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The second reason was also related to Willem Schermer-
horn, and that was because of his greatest contribution to
our profession. This year it is fifty years ago that he
founded ITC and that is an event that certainly deserves
ample celebration.
The third reason was indirectly also related to Willem
Schermerhorn. The fact was that his second successor,
Klaas Jan Beek, decided to step down as Rector of the
Institute in 1996. It would have been a shame if we had left
a man with so much energy without a job. So we decided
that we would volunteer him for the job of Congress Direc-
tor this time. And indeed he was impulsive enough to
accept this job. | am sure that there have been moments
when he regretted that he did not think twice before he
accepted it.
| should immediately add that such a big event cannot be
organised by one person. We were happy to see that so
many members of our society took responsibility and sup-
ported the Local Organising Committee in their work. Not
only our members were involved but also other profes-
sions. This Congress is really the product of the joint
efforts of the whole professional field in The Netherlands.
All the main organisations were involved, be it by physical
support, by services or in the form of sponsoring. We are
very grateful for these contributions.
But an organising team is not sufficient to get such a proj-
ect going. They can only create the conditions for the Con-
gress; the real work has been done by the ISPRS commu-
nity. It was at the joint meeting in Stuttgart 1998 that
ISPRS Council and Commission Presidents helped us to
define session themes within the context of the overall
congress theme ‘Geoinformation for All’.
After that the call for abstracts went out and we were
happy to receive many abstracts, about 1,400. Then the
whole network of the ISPRS organisation got into action to
select papers and make proposals for sessions. Finally,
more than 1,000 papers were submitted and these will be
presented in more than seventy oral sessions and thirty
poster sessions this week.
In addition to that, industry and professional organisations
showed great interest in using the opportunity of this con-
gress to show their new products. Twothousand square
metres of exhibition space have been booked for more
than seventy stands. This Congress is once more a proof
of the fact that science, the development of technology
and the development of new commercial products by
industry are closely related. But even more important is the
fact that the presentations at this congress also show that
the development of our professional field has a direct
impact on policy issues related to environmental manage-
ment. The developments in our professional field can no
longer be seen as just interesting scientific problem-solv-
ing. There are societal consequences we have to be aware
of. We have to think about these consequences and we
have to take responsibility in this respect. These issues
have been expressed in the six interpretations we gave to
the Congress theme ‘Geoinformation for All’.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have done all we could to pre-
pare the Congress with its scientific programme, its exhi-
bition and its social programme. Now that the preparations
have been done, it is your turn as participants to make the
Congress.
On behalf of The Netherlands Society for Earth Observa-
tion and Geoinformatics and on behalf of all the other
organisations that have been involved in the preparation of
this Congress, | welcome you. We all hope that you will
have an interesting, fruitful but certainly also an enjoyable
week here in Amsterdam.
Opening Speech by Past President Royal Netherlands Academy
of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Prof. Dr. Ir. Pieter Zandbergen
Ladies and gentlemen,
| have the honour to have been asked by the President of
the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prof.
Dr Rob Reneman, to say a few words to you in his name.
Perhaps you may think that the world, due to photogram-
metry and remote sensing, has become a rather small
world but in The Netherlands the world is always much
smaller than you think of as possible.
So you may learn that Rob Reneman and Klaas Jan Beek,
your Congress Director, graduated at the same time from
the same high school here in Amsterdam and | myself, being
the predecessor of Rob Reneman as President of the Acad-
emy, served the world of photogrammetry and remote sens-
ing for fourteen years as Chairman of the board of ITC dur-
ing the years that Klaas Jan Beek was the Rector of ITC.
So already in this way there are a number of ties, at least
in The Netherlands, between the Academy and this con-
gress.
By the way, | have heard that ISPRS exists ninety years and
the Academy is a little bit older. It was founded when Louis
Napoleon, brother of emperor Napoleon of France, was
King of The Netherlands in 1808. Although there existed
many so-called ‘learned societies’ in the different provinces
of The Netherlands, only the central power of the French
occupation could establish one unique Academy, some-
thing the united provinces would never have ceased quar-
relling about. Now the Academy has the duty by law to
advise the government in a broad sense on any matter
related to scientific research and the use of scientific
knowledge. The Academy has the care for two clusters of
institutes, one for the life sciences and one for the a and g
Sciences.
It is in the cluster of the life sciences that we find The
Netherlands Committee for Geodesy. There also exists a
Council for the Earth sciences. Perhaps you only see a
connection in a remote sense between these bodies and
the subject of your congress but remember that Prof.
International Archives of Photogrammerty and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part A. A
dam 2000.
61
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2000
