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FALL 2024 NEWSLETTER

December 2, 2024

This is a bumper edition of the newsletter! Read below for changes in the Society’s social media outreach channels, a summary of a satellite conference in Nanjing, news relating to members and more.

You will see a summary of the Society’s accounts for the latest year with more information on the website here (for iEMSs members). These annual accounts are the 13th provided from the stellar service to iEMSs by Ioannis Athanasiadis. I thank him for his amazing service to iEMSs and for his assistance in handing over to the new Treasurer, Sue Cuddy. We were fortunate with a strong management team around the 2024 conference so despite low numbers it broke even. With Dublin being an attractive location for many and relatively easy to get to, we look forward to a bounce-back to pre-COVID numbers. See below for the confirmed conference dates for your diaries! The Proceedings for the 2024 conference have now been produced and are fully citable. The Proceedings are now available here. Many thanks to Stefan Reis for all the work in completing the compilation. – Val Snow, iEMSs President

iEMSs 2026 in University College Dublin (UCD) Dublin, Ireland

We are delighted to confirm the dates of 12-16 July 2026 for the 13th iEMSs conference at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland, convened by David Ayala-Cabrera and Soumyabrata Dev.UCD is Ireland’s largest university, blending over 160 years of history with modern facilities. The conference venue will be O’Reilly Hall within the main campus within Dublin City. Dublin is well connected to direct routes from Europe and North America and the city is well-served by public transportation. The conference location will offer a good range of accommodation options ranging from university halls to near-by hotels.

We anticipate that Dublin and Ireland will be an attractive destination for Society members. The Irish are world renowned for their hospitality and Dublin is a city of contrasts, blending historic charm with modern sophistication.

We look forward to seeing you in Dublin!

Dr. Pouyan Nejadhashemi named director of MSU Institute of Water Research effecti

New director named for MSU Institute of Water Research

Michigan State University Research Foundation Professor Pouyan Nejadhashemi has been named director of the MSU Institute of Water Research (IWR) effective Oct. 15, 2024. The position is a 50% appointment, and Nejadhashemi will continue to serves as a professor in the departments of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering and Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences. His work is also supported in part by MSU AgBioResearch. As an expert in ecohydrology, which delves into how water interacts with ecological systems, his research uses leading-edge tools to model water use and address issues such as monitoring per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) chemicals in Michigan drinking water using machine learning.

Nejadhashemi’s world-renowned research program has received significant funding, including grants from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. As IWR director, Nejadhashemi will deliver strategic vision and oversight of institute initiatives, increase the scholarly activity of IWR and strengthen its reputation at the local, state and national levels. One of his primary responsibilities is to foster a culture within IWR of transparency, diversity, equity and inclusion.

He will collaborate with the water research community at MSU and externally — in addition to state and federal agencies, nongovernmental organizations, tribal groups and other stakeholders — on challenges related to water use, availability and quality in Michigan, the Great Lakes region and beyond. On top of his administrative duties, Nejadhashemi will be tasked with obtaining and increasing funding to IWR efforts, as well as serving as the principal investigator on new research projects.

“We’re fortunate to bring Pouyan into this position given his vast expertise in water research and ecohydrology,” said George Smith, director of AgBioResearch, who will supervise Nejadhashemi in his IWR role. “He has demonstrated success in developing impactful water research, and his leadership will be critical to IWR’s growth and future. I look forward to partnering with him to broaden IWR’s reach.”

The IWR is one of 54 water institutes across the country created under the Water Resources Research Act of 1964 and receives funding from the U.S. Geological Survey.

The organization is dedicated to developing science-based technology, research, educational programs and partnerships to help understand and address critical water issues. Current IWR research and outreach explores risks and opportunities with groundwater management, develops methods to improve water quality for agriculture and local communities, examines PFAS risks and mitigation, reduces nutrient runoff and harmful algal blooms, and protects Michigan’s lakes and streams, among other topics.

“It’s an honor to be named IWR director, a position of great strategic importance to current and future MSU research and outreach,” Nejadhashemi said. “Understanding more about how we use water and the threats to water availability and quality are paramount to Michigan and around the world. With our state’s proximity to an abundance of fresh water in the Great Lakes region, it’s our responsibility to ensure this precious resource is actively managed and protected.”

