OPENING REMARKS
L. Sayn-Wittgenstein
President, Commission VII
This will be a brief report to introduce this Symposium and to
comment on the current programs of Commission VII. You will remember that the
Earth Resources Technology Satellite was launched during the Ottawa Congress
two years ago and the interpretation of ERTS imagery has dominated most other
interpretation problems since. We are now returning to normal, after passing
through a period of excessive enthusiasm, through a lull during which
experiments were being completed, into the present period when results have
begun to exceed the most optimistic expectations - at least for those who have
access to advanced interpretation systems. You will hear some of these
results during this Symposium.
But these new achievements have also posed new problems and things
will never be the same again. The many experiments involving interpretation
of digital data have brought it home to us what a quantitative discipline
interpretation has become. Exact mathematical definitions and statistical
approaches to pattern recognition are rapidly becoming standard interpretation
procedures. The critical limitations in the use of aerial photography and
remote sensing imagery are no longer resolving power and other measures of
image quality, but the methods for extracting useful information from the mass
of data available to everyone. By involving automation, computers and
electronics in the solution of this problem, Commission VII is dealing with
methods and objectives that are central issues in the International Society
for Photogrammetry.
Several immediate priorities are well expressed by the array of
working groups of Commission VII. To these we can add other tasks which
clearly deserve more attention. There is, for example, the need to establish
that conventional interpretation and the new technologies of remote sensing
are not competing systems, but rather complementary methods that must be
combined to meet whatever demands we choose to make from them. Also we have
not made as much progress as there should have been in the interpretation of
side-looking radar imagery, and in studies of imagery from high resolution
weather satellites.
How should Commission VII meet its objective? To put it more speci
fically, what program would you like to see at Helsinki in 1976? The present
Symposium, and several other recent symposia have emphasized ''applications".
Have we ignored the importance of basic research and interpretation concepts
by responding to pressures for proof of useful applications and big benefits?
I hope that the discussions and resolutions of this Symposium will attack this
problem.
You will notice that the Symposium program deviates somewhat from
the structure of Commission VII working groups. One reason ds that the
Symposium theme is "Applications" which does not cover all aspects of
