In our Society we have learned to appreciate that the work of 
our Finnish colleagues is marked by a standard of excellence 
and we are confident that the 1986 Symposium and its partici- 
pation and the preparation for the 1988 Congress will be at 
peak performance. I would like to stress the importance of 
this on behalf of our Society. The Symposium has aptly been 
named "Symposium From Analytical to Digital". We are in our 
field at the crossroads of technology, of the fields in which 
our applications may occur. While analog photogrammetry is 
continuing to be applied successfully in large-scale mapping 
as an economical procedure, many of its aspects have during 
the past 10 years given way to analytical procedures. While 
this was already the case for aerial triangulation in 1972, 
the Helsinki Congress in 1976 clearly marked the transition 
to analytical methods in plotting and in drafting. It must 
be great satisfaction to Uki Helava that his invention of the 
analytical plotter long before that has become internationally 
accepted on a wide front at a Congress in his native Finland. 
Since then remote sensing from satellites, such as Landsat, has 
brought first emphasis on digital techniques. This tendency has 
been strengthened through new satellite systems, such as SPOT, 
and through the ability to work efficiently with digital 
Sensors in close-range applications. This creates an enormous 
demand on new procedures of restitution and analysis, ranging 
from pattern recognition to statistical analysis. The develop- 
ments are brought about by force in governmental programs to 
bring further satellite imaging applications and in industrial 
attempts to automate manufacturing procedures. Even in analog 
mapping the tendency becomes visible. The conventional product 
map is increasingly being replaced by digital storage and 
analysis technology in form of graphical information systems. 
This brings about the need to work with interactive graphic 
Systems in vector form and the potential to compare and to 
analyse the data in an integrated fashion. While this is also 
the concern of surveyors and of cartographers and of other 
disciplines, the integration of raster based image information 
from satellites and aircraft is a primary concern of photo- 
grammetry and of remote sensing. 
The developments in this field are now happening at a rapid 
pace, and it is our utmost concern that we participate as 
photogrammetrists and photointerpretation experts together 
with physicists, computer scientists, statisticians and signal 
processing experts in these efforts. In doing so we have to be 
able to absorb new knowledge. It is of great significance that 
Commission III has started a new trend of offering a tutorial 
program to our members. Yesterday's course by Dr. Fórstner and 
Prof.  Molenaar in the analysis of data has been highly suc- 
cessful. It needs to be repeated in other regions, and other 
courses of this nature could be generated to enable our photo- 
grammetrists and remote sensing experts to more efficiently 
participate in the development of our field in interaction 
with other disciplines. 
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