Prior to Nejadhashemi’s appointment, Dana Infante, chair of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, was serving as interim IWR director.

Treasurer’s Report

You will see a summary of the Society’s accounts for the latest year with more information here. We were fortunate with a strong management team around the 2024 conference so despite low numbers it broke even. With Dublin being an attractive location for many and relatively easy to get to, we are look forward to a bounce-back to pre-COVID numbers. See below for the confirmed conference dates for your diaries!

These annual accounts are the 13th provided from the stellar service to iEMSs by Ioannis Athanasiadis. I thank him for his amazing service to iEMSs and for his assistance in handing over to the new Treasurer, Sue Cuddy.

iEMSs Membership Details

Please remember to update/renew your membership in the Society. Go to the website and log into your account. That will open some information about your membership. You can update contact details etc. under “My profile” while “My membership” will allow you to renew your membership. Click on “Renew” and select a category. If you attended iEMSs 2024 then you have already paid your dues (but you still need to confirm the renewal). If you were not at iEMSs 2024 then the dues range from €10-40 (to take membership up to August 2026) for depending on what category you fall into.

@iEMSs moves to BlueSky

In the view of the direction that X, aka Twitter, has taken in recent months and the expressed values of the corporation owning the network, which are incompatible with ours, iEMSs has followed many not-for-profit organisations and other scientific groupings and moved to Bluesky. The iEMSs feed can be found at @iemss.org and hopefully many of you will be able to follow us there, and get followed back from our account. The iEMSs X/Twitter account will be closed down permanently soon. Of course, we are still keeping our website running, and feel free to join our LinkedIn group, or the WeChat network run by our colleagues in China.

26th Internal Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM2025)

The 26th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM2025) will be held at the Adelaide Convention Centre from Sunday 30 November to Thursday 4 December 2025. The topical streams can already be found here. The call for session organisers to submit session proposals to these streams will shortly open, please keep an eye on the website https://www.mssanz.org.au/modsim2025/ for further details.

Dr. 3rd International Workshop on Geographic Modelling and Simulation was Successfully Held

The 3rd International Workshop on Geographic Modeling and Simulation was successfully held at Nanjing Normal University (Suiyuan Campus) from October 26th to October 27th, 2024. With the theme ‘Modeling and Simulation for a Sustainable World’, the workshop focused on theories, approaches, technologies and solutions of geographic modeling and simulation, while exploring the challenges and applications of sustainable development. The workshop was jointly organized by School of Geography Science, Nanjing Normal University, China, Key Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment (Ministry of Education of PRC), Nanjing Normal University, China and International Geographical Union – Modeling Geographical Systems Commission. It also received strong support from co-organizers, including the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society, The International Association of Chinese Professionals in Geographic Information Sciences, Geographic Model and Geographic Information Analysis Commission, The Geographical Society of China, and so on.

The opening ceremony was held on October 26th morning, chaired by Prof. Changchun Huang (Dean of School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University). Prof. Linwang Yuan (Vice principal, Nanjing Normal University), Prof. Michael Meadows (Past president of the IGU, University of Cape Town) and Prof. Val Snow (President of the IEMSs, AgResearch) delivered welcome speeches.

After the opening ceremony, the following distinguished speakers delivered keynote presentations on various topics:

