- 254 - 
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING 
Commission VI 
Symposium held in Mainz, FR Germany, 22-25 September 1982 
STANDARDS OMPETENCE IN 
PHOTOGRAMM Y ND REMOTE 
SENSING I GRAPHER S 
Dr. J. R. Hardy, 
for the Remote Sensing Society 
University of Reading, England 
ABSTRACT 
Geographers are usually trained with a knowledge of a rather wide range of earth 
and social sciences. Some areas within this range may be of detailed, special- 
ised knowledge, while in other areas knowledge may be more generalised. Because 
of this, geographers are found in a wide range of professional and technical po- 
sitions, with varying demands for subsequent postgraduate knowledge, experience 
and training. They are perhaps well suited to coordination and supervision of 
projects involving a wide range of specialist disciplines. This makes it diffi- 
cult to lay down standards of competence for geographers as a single category, 
and it is suggested that the most that can be achieved at this stage is to try 
"to lay down standards of knowledge and demonstrated practical ability at first 
degree stage, and to recommend suitable curricula for this purpose. This is done 
in the paper. The importance of support subjects such as statistics, computing 
and cartographic science is discussed, as well as suggested essential and desirable 
subjects of geographical training, together with skeleton curricula in remote 
sensing and photogrammetry. 
Dr. John Hardy is Senior Lecturer in Geography at the 
University of Reading, where he teaches remote sensing, 
cartography and surveying (including photogrammetry) to 
undergraduate and postgraduate geographers, and carries 
out research and projects involving remotely sensed data. 
He is currently involved in a project for the evaluation 
of Landsat 4 data. He has taught at universities and 
institutions overseas, being unable to attend the Mainz 
seminar because of a previous commitment to teach at the 
EEC Summer School on Remote Sensing for Land Use 
inventories. Dr. Hardy is currently a member of the 
Technical Advisory Committee for the U.K. National Remote 
Sensing Centre, of the British National Committee for 
Photogrammetry, and is a Council member and Treasurer of 
the Remote Sensing Society. 
  
Bibliographic quotation : 
Hardy, J.R. : Standards of competence in photogrammetry and remote sensing for geo- 
graphers. In: Int. Archive of Photogrammetry, 2l -VI, pp 254-261, Mainz 1982