Suhaimi Napis, PhDChief Technology Officer (CTO) and Director,

InfoComm Development Centre (iDEC)Universiti Putra Malaysia

suhaimi@putra.upm.edu.my, s.napis@gmail.com

Director, E-Research Area, Malaysian Research and Education Network (MYREN)Vice Chair, ASEAN Science and Technology Research and Education Network Alliance (ASTRENA)Director, Natural Resource Area;Co-Chair, Agriculture WG, Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN)

NATURAL RESOURCE AREA

Session Activities Report

NR Area Report• Two presentations for Agriculture WG: New

horizons of agriculture with advanced ICT– Sensing Fusion Technologies, Takaharu Kameoka (Mie

Univ.)• From farm to fork (agriculture production)• Many companies (including Toyota) see that agriculture as

savior of current economic crisis (expect something within one year)

– Inspiring with New ICT, Masayuki Hirafuji (NARO / Univ. of Tsukuba)

• Centres around Field Server deployment in remote area of the world including Mount Everest

• Space and underground farming for food, therapy and wellness

Fate of NR Area

• Discussion on the present state of NR Area• Steady slowing down trend with fewer and

fewer presentations and identified possible main reasons:– Earth Monitoring was very active due to forest

fires in the South-East Asian region (Regional trans-border concerns)

– Presentations of NR topics in other Area/ WGs

• Brainstorming Session to see whether to continue or not the NR Area

Outcome of Discussion

• Intensive discussion with many ideas floating around

• Identified two key topics of regional concerns:– Avian Influenza from public health perspective– Biodiversity

• Many aspects of global concern and possible participations from various domains

• Came up with a general theme entitled “Integrative Science for Human Wellbeing”

Concluding remarks• Everybody is excited about the new conceptual

framework• Many potential opportunities for cross-, trans-,

meta-discipline research• Suggest Area Directors and WG Chairs to

seriously discuss: – how to organise the session presentation so that

there will be more streamlined and to the right group of people

– Make suggestions to presenters that their topics should be in another more relevant session

Concluding Remarks-cont.

• For APAN28 Kuala Lumpur, there is already ongoing discussion to host a GEO-BON meeting

• Unanimously agreed that we will continue to have NR Area and have another discussion in KL

TQ