agricultural expansion and deforestation at increasingly fine levels of resolution. Satellite data are used operationally by several international organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations or the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) (Institute for Environment and Sustainability), often in conjunction with space agencies (e.g. the European Space Agency (ESA) Earth Observation for Sustainable Development program) to provide freely available indicators for users who are not necessarily experts in the physics of remote sensing. In parallel, space agencies provide open access to remote sensing data at different levels of pre-processing to build on the raw radiometry to develop new applications.

Contributions are expected at all scales, on all components of the Earth system, based on all forms of remote sensing whether it be operational products or raw remote sensing data.

The epistemology of data used to analyse sustainable development

The third day, under the sign of social sciences and critical thought, will be devoted to the role of the methods used in the social sciences, within the perception of the socio-economic world and in the prioritization of subjects dealing with significant issues such as the environment. From a critical examination of the world of numbers in which we live to that of the measurement and instruments that we use, this day will aim to define exactly what realities we measure and count, and even to take a critical step back from the theoretical constructions and statistical concepts that result from them. 

The objective of the conference is to question the very rich databases used today by the human, social and legal sciences as well as the biases induced by these quantitative approaches and how to best mitigate them. More generally, it will attempt to settle on an epistemological view of how the sciences approach the SDGs and the environmental transition. Based on the results of our 2019 international conference «From perception to climate action», it will be accompanied by artistic interventions and workshops that will raise public and stakeholder awareness of the transition, the common good, and our relationship with Nature through image, sound, voice, etc.

Sorbonne Sustainable Development is an association bringing together more than a hundred university researchers from all disciplines (humanities, economics and law), affiliated with the UN and established within the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, the first university to be fully COP certified and a member of the United Nations Academic Impact program, as well as Global Compact/PRME (a program linked to the Principles for Responsible Management Training). It is also a founding member of the UNA Europa Alliance and is part of the Sustainability Task Force, comprising an alliance of nine European universities. Thanks to the richness of Sorbonne’s disciplines, SDD is the ideal location for the organization of an open and systemic dialogue between disciplines, capable of thinking transversally and plurally about societal transformations. SDD’s ambition is to train a new generation of researchers and decision-makers who will have the disciplinary and interdisciplinary expertise necessary to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Submission guidelines

To register for the first edition of SDD’s international symposium, you must provide the following documents in French or in English using this link : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ig3bm-UV17jS7ikZoRj36fVnMNpfhrjf/view

before September 30, 2022.

• A curriculum vitae including a short biography at the top or bottom of the page in PDF format.
• A proposal (max 1000 words) in English or French. 
• Name of the PDF: “Application - Last name - First name”. 
• When applying, you must choose between the poster session and the conventional presentation format.
• All applications submitted will be made available for viewing on the conference website.

Doctoral students registered at a university in a low-income country who would like to apply for financial support must mention this at the time of submission (subject to availability of funds and presentation of proof).

Scientific Committee

Brice Anselme, Rémi Bazillier, Jean-Claude Berthelemy, Elodie Bertrand, Lisa Chauvet, Nicolas Delbart, Ariane Dupont Kieffer, Etienne Espagne, Anne Le Naëlou, Antoine Mandel, Kathia Martin-Chenut, Mathilde Maurel, Emmanuel Picavet, Florent Pratlong, Josselin Thuillez, Yann Toma, Thomas Vendryes, Stéphane Zuber.

Organizing committee

• Lila Cazier,
• Fatoumata Nankoto Cissé,
• Stephen Jackson,
• Hugo Lapeyronie,
• Thomas Pernet-Coudrier,
• Alessia Sanna,
• Laurine Wagner.

(Using an A0 sheet of paper, you will summarize the main steps of your approach: data, methodology and main results. You will have the opportunity to discuss the content of the poster with the audience and the experts present. You can find examples of posters via the following link: https://ur.umbc.edu/poster-presentation-examples/)