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INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING 
Commission VI 
Symposium held in Mainz, FR Germany, 22 - 25 September 1982 
NECESSITY FOR STANDARDS OF COMPETENCE 
IN THE UNITED STATES 
Dr. Stanley A. Morain 
Co-Chairman ASP Committee on Education 
Technology Application Center, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA 
ABSTRACT 
The scope and mechanism of standards is considered against some fundamental 
background. The current environment for standards in the USA is outlined. 
The social value of our profession will be gauged by the degree to which 
we can develop our own standards of competence. 
  
Introduction 
Standards in any endeavour are the measure by which professions advance. 
No individual, and certainly no professional fraternity, would take pride 
in an association bereft of standards, or into which the uninitiated and 
untrained could gain admission. Yet, in the history of cultures, from 
the earliest pottery makers of ancient China to the most sophisticated 
satellite technology of today, the establishment of a discipline's stand- 
ards occurs through the experiences of its practitioners, supported by 
the legacies of its forebearers. Some professions, particularly law and 
medicine, are so governed by their standards of competence that severe pe- 
nalties are exacted by society from those who practice without license. 
For most professions, however, measures of competence are much less rigid 
and it is consequently left to the individuals and associations to monitor 
their own progress. 
In the United States the fields of mapping, surveying, photogrammetry, and 
remote sensing, together, represent a vast community bound on the one hand 
by similar interests, but divided on the other by the services they provide. 
Surveyors, for example, serve the very specific and legal needs of society 
for accurate land location, either for cadastral or topographic surveys. 
Their standards are quite definitive and have reached the stage of develop- 
ment where, like law and medicine, licensing programs are common. At the 
opposite extreme, interpreters of photographs and images, which represent 
a subset of remote sensing, provide more subjective information about re- 
sources, the !standards for which are less than fifty years old. 
Scope of Standards 
"Standards" are established through a variety of mechanisms common in differ- 
ing degrees to almost all professions. Without trying to be exhaustive, 
at least eight mechanisms are called to mind here, beginning with the most 
fundamental and proceeding in no particular order to the more elaborate. 
1. Classroom instruction: future members of a profession are taught the 
principles and guiding philosophies that define a field of endeavour. 
Graduates of the training are initiated into this field with a docu- 
mented level of understanding and knowledge. In certain fields on-the- 
job training and apprenticeships fill the same role. 
Bibliographic quotation : 
Morain, 8. : Necessity for standards of competence for photogrammetry and remote 
sensing education in the USA. In: Int. Archive of Photogrammetry, 24 - VI, 
pp 272 - 278, Mainz 1982