International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXII Part 7C2, UNISPACE III. Vienna 1999 
6 
I5PR5 
UNISPACE III - ISPRS Workshop on 
“Resource Mapping from Space” 
9:00 am -12:00 pm, 22 July 1999, VIC Room B 
Vienna, Austria 
I5PR5 
Stage I 
1880 1900 
Stage ¡1 
1920 1940 
Year 
Stage HI 
1960 1980 
Service 
Industry 
Figure 1 Taken from Robinson (1982, page 320). Changing composition of the US work force (%). Stage I is an agricultural 
economy, stage II an industrial economy, and stage III is the information economy. 
Year 
Region 
Annual % increase 
Estimated value 
Author 
1990 
Europe total sales 
30 
- 
Green (1990) 
1988 
US total sales 
28 
635 million USD 
Dataquest (1988) 
1989 
UK total sales 
35 
180 million GB pounds 
Parker(1989) 
1988 
US total sales 
32 
529 million USD 
Walker & Miller 
(1990) 
1995 
Global GIS software 
13.7 
563 million USD 
Fairall (1995) 
1994-98 
Global software sales 
27 
- 
Daratech (1998) 
1994-98 
Global total sales 
18 
- 
Daratech (1998) 
Table 1 Estimated growth in GIS sales and revenues 
At the moment there is large demand for tire products and 
services of the GIS industry, and GIS is undergoing tremendous 
growth (Table 1). 
Another index of the growth in the spatial data industry is the 
number of new software packages released onto the market 
(Figure 2). GIS and remote sensing activity is continuing to 
expand in response to regional and global environmental 
problems (i.e. rising populations and shrinking resources), as 
well as demand from specialised marketing services and 
delivery' of human services. Thus, GIS technology is a rapidly 
growing service sector industry, and remote sensing is a spatial 
data input to GIS.