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INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING 
Commission VI 
Symposium held in Mainz, FR Germany, 22-25 September 1982 
PO S.L T.I—O:-N-S ON SE T.T-1,N-G U.P STANDARDS OF 
COMPETENCE FOR PROP ES SIONAL PEC TOGRAMMETRI:S TS 
Prof. Jan Visser and Christian Paresi 
ITC, Enschede, Netherlands 
ABSTRACT 
Standards of competence are needed to control the quality of education and to permit 
mutual recognition of different educational systems. The authors make an attempt 
to define the different levels of competence for professional photogrammetrists and 
to give a definition of standards of competence for these levels. 
Furthermore, general requirements, in terms of knowledge and experience, are pre- 
sented as to how the standards of competence can be reached at each level. Finally 
a proposal is given on the feasibility of setting up standards of competence and 
on the policy and procedure to prepare and publish those standards. 
  
Standards of performance are always required if one is to be able, at a later stage, 
to evaluate the quality of a product. This is also true in the field of education 
and particularly in the education and training of photogrammetrists. 
In education, however, the term "standards of Competence" is usually used to refer 
to a certain level of education and training as well as to a certain level of ex- 
perience required to perform successfully in a technical field. It is clearly more 
difficult to define what is meant by "experience" in this context. Experiences are 
always different and not easy to measure in the context of successful performance. 
A good example of this difficulty is demonstrated in the "Standards cof competence 
developed for Hydrographic Surveyors" which, although professing to be applicable 
to the personnel engaged in Hydrographic Surveying, are in actual fact, limited only 
to a statement of education and training standards. 
Therefore it is the authors! proposal to consider modifying the scope of a possible 
WG VI-10 so that, instead of developing Standards of Competence for Photogramme- 
trists, the group be given the task to set up International Standards for Educa- 
tion and Training programmes in Photogrammetry, which would avoid the difficulty 
of defining and detailing the experience requested to perform the various tasks. 
It is clear that such International Standards for Education and Training programmes 
in Photogrammetry are needed and will have to be used to: 
- measure quality of education and training, as the well being of any scientific 
field depends on such an evaluation of the quality. 
- provide general guidance, whereby individual photogrammetrists have to be edu- 
cated and trained (1). 
- to be able to grant international recognition to individual educational Insti- 
tutes in any country (2). 
In the following, the authors will first make an attempt to define international 
standards for education and training for professional photogrammetrists, then 
propose some general requirements to reach the defined standards at each level 
of education and training and finally will give some comments on feasibility, 
policy and activities of a possible WG VI-10. 
Bibliographic quotation : 
Visser, J. and Paresi, C. : Positions on setting up standards of competence for 
professional photogrammetrists. In : Int. Archive of Photogrammetry, 24 - VI, 
286 - 295, Mainz 1982