Introduction 
The decision by the General Council of ISPRS taken during the Istanbul Congress to set up a brand new 
Technical Commission VII on:” Thematic Processing, Modeling and Analysis of Remotely sensed Data” has 
turned out to be a very incisive and successful one. During the past four years, this new Technical 
Commission has organized so many conferences and workshops resulting in the publication of hundreds and 
hundreds of scientific and technical papers. Also, for this Beijing Congress, TC VII has received a large 
number of high level papers, which are included in these Proceedings. 
WG VII/1 on Fundamental physics and modeling has produced many research results advancing our 
understanding of the basic bio physical and biochemical principles involved in remote sensing. 
The WG VII/2 on “Information Extraction from SAR Data” has made some significant advances in various 
aspects of SAR Technology such as interferometry, polarimetric SAR and on extracting useful information 
from the increasing number of high resolution SAR satellites currently available. Their results are presented in 
these Proceedings. 
The Proceedings do not report any great breakthroughs or developments in hyperspectral data processing or 
information extraction,(WG VII/3) over the last four year period, but this may change in the near future, with 
more airborne hyperspectral systems becoming commercially available and more satellites with many spectral 
bands being planned for the coming years. 
In the published papers from WG VII/4 on Advanced Classification Techniques, it is clear that the advent of 
high resolution satellites such as Quickbird and Worldview from DIGITAL GLOBE , has drastically caused a 
shift in emphasis from pixel-based classification algorithms to texture-based and context-based classification 
methods. 
Probably the fields in which the most research has been carried out over the past four years as exemplified by 
the many high quality papers in these fields included in thee Proceedings, have been those of WG VII/5 and 
WG.VII/6, on “Processing of multi-temporal data and change detection” and “Remote Sensing Data Fusion” 
This is probably due to the direct and important applications that these methodologies have in areas such as 
Global Change studies, in Environmental Security fields, as well as for all forms of monitoring of the many 
changes occurring on our Planet, and because of the need to integrate data from an ever increasing number 
of data sources in order to extract relevant information for Decision Makers. 
This Volume also includes some interesting papers from the work of WG VII/7 ON “Innovative problem 
solving methodologies for Less Developed Countries. These show that many researchers with low research 
budgets can develop very relevant methods to solve certain issues by using less financial resources but more 
brain resources!! 
Of course, it is not much use developing a new algorithm or new technology without relating this to 
applications or problem solving. Hence there should always be a close link between the research and work 
carried out by TC VII and that done by TC VII on Remote Sensing Applications and Policies”. Therefore the 
reader of this Volume, is also encouraged to read the companion Volume of TC VIII, as well as the Volume 
from the Inter-commission WG on ’’Derivation of global data, environmental change and sustainability 
indicators (Inter-commission VII/IV). 
In conclusion, I would like to thank the Vice-President of our TC VII, Professor Andrew Skidmore, and all the 
authors of the papers in their support in producing this volume. Of course, the work of all the Working Group 
Chairs, their Co-Chairs and WG Secretaries and Regional Coordinators is also gratefully acknowledged for 
their help in soliciting the papers, reviewing and accepting them for this ISPRS Volume. To these, should be 
added the gratitude to the ISPRS Council and the Congress Programme Committee. 
On a personal note, I would like to thank my organization, the ITC for its support over the past four years, 
allowing me to carry out the enjoyable task of TC VII President. 
John van Genderen, President of ISPRS Technical Commission VII 
28th May, 2008