Document Analysis and Recognition – ICDAR 2021 Workshops
Lecture notes in computer science · 2021
Our warmest welcome to the proceedings of ICDAR 2021, the 16th IAPR International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, which was held in Switzerland for the first time.Organizing an international conference of significant size during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the goal of welcoming at least some of the participants physically, is similar to navigating a rowboat across the ocean during a storm.Fortunately, we were able to work together with partners who have shown a tremendous amount of flexibility and patience including, in particular, our local partners, namely the Beaulieu convention center in Lausanne, EPFL, and Lausanne Tourisme, and also the international ICDAR advisory board and IAPR-TC 10/11 leadership teams who have supported us not only with excellent advice but also financially, encouraging us to setup a hybrid format for the conference.We were not a hundred percent sure if we would see each other in Lausanne but we remained confident, together with almost half of the attendees who registered for on-site participation.We relied on the hybridization support of a motivated team from the Lule University of Technology during the pre-conference, and professional support from Imavox during the main conference, to ensure a smooth connection between the physical and the virtual world.Indeed, our welcome is extended especially to all our colleagues who were not able to travel to Switzerland this year.We hope you had an exciting virtual conference week, and look forward to seeing you in person again at another event of the active DAR community.With ICDAR 2021, we stepped into the shoes of a longstanding conference series, which is the premier international event for scientists and practitioners involved in document analysis and recognition, a field of growing importance in the current age of digital transitions.