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THE RESEARCH GOALS AND THE RESEARCH STRATEGY 
OF THE EuroSDR 
Martien Molenaar 
Vice President of EuroSDR 
International Institute for geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) 
Enschede, The Netherlands 
ABSTRACT 
The rapid development of the modern Information Society and within that of GSDIs has important 
consequences for the role of NMAs and geoinformation providers in general. In the past the activities 
of OEEPE concentrated on the development of procedures and methods for spatial data acquisition 
through photogrammetry and other (digital) imagery. The organization decided recently to change 
her name into EuroSDR and to redefine here objectives and strategies and broaden her scope to do 
research on the technology and methods related to all different stages of geo-spatial core data 
provision processes. This means that research will now deal with data acquisition, data storage and 
retrieval, data processing and presentation and dissemination and integration with other data. This 
presentation will explain the consideration leading to these new research goals and strategies. 
1 INTRODUCTION 
Today we celebrate the 50" anniversary of an organisation that was called OEEPE but that starts the 
next fifty years of its existence under name EuroSDR. The change of name was considered relevant 
because the scope of the organisation has widened. In the first fifty years the emphasis was on 
photogrammetry; the founding fathers of OEEPE had a clear vision that this technology, which was 
rather new at that time, could play an important role in the timely production of map data. They were 
even able to convince their governments that these data were of great importance for the development 
of the countries of Europe so that an agreement between their governments was arranged with the 
purpose to do experimental studies to explore and improve the potentials of photogrammetry. Looking 
back we see that this was an exceptional feat, never repeated ever after. 
In the fifty years of its existence OEEPE was instrumental in the emancipation of photogrammetry as 
a tool for mapping. OEEPE projects proved that this technology could significantly speed up mapping 
processes and that it enabled the production of maps with an accuracy level comparable to the 
traditional surveying techniques. The mid seventies the time of the Oberschwaben tests were the high 
days of OEEPE because their accuracy results meant the definite breakthrough of photogrammetry as 
full-grown mapping instrument. Many other projects demonstrated the possibilities of photo- 
grammetry for the production of topographic data and contour lines. Other projects demonstrated the 
usefulness of new products like orthophotos and digital height models and a logical next step in the 
development was the production digital terrain models instead of paper maps. At that moment the first 
step was made in the direction of digital spatial databases. That was in the early eighties but it took 
almost twenty years before the full impact of this (gradual) breakthrough was properly understood so 
that the organisation could draw the consequences of this development. 
In the mean time we have seen the advent of remote sensing, digital image processing and GIS or 
rather geo-informatics. With the development of digital spatial databases came the need for data 
exchange. The role of the traditional maps was now in the context of visualisation rather than 
dissemination. Digital data exchange means generally data integration and that requires standards but 
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