"intelligent" products, which give alternatives or suggestions
for decisions.
Are we sure to be able to meet the demands of the future
market? Competitors from other disciplines like Computer
Science are already strong and will be stronger in the future.
This applies dramatically for companies which produced pho-
togrammetric hardware components in the past.
As a result from fast growing population and fast growing
technology, a series of problems in the political and socio-
economic domain will increase: Pollution of man s environ-
ment does already exceed the acceptable standards in many
regions. Ethnic conflicts and migration of people are indica-
tors of a changing world.
A key concept is "globalisation". In the future, even today,
an event is globally noticed and very quickly may have global
impact. This relates to all mentioned fields, like growing pop-
ulation, growing technology, growing pollution and growing
social conflicts.
3 "OUR PROFESSION"- WHAT DOES IT STAND
FOR?
3.1 About the name
If we simply take the name of our society, our profession could
be called " Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing". This is, of
course, not consistent, as " Remote Sensing" was added in the
seventies to the traditional, internationally recognized greek
term "Photogrammetry". Thus, a wider range of activities
covered by our professional field was marked. This happened
in most countries, but not in all. In the seventies, a wide,
controversial discussion developed whether it would be wise
to "just add on" the new concept of "Remote Sensing", to
leave "Photogrammetry" as it had always been or to take
even just " Remote Sensing" instead of " Photogrammetry".
It is interesting to remember the discussion now as we are
again in a similar situation: " Digital image processing" on one
side and " Geoinformation Systems" on the other are examples
for fast developing fields - outside of ”Photogrammetry and
Remote Sensing"!- which possibly requires modification of
our name. | shall not discuss here whether the proposal from
Wuhan/China to take ”Iconic Informatics” (Deren Li,1992)
or ”Geomatics” form Quebec/Canada would be good alter-
natives. By the way, Kraus mentions that "Photo" refers to
"photones" and, consequently may be used for both photo-
graphic and non-photographic imagery.
Anyhow, the present discussion reflects a changing techin-
cal environment for our profession. As experienced twenty
years ago, a change of name would have to go together with
changing concepts instead of a "just add-on" procedure.
3.2 About the nature of ” Photogrammetry and Remote
Sensing”
Where is our profession located in Science? Depending on
the view, it has strong relation to
Natural Sciences
Engineering Sciences
Political Sciences
Taking e.g. sensor development, it starts with basic Physics.
Turning the sensor operational is an engineering task, and
employing the sensor in a real application like mapping or
14
monitoring of the environment, involves many socio-economic
features which we may assign to " Political Sciences".
It has to be pointed out here, that the nature of the three
fields differs significantly:
Natural Sciences: search for " truth"
Engineering Sciences: solving technical problems
Political Sciences: solving socio-economic problems
(Bähr, 1995a)
Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing will mostly be related
to Engineering Sciences and the limits to Natural Sciences
and Political Sciences are flowing. However, we have to be
aware of the very different concept and methodology people
in the respective field apply to reach their final goal. The
"final goals" - designing a mathematical algorithm, operating
a system, controlling rainforst cut - determine the view of the
individual professional.
3.3 Manifold dimensions
A profession in general is a function of time and space and
there exist still more dimensions.
As far as time is concerned, our profession is highly technol-
ogy driven. Fast changing technical conditions have to be
reflected by corresponding changes in tools and products and
finally by the professional image. This is the main topic of
this paper.
Space stands for regional conditions of Photogrammetry and
Remote Sensing. In the course of this century basic develop-
ments in our field of activity occurred mainly in Europe and
North America, although application, particularly in mapping
from areal and space platforms, was largely performed in and
for the Third World.
The background of this paper is mostly from Central Europe,
USA and Brazil, putting together very different social and
economic environments. The professional image varies sig-
nificantly: in Central Europe, one becomes photogrammetrist
by education; in USA and Brazil by experience ("by doing").
Whereas in the USA a large open market of photogrammet-
ric companies exist (see paragraph 4), Photogrammetry in
Brazil is limited to some big companies, excluding national
and international competition.
Principally, the respective markets design the regional condi-
tions for the differing image of our profession in the spatial
context. Today we encounter globally a dramatic new dis-
tribution of economically active and successful regions like
south-east Asia and partially Latin America. In Europe, too,
we observe a trend to lower legal restrictions in countries of
the European Union (EU), and some even see new markets in
Eastern Europe. All this must necessarily exert a significant
impact on our own professional field.
A third dimension can be found in the different professional
levels. Not considering applications at this point, we have
three levels of education (" academic", " engineer" and "tech-
nician") and three types of activity ("research and devel-
opment (R--D"), "project level" and "operational level").
There are, of course, no rigid limits between the particular
sectors. This is graphically shown in a matrix (Fig. 1).
As we know, the field of activities of our profession is in-
deed confusingly broad, especially when adding more dimen-
sions like the large spectrum of applications (from "on-line
industrial control" to " monitoring global environment") and
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B6. Vienna 1996
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