The International Conference on Navigation and Communication (NAVCOM-2012) was held during 20 -21 December, 2012 at Hyderabad.

Sperry Marine business, a unit of Northrop Grumman Corporation (NOC), will supply advanced shipboard navigation systems for 20 fast patrol vessels under a contract with Indian reseller Marine Electricals Ltd. The systems will be supplied to Indian Coast Guard.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has launched its fi rst copy of the UAE’s electronic statistical atlas. It comes within the framework of the strategic initiatives of the NBS to meet requirements of data users. The atlas is the latest sophisticated data device linked to the GIS technologies and their applications. http://gulfnews.com

Europe’s third Galileo satellite has transmitted its first test navigation signals back to earth. The two Galileo satellites launched last October have reached their final orbital position and are in the midst of testing.

A Chinese Long March rocket successfully launched a Turkish remote sensing satellite last month. The 450-kilogram satellite, built by Turkey’s Space Technologies Research Institute and Turkish Aerospace Industries, Inc., with a camera system provided by South Korea, is designed to provide imagery of the Earth at resolutions as high as 2.5 meters. http://www.spacetoday.net/

Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, required researchers to beef up the security measures of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) and increase its capacity to ward off interference. The BDS began providing services to civilian users in China and surrounding areas in the Asia-Pacifi c region recently. He said the system has broken China’s reliance on foreign navigation systems and carries great signifi cance in safeguarding national security and promoting economic development. www.spacedaily.com.

Nowadays researchers and various users are very interested in urban applications at large scale, where small UAVs are very useful. In Photogrammetry, UAVs represent a very fl exible and low-cost platform which reduces data acquisition time and provides for high resolution and high accuracy data for small area modeling…

During and after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, about 20,000 persons died or are still missing, of which 92.5% were victims of the Tsunami. The fourth biggest earthquake plus Tsunami in history swept away 220,000 houses and 18,000 fi shing boats…

Polar motion refers to the earth rotation axis and surface intersection point’s slow moving on the earth surface [1], realtime acquisition of polar motion is of great signifi cance to high precision satellite navigation, satellite laser ranging and deep space exploration. At present, the international high accuracy polar motion value is obtained through VLBI and SLR technology observation data calculation…

Pilotless aerial vehicle systems (PAVs) have captured many people’s imaginations through the media as combat vehicles in various war zones around the world. These vehicles of combat have acquired the pejorative term ‘drone’ as these aircraft have ‘no intelligence’ and only respond by attacking positions identified by forward personnel on the ground…