importance to the remote sensing and 
photogrammetry community. QUESTALERT will allow 
the user to be kept informed on the latest news 
on a given topic. Using this facility, an ERSAP 
user will store a specific subject in a file of 
interest and receive automatically new 
information on the chosen subject upon each 
update of the ERSAP database. 
7.3.2 The ERSAP Standard Titles 
Selected Current Awareness publications will 
bring attention to recently entered report 
literature pertaining to remote sensing and 
photogrammetry. Each of the ERSAP standard 
titles will be carefully tailored to fit the 
given needs of a special research activity. 
New topics will be added as the need arises, 
others will be discontinued or redefined as 
research demands dictate. 
8. CONCLUSIONS 
As can be seen from the above outline of the 
features of the proposed European Remote Sensing 
and Photogrammetry Database, the European Space 
Agency responds to the needs of European and 
international communities with a new service. 
Many space agencies are contributing to an 
international effort to understand the global 
Earth system and to monitor the intricate links 
between atmosphere, ocean and land. 
ERS-1 (European Remote Sensing satellite), 
launched in July 1991, represents the European 
Space Agency's first contribution to 
environmental monitoring via radar systems. 
Additional European contributing programmes 
include EARSEC (the European Airborne Remote 
Sensing Capability Project) jointly supported by 
ESA and the CEC (Commission of the European 
Communities), ERS-2 and follow on European Polar 
Platforms which will be launched starting from 
1989 onwards. 
Environmental space data, handled by these’ 
missions, will be used by the scientific 
communities to generated report literature, 
publications etc. which will be progressively 
included into the proposed ERSAP database. 
The proposed ERSAP database will complement and 
be integrated into other services provided by 
the ESRIN establishment in the field of Earth 
observation. 
This database can be viewed as the initial step 
towards an international endeavour and effort to 
provide a complete coverage and availability of 
documentary resources in the field of remote 
sensing, photogrammetry and related 
applications. 
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