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The Preparation of the XIXth Congress of the International Society for
Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
by Klaas Jan Beek
1. The Netherlands and ISPRS
The background to the interest of The Netherlands Society
for Earth Observation and Geoinformatics in organising the
XIXth ISPRS Congress can best be explained by referring to
the letter of June 3, 1996 to the ISPRS Secretary General Dr.
Lawrence W. Fritz of Drs. J.P.Pronk, Minister for Develop-
ment Cooperation and Dr.Ir.J.M.M. Ritzen, minister of Edu-
cation, Culture and Science:
For The Netherlands, a densely populated country with
high demands on physical and scientific infrastructures,
the geoinformation sciences and corresponding industry
are vitally important. Early land reclamation dating back to
the Tenth Century would not have been possible without a
mastery of land surveying techniques. Throughout history,
there has been an ever-increasing demand for accurate
maps from the maritime user society at large. This earned
Dutch cartographers such as Ortelius, Mercator and Blaeu
an international reputation during the 16th and 17th cen-
tury. In the fields of triangulation and optics they were sup-
ported by the inventions of mathematicians and physicists
such as Snellius and Christian Huygens. During the pres-
ent century, photogrammetry received a strong impulse
from Willem Schermerhorn, geodesist and first Prime Min-
ister of The Netherlands after World War II.
After attending the second world conference of the Inter-
national Society of photogrammetry in Berlin in 1926,
Schermerhorn coordinated the introduction of photogram-
metric techniques. This resulted in the production of cheap
and accurate maps of rivers and land surfaces in The
Netherlands during the 1930s.
Schermerhorn was elected president of the ISP in 1938
and organised the next congress in 1948 in the Hague, The
Netherlands. Being the first post-war conference, it took
place in a spirit of great international co-operation and sol-
idarity. Upon the ISP's recommendation, The Netherlands
Government decided to establish the International Training
Centre (ITC) for aerial survey and earth sciences, to accel-
erate the production of geographical information in devel-
oping countries.
In the year 2000 ITC will celebrate its 50th Anniversary. By
then, it will have organised training and educational
courses in The Netherlands for 15.000 specialists from 150
countries and an equal number through its sister-institutes
and projects abroad.
The turn of the millennium marks another historic bench-
mark in The Netherlands, as the results of the second ten-
year National Remote Sensing Programme (NRSP) will be
presented in the year 2000. Remote sensing is a core sub-
ject in our environmental research, with special emphasis
on applications in the developing countries. By means of
RS one may focus on characteristics of the coastal zones,
the identification of oil spills from ships, the monitoring of
deforestation in tropical rainforests and global climatic
change.
To this end, institutes in The Netherlands work in close co-
operation with institutes in the countries participating in
the European Space programmes and in the programmes
of the United Nations Agencies.
The Netherlands strives continuously to bridge the gaps
between the rich and the poor countries. These gaps are
particularly wide in science and technology, including pho-
togrammetry and remote sensing. Bearing this very much in
mind, and considering the historic importance of the year
2000 for ITC and the National Remote Sensing Programme,
we invited the ISPRS to organise its XIX World Congress in
2000 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Amsterdam was once the world capital for the production of
maps and globes. Not all countries and individuals on the
globe have so far benefited equally from the fruits of
progress in science and technology. The theme for the turn-
of-the-millennium ISPRS Conference in Amsterdam,
"Geoinformation for All", reflects a spirit of world-wide soli-
darity. In this spirit, The Netherlands looks forward to meet-
ing the challenges of the next century and to meeting you in
Amsterdam in the year 2000.
2. Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and GIS in The
Netherlands
The Netherlands has a long-standing tradition in pho-
togrammetry, remote sensing and GIS. Willem Schermer-
horn was the founding father of photogrammetry as a sci-
entific discipline and profession in The Netherlands. It was
under his leadership that Irian Jaya was mapped in the nine-
teen-thirties. This was the first time that aerial triangulation
and block adjustment had been used on such a scale and
the project proved to be one of the largest photogrammet-
ric exercises of its time, the area being 100,000 km? and the
photoscale 1:40,000. As a result of the knowledge acquired
by him and his staff during the project, they realised the
potential benefits of this technique as a mapping tool.
Schermerhorn became a driving force behind the establish-
ment of the Survey Department of the Ministry of Public
Works (MD) and The International Institute for Aerospace
Surveys and Earth Sciences (ITC).
Photogrammetry became a fully accepted tool for cadastral
and topographic mapping in the sixties and seventies. As
such, it has been of great assistance in carrying out the
major land consolidation programmes performed by the
cadastre and the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Manage-
ment and Fisheries, which have helped to modernise Dutch
farming practice and enabled agriculture to become the
country's second largest export industry.
In the last two or three decades, the successors of Scher-
merhorn and his generation have widened the scope of the
International Archives of Photogrammerty and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part A. A dam 2000.
