The 54th Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN54) Meeting was held in Jinan, Shandong Province, China from the 22nd – 26th August, 2022. Due to the continued outbreak of COVID-19, the APAN Board and the Chinese LOC had decided to host the APAN meeting in a hybrid mode. Some participants from the Chinese mainland attended the meeting physically while other guests participated virtually. This year marks the 25th Anniversary of APAN since it’s proposal and formation under a Memorandum of Understanding in 1997.
APAN has developed into a significant community in the Asia Pacific Region for academics, experts, teachers, engineers, and students from or connected to national academic network organizations to share ideas and experiences of Internet development, to face challenges, and to explore collaboration opportunities. This is thanks to the unwavering support and efforts of APAN primary members and partners. APAN meetings, which are conducted twice a year, offer a great forum for networking and collaborative research among scientists and academics to further the growth of the Internet on a local, regional, and global scale.
The APAN54 conference featured a variety of captivating keynote speakers and a wide range of programs, including training sessions, workshops, tutorials, presentations, demos, conference sessions, and discussion panels. intERLab takes pride in sharing that Prof. Kanchana Kanchanasut and Dr. Adisorn Lertsinsrubtavee also gave presentations at the APAN54 meeting.
Prof. Kanchana Kanchanasut
Title of Presentation: Reaching rural communities with NRENs
Short Abstract: NRENs have traditionally been focusing on connecting research and education institutions with high speed networks.
In this talk, I will describe our experiences in reaching out to remote communities started in 2013. Though this work was not part of ThaiREN, undoubtedly we have been collaborating with ThaiREN. With the rapid expansion of the Internet infrastructures in recent years, our focus has slightly shifted from purely addressing connectivity but towards a broader goal of smart communities with IoT (SEA-HAZEMON), agile networking (IXP and Content Delivery) and a rural community platform (Baengpun).
The recent pandemic has put high demand on the Internet to provide education to homes thus it is time for NRENs to consider extending their networks to homes, in rural areas as well as other disadvantaged communities.
Dr. Adisorn Lertsinsrubtavee
Title of Presentation: SEA-HAZEMON: Active Forest Fire and Haze Monitoring Platform
Short Abstract: Almost every year, South East Asian region are suffered from the haze pollution which significantly caused by forest fires and agricultural-related burning. To better observe and prevent the impacts of the haze pollution, it requires the robust and active monitoring network that could be deployed in large scale across the region. The SEA-HAZEMON is an IoT platform that monitors multi air pollution parameters in real-time and provides early warning of forest fires.
The platform is also integrated with a forest fire detection model which can timely detect burning spots. The notification messages are automatically sent to the forest fire officers with suspected locations through chat applications (i.e., Telegram and Line). The evaluation was conducted through real forest fire incidents occurred in northern part of Thailand during April 2022. The predicted results were compared with the hotspots data reported from satellites and local forest fire officers.
