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from digitised air photos as undertaken by photogram-
metrists, and that of image classification as carried out by
remote sensing specialists, must increasingly be seen as the
one activity: extraction of information from images. Both
groups can learn from one another, and the Budapest con-
ference in September 1998 has assisted in this process.
The major activities of WG VII/3 during 1998 were the
organisation and conduct of a special workshop on high
spatial resolution in collaboration with the Australasian
Conference on Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry,
held in Sydney, Australia in July 1998, and support of
Commission VII's Mid-term Symposium, ECO BP’98 held
in Budapest in September, 1998. Professor Forster chaired
the three sessions allocated to WG 3, and a number of
excellent papers were presented. More details of the con-
ference can be found in the Commission VII's Inter Con-
gress Symposium Report published by the ISPRS High-
lights Vol. 3, No 4 p-13-17, December, 1998. The major
aim of the workshop was to increase both the scientific
and user communities’ awareness of the new data and of
both the potential and problems associated with it. This
was a follow-on to a similar workshop held in Association
with the Asian Remote Sensing Conference in Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1997.
The themes of these workshops were directly related to the
aims of the working group. Both workshops covered similar
topic areas, with speakers and representatives from most of
the potential system operators. The programme and speak-
ers for the Sydney workshop were as follows:
Introduction, Professor Bruce Forster, School of Geomatic
Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia, “Cur-
rent and future high spatial resolution satellites.” Speaker:
Larry Fritz, President, ISPRS. “Comparative analysis of the
resolution of air photo and satellite digital images.” Speaker:
Professor Bruce Forster “Future Spot high resolution satel-
lite systems.” Speakers: Carl McMaster, Spot Imaging Ser-
vices, Sydney, and Rob Lee, Spot Image.
“Bridging photogrammetric feature extraction and remote
sensing image classification” Speaker: Professor Bruce
Forster, “Urban and regional applications of high resolution
imagery” Speaker: Professor Bruce Forster, “Space imaging
satellite systems and their applications.” Speaker: Mark
Judd, Managing Director, Geomatics Technology, Mel-
bourne, Australia. “Earthwatch satellite systems and their
applications.” Speaker: Larry Fritz, on behalf of Earthwatch
Incorporated “Orbimage satellite systems and their applica-
tions.” Speaker: Timothy Puckorius, Representative of
Orbimage. “Analysis of market for high resolution image
data” Speaker: Professor Bruce Forster.
The presentations were followed by an open forum. One of
the major questions asked related to data cost. It was gen-
erally agreed that the cost would be about the same as for
acquisition of aerial photography. In addition, in Malaysia, a
representative of the Indian Space Program also spoke to
the applications of their current and future systems. Approx-
imately thirty people attended the workshop.
It was proposed to conduct a workshop on specific appli-
cations of high spatial resolution data in late 1999. Applica-
tion areas to be addressed were considered to include:
- precision farming and high value crop monitoring
- civil and other engineering applications
- detailed urban planning and monitoring
- tourism planning and products
International Archives of Photogrammerty and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part A. Amsterdam 2000.
- large scale thematic and topographic mapping
- environmental impact assessment
- innovative incorporation into secondary school educa-
tion and training in biology, geography, history & sci-
ences
While a range of workshops were organised in 1998 as
Working Group activities to provide prior-launch-information,
with a view to conducting further application workshops in
1999 with real data, these did not eventuate due to lack of
data resulting from unsuccessful system launches. However
the year was not without success for high spatial resolution
image data, as the following highlights illustrate.
September 1999 saw the launch of the first commercial, high
resolution imaging satellite - IKONOS. Space Imaging began
selling and distributing imagery to customers after system
testing and calibration had taken place. The system has 0.82
m panchromatic resolution and 3.28 m multispectral resolu-
tion in the blue, green, red and near infrared spectral bands.
It also allows for both in and cross-track stereoscopic view-
ing. The IKONOS sensor revisit time is 3 days, with turn-
around of product delivery of the order of 2 weeks. It is
expected, that the high spatial resolution image data will
open up a range of new applications for remote sensing.
However, it should be remembered that the highest spatial
resolution satellite imagery commercially available is approx-
imately equivalent to a 1:100,000 aerial photograph and so
potential users will need to weigh up the benefits based on
considerations of other factors, such as cost, radiometric
resolution and availability ease of digital processing. It is
hoped that these issues will be raised in the papers pre-
sented to the Congress in Amsterdam.
So far, two papers of importance to the WG have been pub-
lished in the ISPRS Highlights, and are recommended read-
ing for application scientists and potential users of high res-
olution image data. These were in the June and September,
1999 issues:
HIGH RESOLUTION COMMERCIAL REMOTE SENSING
SATELLITES AND SPATIAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS by
Lawrence W. Fritz (Vol 4, No. 2, pp 19-30, June 1999).
HIGH RESOLUTION EARTH IMAGING FROM SPACE by
John Neer (Vol 4, No. 2, pp 20-27, September 1999).
These highlights illustrate the future strength of the “high res-
olution industry” and it is hoped that some papers relating to
data from IKONOS and other systems that may be launched
before the Congress date of July 2000 will be presented at
the Congress. However, one can be assured that there will
be plenty of papers on high resolution applications for the
2004 Congress.
Working Group VII/A - Computer Assisted Image
Interpretation and Analysis
Chair: Prof. Dr. Barbara Koch, University of Frei-
burg, GERMANY (Since August 1996)
Co-Chair: Dr. Alois Sieber, EC JRC, ITALY (Since
August 1996)
Terms of Reference
- Integration of remote sensing with geospatial data
- Multi-spectral, multi-resolution and multi-sensor data
for image interpretation
- Knowledge encapsulation for purposes of automatic
image analysis
- Investigation of performance of advanced classifica-
tion techniques
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