The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008 
178 
Psum=Pois +PRs + PRa +PRd’+PGNg+PSVs+ (PCs+ PCns+ 
PCo) + P 0 =36.3+ZlP Sum 
(P c =PCs+ PCns+ PCo) 
ZlPsum includes: 1) Part of output value of satellite remote 
sensing data industry (PRs) is not be calculated, mainly 
including CBERS and "Beijing No. 1" satellite data output. 2) 
Part of output value of aerial remote sensing photogrammetry 
(PRa) and remote sensing data processing services and 
applications (PRd') is not be calculated. 3) The ignored part of 
mapping industry, including part of professional mapping 
companies and institutes and all non-professional mapping 
companies and institutes. 4) Output value of other emerging 
industry, such as LBS, and internet map services,etc. 5) Output 
value of companies without qualifications for surveying and 
mapping which engage in geoinformation process. 6) Output 
value of geospatial related application by IT company which is 
not a small number by case study in Beijing. 7) Output value of 
other parts which are not calculated. All these output value of 
the above parts, by the estimation of experts from SBSM, is 
more than 4 billion Yuan. Namely, 
A Psum > 4 billion Yuan (about $ 0.5 billion) 
PSum >40 billion Yuan (about $5 billion) 
From the above survey and research, it can be concluded that 
the output value of China’s geospatial industry is over 40 billion 
Yuan (about $5 billion). Since the study doesn’t select samples 
from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan special administrative 
region, the result of 40 billion Yuan(about $5 billion) is only the 
lowest approximation of the Chinese mainland geospatial 
industry size. According to the result, the output value of 
geospatial industry is 8.4 percent of that of Chinese software 
industry, 1.2 percent of high-tech industry, 0.19 percent of 
Chinese GDP in 2006. 
4 WORKING POPULATION AND NUMBER OF 
COMPANIES AND INSTITUTES 
Working population is a key indicator to describe the industry 
size. According to the definition of the overall labor 
productivity in economics, the working population can be 
calculated by the geospatial Industry output and the overall 
labor productivity as formula 4-1. 
WP= V/P 
(Formula 4-1) 
WP: Average Number of Staff and Workers; 
V: Value Added of Geospatial Industry; 
P: Overall Labor Productivity of Geospatial Industry 
Since the Chinese surveying industry is one of the key branches 
of the geospatial Industry, it also refers to all other industry 
branches, such as GIS industry, RS industry, GNSS industry and 
mapping industry. The study uses the overall labor productivity 
of surveying industry as the approximation of the geospatial 
industry labor productivity. For the surveying industry labor 
productivity is 116,214 Yuan per person in 2005(SBSM, 2005) 
and the total output of the geospatial industry is 36.28 billion 
RMB in 2006. According to formula 4-1, the working 
population of China’s geospatial industry in 2006 is 312,182. 
Number of companies and institutes is another indicator of 
industry size. There are two categories of companies and 
institutes in geospatial industry, one is with qualification on 
surveying and mapping, and the other is not. According to 
SBSM, there are over 9,096 companies and institutes with 
qualification on surveying and mapping in China. Besides, there 
are still a large number of companies and institutes without 
qualification. It is found out by case study of Beijing that there 
are over 1,000 geospatial-related companies and institutes, 
among which there are only 185 companies and institutes have 
qualification on surveying and mapping. Therefore, It is 
estimated that there are more than 10,000 companies and 
institutes in China. 
5 CONCLUSION 
Under the situation of poor data availability, the study 
decomposes and modifies the indicator of industry size 
according to the characteristics of different industry branch and 
its data availability. By accessing value of each indicator, the 
study finally obtains the value of geospatial industry size (more 
than 36.3 billion Yuan). Based on the value of industry size and 
overall labor productivity, working population of geospatial 
industry is calculated out as 312,182. The number of companies 
and institutes is estimated more than 10,000. 
For the growing demand of geographic information, continuous 
innovation of geoinformation technology, increasingly rich of 
geographic information resources, increasing number of 
geoinformation professionals, the China’s geospatial industry 
size is developing and expanding rapidly. It’s difficult to study 
the industry development status with traditional static method. 
Despite of the error, the method of indicators decomposition 
and modification of key industry branches adopted in the study 
is an effective approach to access the industry size. 
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