The Establishment of Asian Association on Remote Sensing (AARS)
By Professor Shunji Murai, General Secretary , Asian Association on Remote Sensing

Friendship Hotel Beijing The birthplace of ACRS.

It was the second ACRS, held in Beijing, China when the AARS was established. When the first ACRS was held in Bangkok, Thailand, there was no organization. The National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) and Japan Association of Remote Sensing (JARS) sponsored the conference, but these were just only for the first conference. I helped a lot to the conference organization, but I did not have any official position. This was just my personal contribution.

When the national delegates were invited to VIP dinner party by JARS, we proposed to establish an organization. I prepared the draft Statutes, following the ones of International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS). But almost all delegates did not like a copy of Western society. The delegates present were from China (Prof. Yang Shi-ren), Bangla-desh (Dr. Prama-nik), Japan (my-self), Malaysia (Mr. Tim), Sri -Lanka (Mr. Chris-ty Nanayakkara) and Thailand (Mr. Suvit Vibulsresth, Mr. Manu Oma-kupt and Mr. Boonchana). It took three nights from 8:00 pm to midnight to reach the conclusions.

Firstly, we had hot discussion about the name. Three alternatives were Asian Association on Remote Sensing, Asian Association for Remote Sensing and Asian Association of Remote Sensing. It was Tim from Malaysia who strongly recommended "on" and never agreed with "of" nor "for". Almost more than an hour was spent until all agreed with "on".

Secondly, we discussed whether the AARS has the president who represents the association or not. The

Original Signitories of the AARS Statute

majority of delegates agreed that we should avoid the serious problem of seniority in Asia. We knew that there are many senior old people who want to become a president as the seniority symbol. Hence, we decided to have only General Secretary but not Secretary General who should work for Asian people as the secretariat. There was a consensus that I, as a Japanese, should contribute to the association as the first General Secretary.

Other items of the Statutes were made very loose, I should say flexible to be able to adjust easily problems in case of conflicts if we follow the spirit of Asian "friendship" or "family oriented rule" in the Asian tradition.

The delegates were requested to bring back the Statutes for the endorsement by the authorities in each country. In 1981, five countries; Bangladesh, Japan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Thailand joined as ordinary members of AARS officially. China requested me to wait one or two years till China establishes a National Committee for AARS, because there were too many remote sensing organizations in China to represent Chinese remote sensing scientists. China joined AARS officially in 1983 with the endorsement by the Chinese Government.

There were three things beyond my expectations; the first is that the AARS has expanded to 23 ordinary members as of 1998, such a big group, and the second is that I have continued to serve as the General Secretary from the start to now, such a long time and the third is that the ACRS survived until now without any specific fund except the continuous support by JARS with just 5,000~10,000 US dollars every year.

I believe that the reason why the ACRS together with the AARS survived for such long years is that the spirit of the ACRS has been "friendship first and money after".