OPENING SESSION 
  
  
  
ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF COMMISSION III OF THE ISPRS 
E. Kilpeldá 
Prof.Dr. 
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen. 
Four years ago, as we had the Symposium of Commission III of 
the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote 
Sensing in Helsinki, I could not imagine that the following 
Symposium would again be held in Finland, and it would be 
again my pleasant duty to welcome you to it. 
I am happy to state that until now over 130 photogrammetrists 
and remote sensing specialists from 20 member countries of 
the ISPRS have accepted our invitation to attend this meeting. 
It is even more than in the Helsinki Symposium 1982. 
It is a great honour for the Symposium that the ISPRS Council 
is well represented, as the President of the Society, Prof. Dr. 
G. Konecny (FRG), the Secretary General, Prof. Dr. K. Torlegárd 
(Sweden), and the Director of the following Congress, Prof.Dr. 
S. Murai (Japan) have been able to attend the Symposium. 
Further, I am pleased to state that the past President of the 
Society, Dr. F. Doyle (USA) is with us in the Symposium. Of 
the other participants I want to mention especially the attend- 
ance of Prof. Dr. F. Ackermann (FRG) and Dr. U.V. Helava (USA). 
As you can see we are fortunate to have among us many scien- 
tists from the very top of the photogrammetry and remote 
sensing society. Thus we can but wait that the scientific 
niveau of this week's Symposium will be extremely high. 
The large number of participants might be intepreted in such 
a way that the topic of the Symposium "From Analytical to 
Digital" was just the right one for the time being. Further, 
it might be that the Symposium site, the City of Rovaniemi 
has had its own attraction. The initiative for our decision 
to reject the City of Helsinki this time came from several 
non-Finnish photogrammetrists. In the course of years they 
had already been in Helsinki many times participating in 
different occasions, and this time they wanted to see also a 
bit of another part of Finland. To make the decision in 
favour of the City of Rovaniemi was easy for us. It lies far 
enough from Helsinki, it has good facilities to have confe- 
rences, and it has already received a good reputation as a 
conference site. Naturally, there are also personal reasons. 
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