President Alain Baudoin

Secretary Nicolas Paparoditis

Main facts in 2006

In 2006 the following civilian Earth Observation satellites have been launched:

January 24: ALOS (Japan)

April 25: EROS-B (Israel

April 26: Yaogan 1 (China)

April 28: Calipso (USA/ France)

April 28: Cloudsat (NASA)

May 26: Kompass 2 (Russia)

June 15: Resurs (Russia)

July 28: Kompsat 2 (Korea)

It can be noted that in 2006 the GEO (Group on Earth Observation) has begun the implementation of the GEOSS 10-Year Plan as endorsed by the Third Earth Observation Summit. Its 66 members (Countries) and 43 participating organisations met together for the GEO-III meeting in Bonn, Germany, on November 28-29.

The Commission I Symposium

In 2006 the main activity of the Commission has been the preparation and organization of the Symposium held at Marne-la-Vallée, near Paris, France, in the premises of the Ecole Nationale des Sciences Géographiques (ENSG - the IGN's school) with more than 200 participants from 30 countries.

The Symposium has been organized under the responsibility of the French Photogrammetric and Remote Sensing Society (SFPT) with the help of IGN, the French National Mapping Agency and CNES, the French Space agency. Other sponsors (Spot Image, Intergraph, ITT, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Council of the Île-de-France Region) added their support to hold an exhibition and to deliver some grants to students or attendants from developing countries.

The first day, July 3, 2006, a tutorial on "Information extraction, with emphasis on DSM generation, from high-resolution optical satellite sensors" has been organized for 30 participants.

Then the Symposium itself took place from July 4 to July 6, where 193 participants could attend the sessions and visit the exhibition where 9 industrial companies or public organisations presented their activities and products.

Three keynote speakers, representing ISPRS partners; EuroSDR (Keith Murray), ION (Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska) and GEO (José Achache) gave an overview of their organisation while showing the interest for them and for ISPRS to co-operate together.

The title of the Symposium: "From Sensors to Imagery" reflected our common feeling on the necessity to design and operate sensors in a way they could produce high quality images and then useful information.

The sessions were organised by the seven Working Groups of the Commission and by the two Inter Commission Working Groups (WG I/V and V/I).

After reviewing the 105 submitted abstracts 44 papers have been accepted for a presentation in one of the 11 oral sessions and 40 accepted for a presentation during one of the 3 poster sessions. It can be noted that, even if this is still too much, only 6 oral and 12 poster presentations should have been cancelled due to the lack of speaker.

Most of the WG officers have attended the Symposium and this was an occasion to have a Commission meeting to review the results of the Symposium and the past activities and to propose future activities.

The scientific outputs of the Symposium were considered as quite satisfactory, as most of the topics related to the Commission had been addressed, even if some important ones were missing such as new operational satellites (ex ALOS, Cartosat) web-based applications for mobile mapping systems, small and medium format aerial cameras. This could be due to some competition with other meeting related with these subjects.

But many new ideas were discussed, such as new processing techniques for LiDAR, the use of images for navigation, the interest of satellite imagery for 3D city models generation, the need for guidelines of camera calibration, the impact of sensor network on life privacy.

The publication of the full papers has been split in two parts, Part A and Part B. Each author had the possibility to be peer reviewed or not and those who had asked for this review and had been selected are published in Part A, the others in Part B. As a result Part A contains 29 papers and Part B 45 papers. The Proceedings of the Symposium are available on a digital form and were distributed to all participants at the Symposium. They will be also available on line from the ISPRS web site and from the Commission web site.

New organisation of Commission1

After the Commission Meeting during the Symposium where all members of the ISPRS Council were present and where a review of the WG activities were presented, it has been decided to slightly modify the organisation of the Commission. The following decisions were agreed at the Joint Meeting of the Council and the TCPs in Goa on October 1^st 2006:

• WG I/1 is asked to modify its board of officers.

• WG I/7 is deleted and its Terms of References and activities split between WG I/3 and WG I/6 as follows:

• Additional Terms of Reference for WG I/3:

• Autonomous sensor and platform control.