  1. Speaker: Prof. Stewart Fotheringham, Academician of U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Arizona State University.
    • Title: Measuring the unmeasurable: models of geographic context.
  2. Speaker: Prof. Jun Xia, Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan University.
    • Title: Developing water systems science and technology in large river basins.
  3. Speaker: Prof. Xin Li, Deputy Director of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
    • Title: Modeling complex human–natural system at the river basin scale in the AI and big data era.
  4. Speaker: Prof. Paul Longley, Academician of Academy of Social Sciences, University College London, UK.
    • Title: Individual level modelling and simulation.
  5. Speaker: Prof. Josef Strobl, Academician of Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Salzburg.
    • Title: Online DEMs: terrain representations for modeling and simulation.
  6. Speaker: Prof. Anthony Jakeman, Fellow of American Geophysical Union, Australian National University.
    • Title: Managing and reducing uncertainty for grand challenge problems: focus on water quality modelling.
  7. Speaker: Prof. Jinfeng Wang, Distinguish Professor, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
    • Title: Beyond the 1st & 2nd laws of geography: modelling for spatial stratified heterogeneous data.
  8. Speaker: Prof. Kazuhito Ichii, Deputy Director of the Center for Environmental Remote Sensing, Chiba University.
    • Title: Monitoring terrestrial carbon cycle across Asia in the era of earth observation big data.
  9. Speaker: Prof. Mei-Po Kwan, Academician of Academy of Social Sciences, Chinese University of Hong Kong.
    • Title: Advanced geospatial modeling in human mobility and health research.
  10. Speaker: Prof. Niklas Boers, Researcher of the Technical University of Munich.
    • Title: Machine learning for earth system modelling.
  11. Speaker: Prof. Stefan Reis, Past President of the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society, DLR Projektträger.
    • Title: Integrated environmental modelling and simulation to tackle the triple existential crisis.
  12. Speaker: Prof. Min Chen, President of the International Association of Chinese Professionals in Geographic Information Sciences (CPGIS), the Vice-President of the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society (iEMSs), Nanjing Normal University.
    • Title: Geographic modeling and simulation in the AI era.

At the welcome gala dinner on October 26th evening, Prof. Min Chen hosted the award ceremony for the 2024 International Geographical Union (IGU) Outstanding Achievement Award in Geographical Information Modeling (OAA) and the Young Scholar Award (YSA). Prof. Pankaj Kumar from the University of Delhi, and Prof. Guonian Lv from Nanjing Normal University presented certificates and trophies to the awardees.

On October 27th, 97 oral presentations were delivered in 4 parallel sessions, covering 13 themes including “Theories, Methodologies, and Applications of Earth System Models”, “Big Data Analytics, Modeling, Simulation, and AI in Health Geography”, and “Intelligent Simulation of Spatiotemporal Processes”.

After the conclusion of the parallel sessions, the closing ceremony was hosted by Prof. Min Chen, who summarized the achievements of the conference and presented certificates to the winners of the “Best Paper Awards”. The conference attracted over 160 experts and scholars from 48 universities and research institutes across 11 countries and regions, facilitating in-depth exchanges among international experts and strengthening collaboration and friendships among participants.

Dr. David Swayne Obituary

SWAYNE, Dr. David Allan Butler: September 5th 1945 – October 13th, 2024

Dr. David Allan Butler passed away suddenly in London, Ontario on Sunday, October 13th, 2024 at the age of 79 years. David was born in Smiths Falls, Ontario on September 5, 1945 to Clarence (1973) and Thressa (nee Droppo; 1995) Swayne. He was the loving husband of Dianne Swayne for 54 years. Loving father of Stephanie (Paul Buchan), Seanna (Tim Costello), and Leigh Anne (Brent Shantz). Doting grandfather of Izak Buchan and David Gnepe. Dear brother-in-law of Ronald and Susan White, and Brenda Lee and Daniel McNiven. Dearly missed by Dwayne, Sara, Mike, and Jeff Edgerton, and Clair, Charis, and Felica Kelso and many nieces and nephews.

David obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in (1975) and was a long-time professor at the University of Guelph. He was instrumental in establishing the University of Guelph-Humber. He was very proud of his long-term work with Canada Centre for Inland Waters and Environment Canada as a private consultant in the early days of artificial intelligence and environmental modelling. His work in this area also took him to many parts of the globe (where he made lasting friendships), including Ethiopia, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, Scotland, England, Central and South America (and many more). David loved to ski, travel and enjoy a hearty meal with loved ones, often prepared by him. He excelled at many sports throughout his childhood and early adulthood, including basketball, hockey, running and tennis. Later in life, he became an avid crossfitter(!). He was an intense sports fan, cheering on his daughters in a variety of sports, and as a many-years-running president of the “6th player [basketball fan] club” and academic mentor to University of Guelph men’s basketball players, and as a dedicated fan of March Madness U.S. College basketball. He loved to spend time with Dianne and “the three girls” and organized many an adventure for them (in various Volkswagen vans). He loved dogs, especially his little 1.5 pound teacup poodle, Zena. He cherished sharing stories of his travels and his vast knowledge of many subjects with his grandsons, as well as cheering them on for all their activities and sports. Although the pandemic years were isolating, he kept them well supplied with Lego and other past times and he designed and helped construct a two-storey tree fort to make sure they were happy. He will be fondly remembered by family and friends alike for his quick wit, friendliness and generosity of spirit.

