are e.g. forest inventory and monitoring changes in forest
condition. A remarkable project in the field of remote sensing
has been to check the areas of cultivated land in applications
for EU-support. Ice field monitoring is concentrated to
interpret the ice situation at the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of
Finland and the Baltic Sea. The data type used is mainly
NOAA-images, another data used is ERS-1-data and the use of
it has been increasing. The real-time system for transmitting
satellite-date products to icebreakers is in operational use.
The Satellite Image Centre, a new national unit, was
established in the National Land Survey in February 1995. The
centre imports and distributes satellite images, it takes care of
the initial processing of the remote sensing data, offers
educational and technical services for the users. One task of
the Satellite Image Centre is to take care of contacts with
remote sensing organizations of other countries.
Research activities in the field of remote sensing are
concentrated e.g. to develop more automatic methods for
interpretation and classification of satellite images, rule-based
methods, neural networks and fuzzy sets have been under
investigation. The use of multi-source image data for
interpretation and radiometric calibration of satellite images
has been also intensively studied.
4. DEVELOPMENT OF GIS AND DIGITAL MAPPING
During the past four years, the focus of mapping activities have
been on the revision, the mapping at larger scales and the
production of digital maps. Typical for this period has been the
remarkably increased and still increasing amount of different
numerical map-data. Today the latest edition of the Basic Map,
scale 1:20000, is available on raster form as datasets of
planimetric details, contours, waters and fields. Most of the
datasets are also available in vector form. Other products
available in digital form are:
e Nordic Map Database, scale 1:2 millions
National Road Database
Administrative Boundaries
Digital Elevation Model
Land Use and Forest Classification.
The Topographic Data System consists of the most detailed
general topographic data with nation-wide coverage and the
map databases. Data inside it covers 23 % of the area of
Finland. The Topographic database is used as a basis for
variety of standard products as well as products customised to
user's needs.
The producer of naval charts in Finland is the Hydrographic
Department of the Finnish Maritime Administration. It has
published a chart series for yachtsmen in raster form on CD-
ROM in spring 1995 and coastal charts covering the eastern
part of the Gulf of Finland. Nautical charts have made in
numerical form covering southern part of lake Saimaa and
waters between cities of Savonlinna and Kuopio. During the
digitisation process, the precision of charts has been improved
using e.g. a new digital coastline.
Other organizations besides the National Land Survey, which
is responsible for small scale mapping covering the whole
country, there are private surveying companies and municipal
surveying organizations producing digital maps. They produce
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B6. Vienna 1996
normally large-scale maps for purposes like land use planning
and road building. Other produced large-scale data are digital
elevation models and digital terrain models. GIS has increased
the need and production of digital map-data in cities and other
municipalities.
The Geographic Information Centre at the National Land
Survey is responsible for stimulating geographic information
activities in Finland. To implement geographic information
services and to develop standards and tools are its main tasks.
The real-time information service on geographical data is
already available. User can define queries by pointing entities,
attributes and areas and by typing restricting values of
attributes using some GIS application, for example MapInfo,
ArcView2 etc. Service centre routes modified queries to the
supplier where the database containing the needed data exists.
The aim of the Geographic Information Centre is to implement
the data services for geographic data covering all important
national datasets by the year 1996.
5. EDUCATION AND RESEARCH
5.1. Education
Education in surveying at the university level is centred to the
Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) in the department of
Surveying. Annual intake is 55 students of which 22 will study
surveying and mapping technology and 33 property economics
and law. The average amount of graduated on M.Sc. level is
about 40 persons each year. There are different entrance
examinations for these two study directions. The system of two
different entrance examinations was taken in use in year 1993.
University level education in fundamentals of photogrammetry
and remote sensing and special courses in the determination of
forms and deformations, is also given at the Tampere
University of Technology (TUT).
Fundamentals of remote sensing are also taught in the
department of geography and forestry at the University of
Oulu, in the departments of geography and biology. Education
in the field of remote sensing is given as well at the University
of Turku and at the University of Joensuu in the department of
forestry.
One remarkable change in education during these for years has
been that in Espoo-Vantaa, Mikkeli, Rovaniemi and Vaasa
Institutes of Technology are now educating engineers instead
of technicians. The first surveying engineers in Finland will
graduate in 1996.
During the period in question thirteen M.Sc. theses, two
licentiate degree theses and one doctorate thesis in
photogrammetry or remote sensing have been accepted. The
dissertation was:
Haggrén, Henrik: "On system development
of photogrammetric stations for on-line
manufacturing control".
The licentiate's theses were:
Lammi, Jussi: "Production and Use of
Digital Imagery in the GIS Environment".
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