• On-board data processing.

• Additional Terms of Reference for WG I/6:

• Future trends in the development of sensors and platform, especially for small satellites.

Other activities of the Commission Board

The Secretary attended in January 2006 EuroCOW 2006 organised by WG I/3 with EuroSDR in Casteldefells, Spain and in February 2006 the Workshop "Topographic mapping from Space " organised by WG I/5 and WG I/6 in Ankara, Turkey.

The President has been involved in the Cartosat Scientific Assessment Program, set up by ISRO and Commission IV. First results were presented at the Goa Symposium. He was designated as member of the GEO Architecture and Data Committee and could attend the 1^st meeting in Paris, March 2006.

Plans for future activities

The Commission will organize, through its Working Groups six workshops in 2007 and beginning 2008, while preparing the ISPRS Congress in Beijing in July 2008.

These workshops are the following (See details in the WG reports where other meetings involving the WG could also be presented):

• 2007, May 29, June 1 in Hanover, Germany organized by WG I/5 with I/1 and I/4 on High Resolution Earth Imaging for Geospatial Information.

• 2007, May, 28-31in Padua, Italy, organized by ICWG I/V with ICWG V/I and WG I/2 and I/3, on Mobile Mapping Technology (MMT'07)

• 2007, September, 12-14 in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, organized by WG I/4 on Airborne Digital Photogrammetric Sensor Systems

• 2007, September, 19-21, in Munich, Germany, with WG I/2 on Photogrammetric Image Analysis

• 2007, November 19-22 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia organized by WG I/6 on Earth Observation Small Satellites for Remote Sensing Applications.

• 2008, January 30 - February 1, in Casteldefells Spain, organized by EuroSDR with WG I/3 and WG I/4

Beyond this support to the WG activities the Commission Board will continue to cooperate with sisters organisation, especially EuroSDR and GEO. The web site of the Commission should be updated and improved by beginning of 2007.

Working Group Activities during the Current Year

Chair: Roland Gachet (France)

The WG has not yet been very active: Its web page is not yet available but should be prepared within the next months.

The WG participated to the CEOS CalVal meeting in Frascati in November 2005.

A proposal to create a catalogue of calibration test sites and methods is still to be discussed and achieved.

During the Symposium 4 papers were presented in one oral session and 7 as posters

A closer co-operation with the ISPRS Standards Committee should give the opportunity to propose additional standards or modifications of current ones to the ISO/TC 211 "Geographic Information / Geomatics", WG 6 "Imagery".

Activities in 2006

Web page: http://www.commission1.isprs.org/wg2/

Symposium of the Technical Commission I of ISPRS:

4-6 July 2006, Marne la Vallée, Paris, France: "From Sensors To Imagery" was the most important meeting for the WG. There were 17 abstracts submitted to the WG; four related to SAR and five to LiDAR technology, and nine with a variety of overlapping topics. Half of the abstracts were selected for oral presentations, representing seven countries. Five manuscripts were selected for peer-reviewed publication.

Participation to other meetings:

2006 January 18-20 ION National Technical Meeting, the WG organized a special session on "Rapid Geointelligence Acquisition From Airborne Platforms", Sponsored by ISPRS WG I/2 "SAR and LIDAR Systems."

2005 May 1-5 ASPRS Annual Convention in Reno. Charles Toth, as the Director of Photogrammetric Application Divisions of APSRS, oversees the work of the LiDAR sub-committee and provides a link between the national and international societies.

- Planned meetings, workshops and tutorials

2007 May 28-31: The 5^th International Symposium on Mobile Mapping Technology (MMT'07), Padua, Italy, sponsored by ISPRS WG I/2 on "SAR and LIDAR Systems".

2007 September 19-21: Photogrammetric Image Analysis in Munich, Germany. The WG is having is WG bi-annual meeting in collaboration with four other WGs.

- Links and exchanges with other organizations

The WG Officers provide an essential connection to their national societies in the field of WG ToR. The cooperation of with other organizations is mostly on a case-by-case basis and the meetings listed above show the recent and planned activities.

