International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXII Part 7C2, UNISPACE III, Vienna, 1999 
143 
UNISPACE III- ISPRS/NASA Seminar on 
I5PR5 “Environment and Remote Sensing for Sustainable Development” 
9:00 am -12:00 pm, 23 July 1999, VIC Room A 
Vienna, Austria 
one of stnicturing the out year “vision” of benefiting from the 
new information sources by supporting the demand side of 
the end users. 
The idea of controlling information is the centrai theme 
here; not data access. 
When framed this way and in today’s free flowing 
information society, we must critically determine what is the 
real reason to deny someone information. In such a case, the 
one who has the information has the power. To deny means 
to control. If we are to realize a “one world” vision, then we 
must give up control to gain knowledge, security, and 
sustainability. This trade off is very challenging, and gives 
rise to the “Dawn of the Age of Transparency 7 ”. 
Final Words and Thoughts 
Space Imaging and others are making substantial investments 
in the remote sensing industry and foresee a robust, 
expanding, and rewarding market to sendee. A partnership 
must be formed between private and public providers of such 
systems. Government systems should not compete with 
systems that the private sector is prepared to undertake. An 
open and unconstrained “peaceful” use of space to remotely 
sense the Earth is critical to long term development of the 
global society. Access to information by all who seek 
peaceful use of such information should be assured. Toward 
that end world organizations like the UN, World Bank, and 
World Health Organization should promote information 
applications on the local level. 
The UN should assist developing nations economically to 
purchase information and educationally assist in training the 
people to the use information to solve their local problems. 
The UN, working at the global level, can effectively help 
integrate the local activities into the global sustainable 
development initiative. This should be the highest global 
priority the UN has since it links the local social economic 
realities to that of the world. 
Finally, more efficient means to monitor and measure the 
movement toward a sustainable world requires a new and 
better economic model. While not unique to the remote 
sensing industry, the absence of a better economic model 
makes critical national development decisions far more 
subjective than objective. Such conventional metrics as gross 
domestic or national product (GDP or GNP) are consumption 
based economic metrics. They do not factor into proper 
perspective the value of the national resources and resenes, 
i.e. the potential energy of the country versus its kinetic, 
action, energy of production. The net national product (NNP) 
concept suggests that the proper goal is to produce at a rate 
that preserves or restores the consumable assets of the 
country. 
Commercial and National remote sensing systems will merge 
into an integrate w'hole “system” to provide a powerful set of 
information sources to better obsen'e, monitor, and map the 
Earth in the 21 st Century. Socrates said, “Man must rise 
above the clouds and look back upon the Earth only then 
can he truly understand the nature of things.” Such prophetic 
wisdom should guide our thinking and actions at UNISPACE 
III. 
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