The IAG Newsletter is under the editorial responsibility of the Communication and Outreach Branch (COB) of the IAG. It is an open forum, and contributors are welcome to send material (preferably in electronic form) to the IAG COB (http://newsletter@iag-aig.org). These contributions should complement information sent by IAG officials or by IAG symposia organizers (reports and announcements). The IAG Newsletter is published monthly. It is available in different formats from the IAG internet site: http://www.iag-aig.org.

Each IAG Newsletter includes several of the following topics:

  1. i.

    General information.

  2. ii.

    Reports of IAG symposia.

  3. iii.

    Reports by commissions, special commissions or study groups.

  4. iv.

    Symposia announcements.

  5. v.

    Book reviews.

  6. vi.

    Fast bibliography.


Obituary

Adam Chrzanowski (1932–2020)

Professor emeritus Adam Chrzanowski died on Friday, June 12, 2020.

Adam was born in 1932 in Kraków Poland, the city where he grew up and obtained a bachelor’s, a master’s, and a doctoral degree from the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy (now the AGH University of Science and Technology). He served as faculty member of AGH from 1956 until 1964, when he moved to Canada to take over an NRC postdoctoral fellowship at the then Department of Surveying Engineering at the University of New Brunswick (UNB). Two years later, he was appointed as a faculty member of the department and he never left us. He remained active until his last breath, a full 56 years in various capacities. Adam served as chair of the Department of Surveying Engineering at UNB between 1990 and 1992, leading the process that led its renaming to Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering. He has also served as Director of the Canadian Centre for Geodetic Engineering at UNB since 2011 and Vice- President of Monitoring Systems, Ltd. since 2006.

figure a

Adam was a leading expert in mining and engineering surveys, and his contributions have touched many individuals and institutions around the world. Among his major accomplishments were participation in the Mt. Kennedy mapping expedition in 1965, implementation of emerging laser technology in new surveying techniques of high precision, pioneering application of GPS in ground subsidence studies in the 1980s, development of a generalized method of geometrical analysis of structural and ground deformations, development of fully automated deformation monitoring systems, and development of integrated analysis of structural and rock mass deformations. Highlights of his contributions to engineering and mining surveying include subsidence studies in the oil fields of Venezuela; monitoring of tectonic movements in Peru; design of geodetic control and tunnelling surveys for the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas; monitoring and analysis of dam deformations in Canada, Pakistan, and the USA; and monitoring of slope stability in open pit mines in Canada, Chile, and Poland.

Adam co-founded the International Society of Mine Surveying and authored or co-authored over 300 papers and seven books on geodetic, engineering, urban, and mining surveys, including the very influential Urban Surveying and Mapping. He also held visiting appointments at several universities around the world and received honorary degrees from the Technical University of Mining and Metallurgy in Kraków, the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, and the Technical University of Surveying and Mapping in Wuhan.

In addition to his teaching and mentoring duties, Adam was a foreign member of both the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also won many other national and international awards, including the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit (awarded by the president of Poland) in 1995 and the Gold Medal of Merit from the Ministry of Resources (Poland) in 2000, among others.

In 2014, Adam Chrzanowski delivered a lecture during an event celebrating his 50 years of professional life at UNB. A video of this lecture can be found on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbnU7oWcyxo).

Marcelo Santos