David’s family will receive relatives and friends from 4:00-6:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 19, 2024 at the Henry Walser Funeral Home, 507 Frederick Street, Kitchener, 519-749-8467. Memorial will be held in the funeral home chapel on Sunday, October 20, 2024 at 11:00 a.m. Reception to follow.

Condolences for the family and donations to, St. Mary’s Hospital Foundation-Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, and University of Guelph – Athletic Scholarships may be arranged through the Henry Walser Funeral Home (519-749-8467.)

Visit www.henrywalser.com for David’s memorial.

Featured

SUMMER 2024 NEWSLETTER

August 26, 2024

In this issue:

iEMSs 2026 in University College Dublin (UCD) Dublin, Ireland

We are delighted to announce that the 13th iEMSs conference will be convened by David Ayala-Cabrera and Soumyabrata Dev at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland.


Dr David Ayala-Cabrera is an Assistant Professor at UCD, with a focus on civil engineering and environmental modelling. His research is dedicated to advancing sustainable infrastructure and improving water resource management.
Dr Soumyabrata Dev is an Assistant Professor at UCD, specialising in machine learning, computer vision, and remote sensing. His work is at the forefront of applying artificial intelligence to address pressing global challenges, including climate change and environmental monitoring.

UCD is Ireland’s largest university, blending over 160 years of history with modern facilities. The conference venue will be O’Reilly Hall within the main campus within Dublin City. Dublin is well connected to direct routes from Europe and North America and the city is well-served by public transportation. The conference location will offer a good range of accommodation options ranging from university halls to near-by hotels.

We anticipate that Dublin and Ireland will be an attractive destination for Society members. The Irish are world renowned for their hospitality and Dublin is a city of contrasts, blending historic charm with modern sophistication.

Conference dates are yet to be confirmed (our preferred dates are waitlisted) but will be in late June or July. Please look out for an announcement soon!

We look forward to seeing you in Dublin!

iEMSs 2024 at Michigan State University in East Lansing, USA

From 23 to 27 June 2024, we gathered on the Michigan State University (MSU) campus in East Lansing to hold our 12th biennial conference with the overarching motto “Addressing Global Environmental Challenges Through Intelligent Modelling”. Our MSU colleagues had set up a great event with short connections between the meeting rooms and accommodation, and we were delighted to welcome more than 180 participants from 21 countries. On Sunday evening, we gathered for early registration and an icebreaker reception in the lovely outdoor grounds of the Kellogg Centre, and on Monday morning, we formally opened the conference with welcoming words from the MSU President and the Director of AgBioResearch, followed by a very engaging keynote presentation by Whitney Gravelle, President and member of the Executive Council of the Bay Mills Indian Community. Whitney focused on the most pressing environmental topics in Michigan and beyond from the perspective of an Indigenous community and the role that environmental science and modelling can play in finding solutions to these challenges.

Following a busy day of parallel sessions and workshops, we gathered for an opening reception. For the plenary session on Tuesday, we welcomed Barbara Robson, Leader of the Tropical Marine Water Quality and Impacts team at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, talking about ‘Assessing model “fitness for purpose” in the context of long-term change’. After a further set of parallel sessions and workshops, the iEMSs committee on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion met, and conference participants had the opportunity to meet the editors of SESMO and Environmental Modelling & Software to ask questions or discuss particular topics.

Our Wednesday was opened by another excellent keynote speaker, Mariana Rufino, Chair of Livestock Systems at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. She elaborated on the topic of “Smart Grazing: digital tech and models to improve the sustainability of livestock” and gave us her insights into the role of environmental software and modelling in agriculture, with a wider view of current challenges. After more sessions and workshops, we all gathered at the MSU Football Stadium, home of the Spartans, for our banquet and used this occasion to honor our awardees of Fellowships, Early Career Research Excellence prizes and the Biennial Medals, which had been selected as usual in the odd year (Fellowships) and earlier in 2024 (ECREs and Medals). Here, we also announced that iEMSs 2026 will tentatively be held in Dublin, Ireland, with details yet to be finalized.

