President's Note

Date: March 15, 2021

Dear CPGIS members,

As the 2020-2021 CPGIS President, I would like to express my gratitude to all your support to me and the Association. My thanks also go to the immediate past presidents, Professors Qinghua Guo and Changshan Wu, the Board of Directors, and senior CPGIS veterans who have helped me settle in. All together, we are developing CPGIS toward a leading organization of GIScience worldwide.

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the world in all aspects, which has no exceptions to our CPGIS community. Adapting the new challenges, in 2021 we are going to carry on our annual CPGIS events in more of virtual/hybrid format:

·         The 2021 CPGIS Business Meeting will be held during AAG at 6:15-7:30PM (Pacific Time) on April 9, equivalent to 9:15-10:30AM (Beijing Time) on April 10. It will be a ZOOM meeting organized by AAG as one of its Special Events.

·         The 28th CPGIS Annual Conference (Geoinformatics 2021) will be held on August 8-10, 2021, at Nanchang, China. This hybrid conference has both onsite and virtual events. More details are available at http://www.cpgis2021.com/.

As online activities become essential nowadays, CPGIS has kicked off our online events this year. The most active example is the CPGIS Educational Webinar Series with support from our co-sponsors. The first series has a theme of “Spatiotemporal Study of Urban Dynamics” in a bi-weekly basis between February 25-May 6, followed by the “GeoAI” series in May-July. In alignment with the CPGIS Annual Conference, we will also switch our legacy GoHome lecturing events and themed summer workshops in a more flexible, virtual or hybrid format. As you may have noticed, CPGIS news and event flyers are now collaterally posted in multiple platforms: CPGIS WeChat Group; WeChat Public Account, Twitter, etc. aside from the conventional CPGIS website and CPGIS-L mail list. On behalf of the 2020-2021 President’s Office, Board of Directors, Regional Offices, and a list of energetic committees (https://www.cpgis.org/AboutCPGIS), I invite you all to participate in these exciting online events in an upfront post-pandemic year.

CPGIS has effectively promoted the interchanges of GIScience, both in academia and industry. As always, with your involvement and support, I fully believe that CPGIS will continue to succeed and play a much more important role in our society.

Sincerely,

Dr. Cuizhen (Susan) Wang, CPGIS President

Professor of Geography

University of South Carolina, USA