Advances in Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences:

Abstract

The Congress is the largest ISPRS event, taking place every four years. It is the most important event in the community of photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences. It is always the case that during the period of four years between two successive ISPRS congresses significant scientific and technological progress will have been made in the fields of photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences. As a result, thousands of papers are submitted to each congress, and recorded in many thick volumes of proceedings—the International Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. For example, at the XXth Congress held in Istanbul (Turkey), during 12–23 July 2004, more than 50 poster and 100 oral presentation sessions were scheduled and nearly 2000 papers were presented over the 12 days. At this coming Congress to be held in Beijing during 3–11 July 2008, a total of 2600 papers are to be presented in 143 oral and 45 poster sessions. It is always pleasant to see significant progress being made in different fields within ISPRS. On the other hand, this also causes difficulties for researchers and practitioners when attempting to digest such a huge body of literature. Therefore, as one can imagine, it would be very desirable to have a few overview/review papers that describe the major achievements and look to future developments in different fields. This motivated Council in 2003 to initiate the ISPRS congress book series on a permanent basis. It was proposed to produce the first book for the Istanbul Congress but it was not materialized due to time constraints. Thus, this is the first attempt to realize such an endeavour. The Congress Director, Chen Jun, discussed the idea with Zhilin Li in the middle of 2005 and together they produced a proposal in June 2006. This proposal was strongly supported by the ISPRS Council and the Second Vice President, Emmanuel Baltsavias, then joined the team as one of the editors. The volume is intended to cover the major themes in all eight technical commissions. It was not intended to cover the topics of all existing ISPRS Working Groups, for various reasons. The emphasis is on the substantial developments since the Istanbul Congress. After intensive discussions with council members, a list of 36 chapters was finalized. In this volume, a total of 34 chapters are included. They are divided into six parts