and 
FOREWORD 
At Washington '92 Congress and ISPRS General Assembly, Italy got the honour to serve 
ISPRS hosting the Technical Commission I (TC I), in the period 1992-96. In this period: 
- 6 WG's were established; 
- 8 WG's (2 belonging to OEEPE) were engaged as Cooperating WG's; 
- 3 workshops (among which the Mid Term Symposium) were organized, in Trento, Como 
and Udine, with a scheduling of one year; 
-  4volumes of Proceedings have been issued; 
- . 110 papers were presented and printed; 
- . 190 people attended the events. 
After the Joint Meetings of Council and Technical Commission Presidents, that were held in 
Beijing, Vienna and Bali, the TC I got 6 technical sessions, 2 poster sessions (each of these of 
about 10 papers) and 1 key-note in the Vienna '96 Congress. 
It is a big pleasure to note as all technical sessions will host officially, or unofficially, one or 
more Cooperating WG's, so that the TC I isn't a small, isolated and, maybe, useless 
Commission, but it plays an important role among several Technical Commissions increasing 
their cooperation and emphasizing the topics of primary data acquisition and evaluation. 
Furthermore a special attention to Industrial Equipments for Data Acquisition must be given by 
every WG's, paying a lack of content in the TC I which, according to its name Sensors 
Platforms and Imagery and the Terms of Reference, cannot neglect or dismiss contributions 
from industries, engineering firms, etc. 
Concerning presented papers, since the Congress Director gave each Commission the 
possibility to decide a "review process" for TC I papers in Vienna, the following review 
process has been chosen: 
- 2 people (usually Chairmen and Co-Chairmen of TC I WG's, or Cooperating WG's) will 
do a "blind review process", assigning a vote (A to E) decreasing with the quality of the 
abstract; 
— 2 people (the President and the Secretary of TC I) will prepare the proposals for the TC 
P's and Council Meeting, taking into account the "blind review process", in the hope to 
collect a big number of high quality papers. 
Regarding ISPRS TC I future role, two different strategies can be identified: 
— from the point of view of contents: TC's III, IV, V and VII cover all ISPRS scientific and 
technical arguments; 
— from the point of view of the participation: TC's I, II and VI offer open space suitable to 
study different aspects, for which the major Commissions are too small: consequently 
there aren't discussion, circulation, promotion, etc. 
A possible suggestion is to form a double structure in the ISPRS: 
- . with 4 major Commissions, 
— . that meet 3 minor Commissions 
— by separate, but parallel, WG's, 
- whose Terms of Reference recommend to establish close contact among themselves, 
— whose activities foresee Intercommission Workshops and 
the participation in the activities of different Commissions as Cooperating WG's. 
The philosophy of this opinion is that "cooperation" is better than "competition" and assures 
bigger and more stable advantages. 
Luigi Mussio Gianfranco Forlani 
(President of TC I) (Secretary of TC I)