Our final day, Thursday, started without a plenary session, and after several more parallel sessions and workshops, we gathered for a joint lunch and presented the awards for the best student presentations before closing the 2024 iEMSs biennial conference.

#OSIRIS Survey on Computational Reproducibility

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Elevate science by taking part in the #OSIRIS survey on computational reproducibility!

The EU-funded OSIRIS project aims to provide evidence-based solutions to support reproducibility in the scientific process. 

Computational reproducibility is an important aspect of the work. Considering the rapid development of digitalization, this survey aims to point out interesting details about recent practices, issues and challenges.

Researchers of the environmental modelling community are invited to contribute to the important topic of science reproducibility by filling the survey and by providing their views and insights.

Survey is available here: https://onlinekutatas.uni-mate.hu/index.php/617368?lang=en

Open until the end of Sept 2024.

*****************************************************************

Featured

iEMSs 2024 Student Awards

July 14, 2024

We had a large volume of excellent student presentations again at iEMSs 2024 and with the help of the session organisers and additional volunteer judges, awarded the following student prizes1 in East Lansing on the final day of the conference:

1st prize: Douglas Radford for „Process-based aggregation reduces dimensionality and enables surrogate model development: An application to wildfire risk modelling“

2nd prize: Palok Biswas for „Equity-Informed Multi-objective Optimization: Examining the Regional Distribution of Emission Control“

And a joint 3rd prize:
Samira Islam for „Tracking Leakage in Water Distribution Networks Using Multi-Agent Systems, Machine Learning, and GPR “
and
Jiayu Yao for “Water distribution system design under long-term uncertainty considering solar energy as a supplementary energy source”

We congratulate all awardees and will send a formal award certificate out to each of them in due course.

1) The awards will comprise the following:
1st prize – free registration at student’s preferred iEMSs, regional iEMSs or MODSIM and to be taken before the end of 2028.
2nd prize – €500 to be applied towards travel to iEMSs, regional iEMSs or MODSIM before the end of 2028.
3rd prize €250 to be applied towards travel to iEMSs, regional iEMSs or MODSIM before the end of 2028.

Featured

iEMSs Biennial General Meeting (BGM) 2024

July 8, 2024

Dear iEMSs Members,

To mark the transfer of leadership to the newly elected president, office and board, we invite all iEMSs members to participate in the iEMSs Biennial General Meeting, which we will organise on August 5, 2024 in two sessions to accommodate all member time zones to the extent possible. The first session will run at 6 a.m. UTC and the second session at 8 p.m. UTC. We will send out a detailed email with agenda and meeting registration (likely through ZOOM) in the next couple of weeks.

Please save the date and we look forward to meet virtually with many of you on this occasion.

With best regards, Val, Stefan & Takuya

Featured

iEMSs 2024 Awards presented

June 27, 2024

The iEMSs Board has confirmed the 2024 awards proposed by the Awards Committee and we have presented them at the iEMSs Biennial Conference in East Lansing to announce and celebrate outstanding contributions to the Society in the following categories:

Biennial Medals

  • Min Chen
  • Dan Ames
  • Tony Jakeman

Early Career Research Excellence Prizes (ECREs)

  • Lieke Melsen
  • Jeffrey Sadler
  • Jazmin Zatarain Salazar
  • Razi Sheikholeslami
Featured

Congratulations to the 2023 iEMSs Fellows

March 7, 2024

We are delighted to announce, that following nominations and evaluation by our awards committee, the following new iEMSs Fellowships have been awarded:

  • Dr. Nagesh Kolagani, who is a Professor at the School of Engineering and Technology, Centurion University of Technology and Management, India
  • Dr. Ibrahim Demir, Robert and Virginia Wheeler Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering, The University of Iowa

We look forward to celebrate the two fellows along with other awardees at our upcoming biennial conference in East Lansing in June, but I would like to express my gratitude for their support of iEMSs and the field of environmental modelling and software over many years already now.

