- 2605 = 
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING 
Commission VI 
Symposium held in Mainz, FR Germany, 22 - 25 September 1.982 
  
IN PHOTOGRAMMETRY 
STANDARDS O E 
P C L'AL I S T.S 
COM PE 
50d L 
ri 
ui pd 
"je 
moO 
F 
OR 
Prof. Leonidas Mejía 
Centro Interamericano de Foto-interpretación (CIAF), Bogotá, Columbia 
ABSTRACT 
Several factors to be considered when establishing Standards of Competence for 
Soil Specialists are treated. Details are elaborated for defining a "Photogram- 
metrie Knowledge Level (PKL) for Soil Specialists. The paper attempts to set 
some preliminary guidelines for the future standardization of the PKL for Soil 
Specialists. The outline is based on experience and/or references available 
at CIAF Bogotá, Columbia, and IPI Dehra Dun, India, and ITC Enschede, Netherlands. 
Introduction 
The establishment of Standards of competence at an international level for any 
field of Science or technical discipline is not only a very important but a 
necessary goal for guarantee minimal norms of quality of education on a worldwide 
basis. For this reason CIAF is completely identified with the task undertaken 
by Commission VI of the ISPRS of establishing Standards of competence for the 
"photogrammetric-knowledge level" (PKL) for the different technical fields for 
which Photogrammetry represents a basic part of training Courses. 
Such a standardization as this proposed by Commission VI is not an easy task. 
Concerning to the standardization of the PKL of Soil Photointerpreters the Com- 
mission VI will have to consider several factors like: the length and depth 
of the different courses offered by each training school; the specific orienta- 
tion and basic objectives pursued by each training school with each course; 
the available resources, endowment and development level reached by each training 
school, etc., and we even think they will have to define what should we under- 
stand as the real scope of Photogrammetry. So, we think that a preliminary step 
of this standardization project should be to answer some important questions 
like: 
1) How could be homologated all the different training courses offered today 
for each one of the different training schools? 
2) Which is the real scope of Photogrammetry? Does this science have the extremely 
broad scope given to it as defined in 1980 in the new Manual of Photogrammetry, 
or do we have to retain the limited scope stated in the Manuals before 1966? 
3) which are the main objectives pursued by Schools like the Centro Interamericano 
de Foto-interpretación (CIAF), the International Training Center (ITC) and 
the Indian Photo-Interpretation Institue (IPI) training Soil photointerpreters? 
4) Independently of the definition we give to Photogrammetry, how deep have 
we to go teaching Photogrammetry to Soil photointerpreters to get an adequate. 
PKL according with the nature of its future work? How often will they have 
opportunity of applying its photogrammetric knowledges? 
Bibliographic quotation : 
Mejia, L. : Standards of competence in photogrammetry for soil specialists. 
In: Int. Archive of Photogrammetry, 24 -VI, pp 265-271, Mainz 1982