Chair: Dr. Vincent Tao (Canada)

Co-Chairs: Dr. Ismael Colomina (Spain)

Activities in 2006

Web page: WG I.3 website has been established. See: http://www.geoict.yorku.ca/TGIPage/Research/Sensorweb/isprs/wg.html

WG Conferences and Workshops

January 25 -27 2006, as the primary organizer, WG I.3 organized the International Calibration and Orientation Workshop (EuroCOW 2006) in Castelldefels, Spain. WG I.3 co-chair Dr. Ismael Colomina is the chair of the EuroCOW workshop. More details see: http://www.eurocow.org/

May 2^nd 2006, WG I.3 organized a workshop called "Sensor Networking and Cross-platform Integration: A New Direction in Sensing Technology" at ASPRS 2006 Conference, Reno, USA. The workshop is a tutorial on the design and operation of sensor networking and cross-platform integration intended for mission-specific monitoring strategies. The workshop was instructed by WG I.3 officer Dr. Radd A. Saleh (WG I.3 Co-chair) and Dr. Vincent Tao (WG I.3 Chair). More details see: http://www.asprs.org/conference-archive/reno2006/final-prog.htm

May 2006, WG I.3 organized a special panel session on "Multi-platform sensing and sensor networks" at ASPRS 2006 Conference, Reno, and USA. Dr. Radd A. Saleh and Dr. Vincent Tao organized the panel session

July 3-6 2006, WG I.3 organized the WG I.3 oral presentation session and poster session at ISPRS Commission I Symposium, in Paris, France.

Other Activities

February 1^st 2006, WG I.3 member, Dr. Vincent Tao and Steve Liang, co-organized a workshop on "Intelligent Sensorweb for Integrated Earth Sensing (ISIES)" at York University, Toronto, Canada. ISIES is a real-world sensorweb system designed to integrate remote sensing data and in-situ sensorweb for agricultural applications. An interactive demonstration of the ISIES project is available at: http://www.ictdevgroup.com/agriculture/casestudies/isies.htm

August 6-9 2006, WG I.3 Chair, Dr. Vincent Tao, was invited to present on the research of "Spatial Sensor Web" at Microsoft 2006 Summer Institute on the World-Wide Sensor Web in Blaine, WA, USA. More details see: http://www.cs.washington.edu/mssi/2006/index.aspx

WG I.3 members, Dr. Vincent Tao and Steve Liang, contributed to the making of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web interoperability standards, interoperable Sensor Web software, and interoperability demonstrations. The OGC Sensor Web standards have been published as formal OGC standards in 2006. The OGC Sensor Web standards and an interactive multi-media demonstration on OGC Sensor Web is available at OGC web site, http://www.opengeospatial.org/ .

Planned activities

February 5-6 2007, WG I.3 planned to sponsor the 2nd South African International Workshop on Sensor Web Enablement. WG I.3 Chair, Dr. Vincent Tao, will attend the workshop.

May 23-25 2007, WG I.3 will co-organize a joint conference on Geo-information for Disaster Management (GI4DM) in collaboration with The Canadian Institute of Geomatics (CIG). The GI4DM is a joint conference of the 3^rd International Conference on Geo-information for Disaster Management and the 100^th National Conference of the Canadian Institute of Geomatics. More details see:

https://www.cig-acsg.ca/cig2007/english/home.htm

May 28-31 2007, WG I.3 will co-organize the 5^th International Symposium on Mobile Mapping Technology (MMT '07). More details see: http://www.cirgeo.unipd.it/cirgeo/convegni/mmt2007/

Chair: Dr. Jon Mills (UK)

Co-Chairs: Jean-Philippe Souchon (France)

2006 Activity

2006 activity is shown with reference to the TOR of the WG.

Meetings: An excellent response was received to the call for WG I/4 papers for the Commission Symposium held in July. Nine papers were presented in two oral sessions and 11 as posters, addressing TOR 2 and 3. The WG also participated in the Scientific Committee of the "Future of Remote Sensing" workshop that was held in Belgium in October 2006, addressing TOR 4.