Office

July 10, 2024

The iEMSs Office (2024-2026)

President 

Val Snow, AgResearch, New Zealand

Secretary

Takuya Iwanaga, Australian Institute of Marine Science, Australia

Treasurer

Ioannis Athanasiadis, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Vice -presidents

  • Marina Erechtchoukova, York University, Canada
  • Min Chen, Nanjing Normal University, China
  • Peter Khaiter, York University, Canada
  • Sondoss Elsawah, UNSW, Australia

Arbitrators

Carlo Lepori, IDSIA, Lugano, Switzerland
Andrea-Emilio Rizzoli, IDSIA USI/SUPSI, Switzerland

The iEMSs Board and the iEMSs Office are in charge for 2 years, new elections will be held in 2024, before the iEMSs 2024 biennial meeting.

Past-presidents

2020-2024 Stefan Reis, UKCEH, United Kingdom

2016-2020 Dan Ames, Brigham Young University, United States

2012-2016: Andrea Emilio Rizzoli, IDSIA, Switzerland

2008-2012: Alexey Voinov, ITC, U Twente, The Netherlands

2004-2008: Giorgio Guariso, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, EU

2000-2004: Anthony J. Jakeman, Australian National University, Australia.

Board

July 10, 2024

The iEMSs Board of Directors (2024-2026)

In addition to the Office members, the following iEMSs members compose the Board of Directors:

  • Dan Ames
  • Ioannis Athanasiadis
  • Susan Cuddy
  • Karina Gibert
  • Tony Jakeman
  • Chris Knightes
  • Junzhi Liu
  • Pouyan Nejadhashemi
  • Cheng-Zhi Qin
  • Saman Razavi
  • Stefan Reis
  • Andrea Rizzoli
  • Wenyan Wu
  • Fengyuan Zhang

The iEMSs Board  are in charge for 2 years, new elections will be held in 2026, prior to the Biennial Meeting.

SPRING 2024 NEWSLETTER 2

May 28, 2024

In this issue:

iEMSs Elections: Vote by 28 May 2024

Please cast your votes by May 28th midnight CEST.

Use this form:  https://iemss.org/home/elections2024/

As a reminder: 

Elections Timeline

March 8th – Circulate Information Letter # 1 to membership
March 15th – Call for nominations opens
April 22nd – Closing date for nominations
May 5th – Open the online form for vote casting
May 28th – Closing date for election votes
June 10th – Finalize results of elections
June 26th – Announcement of the election results at the Biennial Conference in Michigan and on the iEMSs website

iEMSs REGISTRATION – Regular Registration ends 2 June 2024

Registration for the event is now open. Regular registration ends 2 June 2024You can register by visiting: https://events.anr.msu.edu/iEMSs/. Registration includes the iEMSs 2 year membership fee, program materials, and several meals and beverages throughout the event. An outline of the membership fees are below:

Professional Online Registration

  • Regular Registration: US$995 (27 April 2024 to 2 June 2024)
  • Late Registration: US$1195 (3 June 2024 to 19 June 2024)

Student Online Registration

  • Regular Registration: US$595 (27 April 2024 to 2 June 2024)
  • Late Registration: US$795 (3 June 2024 to 19 June 2024)

To learn more or register visit: https://conference.iemss.org/

SPRING 2024 NEWSLETTER

March 14, 2024

In this issue:

iEMSs 2024 Biennial Conference –

Abstract submissions extended to 19 April 2024

Call for Abstracts for iEMSs 2024, abstracts are currently being accepted. Deadline for submission has been extended to 19 April 2024! Submit Abstracts here:
https://proceedings.iemss.org/index.php/2024/about/submissions

Session convenors: please assess all abstracts as they are submitted.

To enable travel decisions based on an accepted submission, please consider submitting your abstracts as soon as possible.

