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INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING
Commission VI.
Symposium held in Mainz, FR Germany, 22-25 September 1982
STANDARDS OF) COMPETENCE
Comments on Outline 01.82 and on the Questionnaire (91-911)
FROM : Prof. Dr. H.M. Karara; University of Illinois; Newmark Civil Engineering
Laboratory; 208 North Romine Street; Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
fully agree with the statement of President ISP Doyle that the only reasonable
basis for a graded membership in COMPASS must be Standards of Competence. Based
on the various replies that will be sent to you in response to your letter, a
coordinating committee could then set standards of competence for professionals
in photogrammetry, geodesy, surveying, cartography, and remote sensing.
At the University of Illinois, Photogrammetric Engineers are actually Civil En-
gineers with specialization in Photogrammetric and Geodetic Engineering. In other
words they are the product of our civil engineering curriculum which permits
substantial flexibility in course selection during the last two years and thus
enables specialization in: construction, construction materials, environmental
engineering, hydrosystems engineering, photogrammetric and geodetic engineering,
structural engineering, and transportation engineering.
Our Civil Engineering curriculum requires 129 semester hours (hrs) for graduation
and details on its basic structure will be mailed on request.
I do not know how ISPRS Commission VI wants to pursue the matter of standards
of competence for photogrammetric engineers. In the U.S.A., however, some
coordination will be needed to come up with one proposed standard of competence
for each of the disciplines in COMPASS, on the basis of the several replies that
you will receive.
FROM: J. Kure; ITC; Enschede, Netherlands
COMMENTS ON SCOPE
It is hereby proposed that Commission VI consider changing the scope of an even-
tual working group on Standards and that instead of developing Standards of Com-
petence for Photogrammetrists and Remote Sensors, the group be given the task
to set up International Standards for Education and Training Programmes in Photo-
grammetry and Remote Sensing.
This recommendation is based on the main consideration that Commission VI's pro-
posal is modelled on the Standards of Competence developed for Hydrographic Sur-
veyors, which, although professing to be applicable to the personnel engaged in
hydrographic surveying, in actual fact are educational standards. This latter
aspect is unfortunately not reflected clearly enough in the title of the IHO's
Standards and the ISPRS should not make the same mistake.
This change of title does, in my opinion, not essentially change the scope of
the working group's task and has the edded advantage that the term competence
(with its associated stigma) can be avoided.
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