ESA-EUSC-JRC 8th conference on image information mining: knowledge discovery from earth observation data. 24-26 October 2012, German Aerospace Centre (DLR) Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany

The Image Information Mining 2012 conference is the eighth in the series jointly organised by ESA and EUSC, and by JRC since 2009. It took place for the first time in the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) premises, Oberpfaffenhofen site (Germany), 24th--26th October 2012. Earth Observation (EO) data has increased significantly over the last decades with sensors collecting terabytes of data per day. Meanwhile, the advent of sub-meter resolution Optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors brought new dimensions to application areas with the consequence that the observed details has grown exponentially. Moreover, decades of EO image time series will be continued in the future describing land cover and/or scene evolution and dynamics. With plans for more missions and higher resolution EO systems, the challenge is increasingly going to be how to augment the usability of the millions of images being collected to a larger and larger group of end user applications (e.g., climate change, security, land use, etc.). This year's conference focuses on automation in support of applications and services for knowledge discovery from EO data, for which Image Information Mining plays a key role. Image Information Mining proves most successful when cross-cued from other disciplines. For this reason, the conference topics are broadened towards more generic Information Mining thanks to a series of keynote lectures in related fields. The conference proceedings include all contributions that have been accepted for oral and poster presentations.