As a quick reminder and background: the iEMSs Board and Office have decided to move to a model with extended abstracts (max. 2 pages including references) only. This is because there is substantial additional effort required to manage the review process and to ensure that conference proceedings were edited and made available online open access in an acceptable amount of time. Download figures for full conference papers, and the major hurdles of getting proceedings and full papers of a comparatively smaller conference indexed in Web of Science or Scopus did not justify that effort. In addition, we are publishing SESMO, our full open access journal, and edit Environmental Modelling and Software, which provide excellent outlets for full manuscripts which may emerge from iEMSs biennial conferences. Specific communications around opportunities for special issues and general submissions to both journals in the context of iEMSs 2024 as an excellent venue for publishing full manuscripts will be made in due course.

We will gather feedback after the 2024 conference and report back to the new Office and Board to be elected next year to review this approach in time for the 2026 conference and beyond.

Secondly, after working with several different conference management and abstract handling systems over the years, we have decided to invest some efforts in setting up the Open Journal System (OJS), which is used as well to publish SESMO. Along with setting up a persistent conference website as part of the iEMSs domain, the plan is to trial OJS for the 2024 conference, gather feedback and learning points, and if all goes well, we will go with this setup for all future conferences. This will have several benefits, including the ease of generating open access proceedings directly in the iEMSs online presence and close to, if not even before the actual conference. In addition, it would give abstract authors, session organisers and stream convenors the same user experience every time, without the need to adapt to a new system again and again.

We will be working with session organisers and stream convenors as we run this new setup for a first time in the run up to June. We may hit a bump or two and experience some hiccups, but the potential advantages operating our own setup will streamline our conference organization in the future and benefit local organisers and scientific committees going forward.

iEMSs REGISTRATION – Early Bird extended to 26 April 2024

Registration for the event is now open. You can register by visiting: https://events.anr.msu.edu/iEMSs/. Registration includes the iEMSs 2 year membership fee, program materials, and several meals and beverages throughout the event. An outline of the membership fees are below:

Professional Online Registration

  • Early Bird Registration: US$795 (until 26 April 2024)
  • Regular Registration: US$995 (27 April 2024 to 2 June 2024)
  • Late Registration: US$1195 (3 June 2024 to 19 June 2024)

Student Online Registration

  • Early Bird Registration: US$395 (until 26 April 2024)
  • Regular Registration: US$595 (27 April 2024 to 2 June 2024)
  • Late Registration: US$795 (3 June 2024 to 19 June 2024)

To learn more or register visit: https://conference.iemss.org/

iEMSs Elections

Elections Committee is holding elections to constitute a new Office and Board according to the Bylaws Articles V, VI and VII.

 Positions

The following positions are open for nominations:

(up to) 7 members of iEMSS Office

  • 1 iEMSs President;
  • 1 iEMSs Secretary;
  • 1 iEMSs Treasurer;
  • 4 iEMSs Vice-Presidents.

The iEMSs Secretary and the iEMSs Treasurer may be the same person.

  AND

  • 8-25 members of iEMSs Board.

Nominations

Nominations for the positions are invited to be submitted via online Form on the iEMSs website (https://iemss.org/home/elections2024-nominations/) during the period March 15th – April 15th, 2024. Please provide information about the candidate, including a short bio and motivation to run for the Board/Office.  Candidates for the Board are required to specify their previous contributions to the Society. Candidates for the Office are expected to additionally indicate specific areas of intended contribution to the society as an officer. Self-nominations are possible.

“Terms of members of the iEMSs Board and the iEMSs Office will be two years… Nominees are expected to have contributed actively to society activities and functions. Service contributions can include service as a session organizer, participation as an editor of the iEMSs conference proceedings, input as a group or thread moderator, and notable other efforts for the general benefit of the society” (Bylaws Article V.5).

Nominations for the iEMSs Office will also be considered as nominations for the iEMSs Board.

The candidate details will be made available online to all members of the iEMSs prior to the opening of the voting period.  

Electronic vote

Each active member of iEMSs will be invited to cast their vote through online Form (by login to the iEMSs website) during the period between April 30th and May 15th, 2024. The results of the vote will be validated by the Elections Committee and reported to the iEMSs President prior to the General Meeting and announced at the General Meeting during iEMSs 2024 Congress in East Lansing, Michigan, including the date for constituting the new Office to take over operations of iEMSs, as well as via email to the iEMSs membership.