Publications: A special issue of the ISPRS Journal on "Digital Aerial Cameras" was published as Volume 60 Issue 6 (September 2006). The issue was jointly edited by the organizers of the Hanover Workshop and WG I/4. Five papers were published from 13 submitted, addressing TOR 1, 2 and 3.

Other activities: The WG website gives useful information on its activities and also provides digital images from airborne photogrammetric sensors free of charge for non-commercial use (addressing TOR 5). Information can also be found regarding the collaboration with EuroSDR on the calibration and testing of airborne digital sensors (addressing TOR 1). Approximately 40 members from 13 countries participate to the WG activities.

Future activities

Planned meetings: The first call for papers was recently made for the WG I/4 workshop that will be held during the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society (RSPSoc) Annual Conference. The workshop will take place at Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, from 12 - 14 September 2007. See http://www.rspsoc2007.org for further details. In 2007 the WG will also contribute to the organisation of the Hanover Workshop (29 May - 1 June 2007). In 2008 WG I/4 will cooperate with EuroSDR in the organisation of EuroCOW 2008 (provisional dates 30 January - 1 February 2008) as well as the Beijing Congress (initial plans submitted but not yet finalised).

Chair: Dr. Karsten Jacobsen (Germany)

Co-Chairs: Dr. Peter Reinartz (Germany)

Activities in 2006

Meetings

From February 14^th up to 16^th, 2006 a common workshop "Topographic Mapping from Space with Special Emphasis to Small Satellites" has been held by the WG I/5 together with WG I/6 in Ankara, Turkey. 30 presented papers are available on CD in the ISPRS archive under XXXVI-1/W41 and also on ISPRS WEB page

http://www.isprs.org/commission1/ankara06/isprsAnkara.htm.

During the Commission I symposium from July 4^th to 6^th, 2006 in Paris, Marne la Vallée the sessions "Modelling of space borne sensors" and "DEM generation" have been covered by WG I/5. In addition WG I/5 participated at the tutorial "Information extraction, with emphasis on DSM generation, from high resolution optical satellite sensors".

Planned meetings

From May 29^th up to June 1^st, 2007 the "ISPRS Hannover Workshop 2007" "High-Resolution Earth Imaging for Geospatial Information" will be organized by WG I/5 and WG IV/3 with support of WG I/4 and WG IV/9. The 4-days workshop will be held in the Leibniz University Hannover.

Trends in Geometric Modelling of Optical Spaceborne Sensors:

The growing number of high and very high resolution optical satellites is equipped with gyros, star cameras and positioning systems, allowing a direct sensor orientation. The orientation information of the direct sensor orientation is distributed by means of rational polynomial coefficients (RPCs). By this reason the bias corrected RPC-solution is becoming the most often used orientation method, caused also by the fact of missing standards for other orientation information. The approximations 3D-affine transformation, DLT and RPCs based on control points require more and well distributed control points and do not lead to the same accuracy.

Trends in DEM generation by space information:

With the stereo sensors Cartosat I and ALOS/PRISM the conditions for generating DEMs based on optical space images have been drastically improved. The generated DEMs are more accurate and quite more detailed like the free of charge available SRTM C-band height model. In addition the optical sensors are not affected by foreshortening and layover, having better conditions in steep terrain.

From the very high-resolution optical sensors only few stereo pairs, taken from the same orbit, are available. This may be improved with the more flexible sensors Worldview and GeoEye.

Chair: Ugur Murat Leloglu (Turkey)

Co-Chair: Arthur Cracknell (UK)

WG I/6 has a website considered by the ISPRS Secretary General as perfect in its format. It is ready since April 2005 and kept up-to-date continuously.

The main event organized by the WG was, in common with WG I/5, the Workshop on "Topographic Mapping from Space (with Special Emphasis on Small Satellites)" held in Ankara, Turkey on 14-16 February 2006.

At the Marne-la-Vallée Symposium 3 papers were presented in one oral session and 1 as poster.

