STATUS OF ORTHOPHOTO PRODUCTION AND APPLICATIONS IN SERBIA 
D. Mihajlovic, M. Mitrovic, M. Vojinovic, M. So&kic 
Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro — 
(draganm@grf.bg.ac.yu, mitrovic@grf.bg.ac.yu, milosv@grf.bg.ac.yu, mladens@grf.bg.ac.yu) 
Commission IV, WG IV/6 
KEY WORDS: Photogrammetry, GIS, Orthoimage, Spatial Infrastructures, Orthorectification, Mapping 
ABSTRACT: 
Paper reviews achieved level of orthophoto production in Serbia, with estimates on further developments in the next few years. 
Users, sources of financing, application areas, state and private sector partnership, etc. are particularly analyzed. Role of orthophoto 
in a situation characterized by outdated official maps, especially for urban areas with a large number of new objects, and even whole 
new settlements which are not surveyed and mapped is evaluated. 
Digital orthophoto also plays key role in Serbia in all cases where large scaled GIS establishment is concerned. Paper also reviews 
gained experiences related to this matter. 
Although there is a generally unquestionable support to orthophoto in Serbia, there are still some issues that have to be dealt with. 
For example, when orthophoto utilization for cadastral purposes is considered, there is no answer to the question whether or not, and 
under which conditions, digital orthophoto could be used for the update of official cadastral maps at 1:1000 and 1:2500 scale. Some 
solutions to this dilemma are presented in paper. Some other related issues such as technical regulations for digital orthophoto 
production, copyright, establishment of the national orthophoto program, etc. are also reviewed in the paper. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
There has been a rapid expansion of orthophoto production in 
Serbia in the last few years. The main impulse has come from 
users who discovered great potentials of orthophoto for solving 
accumulated problems of chronic lack of up-to-date large scaled 
maps, at scale range from 1:1000 to 1:5000. It is more and more 
practice throughout Serbia that, driven by the accumulated 
problems in the area of city planning, municipality utilities 
development and spatial planning, local managements decide to 
invest in digital orthophoto production projects, mostly for the 
whole administrative territory. This practice is more and more 
present, so it is estimate that just during 2002 and 2003 it is 
covered 8% of the Serbian territory with digital orthophoto with 
pixel size of 30cm, and according to indications this territory 
could reach 20% at the end of 2004 (Figure 1). 
Special impulse to digital orthophoto production has been given 
by great number of independent software vendors in the area of 
photogrammetry and remote sensing, along with the constant 
improvement of hardware, system and applicative software and 
also with constant price cuts for these components. Possibilities 
have emerged even for small agencies to undertake projects of 
digital orthophoto production which in the past has been 
reserved exclusively for companies with extremely expensive 
equipment and superior resources, or for national geodetic 
agency. That is why all available digital orthophoto (DOP) in 
Serbia (Figure 1) in the last several years has been produced by 
small, independent geodetic companies. Due to their 
enterprising and strong marketing campaign, digital orthophoto 
production in Serbia is permanently growing, with tendency to 
cover the whole territory of Serbia with large-scale DOP in the 
next several years. 
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Parallel with the process of digital orthophoto production in 
Serbia there are other accompanying processes taking places 
which gives to digital orthophoto special significance. First of 
all, digital orthophoto naturally requires users that are strictly 
computer oriented, no matter what applications are concerned. 
Therefore, it is very often initiator of the process of involving 
computer technology into business system of the user, which 
significantly changes the whole business philosophy and brings 
a new quality. It is especially important when municipal utilities 
systems, city planning departments and other public services 
related to the city environment are concerned. 
2. DIGITAL ORTHOPHOTO PRODUCTION IN 
SERBIA 
Interest of prospective digital orthophoto users is not a recent 
thing in Serbia. First public tenders for larger digital orthophoto 
(DOP) projects appeared in 1998 for the cities of Novi Sad 
(beginning of 1998) and Subotica (end of 1998). Other cities 
such as Belgrade, Ni§, Cacak and Kraljevo were also 
considering possibilities for financing DOP projects for their 
territory at that time, but these efforts did not result in any 
project realizations. Unfortunately, realized DOP projects failed 
to initiate new DOP projects in Serbia, which should be 
reasonable to expect. There are lots of reasons for this, but 
according to authors’ opinion two of them are predominant. 
Firstly, realization of these projects took too long. Secondly, 
unnecessary large DOP resolution (ground pixel size) was 
required, which affected photo scale and unnecessary increase 
of project expenses.