The next meeting will be the "International Workshop on Earth Observation Small Satellites for Remote Sensing Applications to be organized by the WG in Kuala-Lumpur, Malaysia, on 19-22 November 2007.

Chair: Dr. Guoqing Zhou (USA)

Co-Chair: Dr. Winfried Halle (Germany)

Activities in 2006

WG I/7 technically co-sponsor the 3^rd International Symposium on FIEOS, Beijing, China, May 24-26, 2006, in collaboration with IEEE Society for Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Beijing Chapter. General Chair is Dr. Xu, Minister of Chinese Science and Technology Ministry.

WG I/7 technically co-sponsor the 2006 Geo-sensor Network Workshop, October 1-3, 2006, Boston, MA (USA).

Unfortunately, due to the impossibility to get on time a visa the WG Chairman could not attend the Symposium and no other WG officer were present.

Proposed Activities in 2007 and 2008

(1) WG I/7 will technically co-sponsor the 2007 IEEE Aerospace Conference, "Integrated Sensing, Modeling, and Analysis Using Sensor Webs, Big Sky, Montana, March 3-10, 2007.

(2) WG I/7 will technically co-sponsor International Symposium on the Mapping Without the Sum: Techniques and Application of Optical and SAR Imagery Fusion, Chengdu, Sichuan, China, September 25-27, 2007.

(3) Special Session: Integrated Geosensing and Analysis Using Sensor, Beijing China, 2008

Comment from the Commission President: As the WG I/7 has been deleted these activities will be continued in WG I/3 and I/6.

Chair: Dr. Ron Li (USA)

Co-Chair: Jurgen Everaerts (Belgium)

1. State of Science and Technology of Working Group Topics

a) Land based mobile mapping systems are usually equipped with navigation/mapping sensors such as GPS/INS sensors, stereo cameras, radar, laser scanners, odometer, and brake and steering sensors. Intelligent integration and real-time processing of mobile mapping/navigation data remains an active research topic. A typical development is the real-time mapping effort for supporting autonomous vehicle navigation in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge.

b) Car navigation systems and driver assistance systems are commercialized in almost every car maker. Research focuses are on increasing safety, convenience, and efficiency of driving and capability of detecting and protecting pedestrians in the mean time.

c) Autonomous navigation of planetary robots (e.g., a Mars rover) is primarily based on wheel odometer and IMU. In the 2003 NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission, visual odometry technique has also been used on-board to correct errors that are often caused by wheel slippage when the rovers travel on steep slopes or across loose soils. Bundle adjustment method has been utilized on the ground (Earth) to improve the localization accuracy of the MER rovers. Rock modelling and matching methods are being developed for autonomous long-range Mars rover localization.

4) Image based autonomous navigation method is being developed for Martian aerobot (e.g., balloon) in ESA'a future Mars missions. Relative localization by tracking landmarks in image sequence and absolute localization by matching of aerobot-generated DEM and Mars global DEM have been developed and tested on Earth.

e) Mini-UAV systems (e.g. model helicopters) have been used in various mapping applications. Semi-autonomous and autonomous navigation of UAV are currently under development and testing.

2. Accomplishments of the WG

- The WG Web Page

(http://shoreline.eng.ohio-state.edu/ICWGIV/index.htm) was systematically updated in September 2006 to conform the ISPRS template.

- We organized a session "Advancement in Navigation and Mobile Mapping" in ISPRS Commission I Symposium "From Sensors to Imagery" in Paris, France, July 4-6, 2006.

- We organized a session "Vehicle-borne systems" in ISPRS Commission V Symposium "Image Engineering and Vision Metrology" in Dresden, Germany, September 27-30, 2006.

- We co-organized the 2^nd International Workshop "The Future of Remote Sensing" in Antwerp, Belgium, October 17 - 18, 2006.

3. Working Group News

2007: 5th International Symposium on Mobile Mapping Technology (MMT 2007) to be held in Padua, Italy, May 28-31, 2007.

2008: Technical sessions on the 21 ISPRS congress, Beijing, China, July 3-11, 2008.