Preliminary work has been done by the former WG II/7 “Practical and Implementation Issues in Digital Mapping“. The outcome was the “Image Transfer Standard” (ITS) which could be considered a detailed concept for the general data exchange between any type of photogrammetric and remote sensing sensor and application.

In the last two years a good working relationship has been established with ISO/TC211. (ISO = International Organization for Standardization, TC211 = Technical Committee 211 “Geographic Information – Geomatics”). TC211 has mainly dealt with the creation of basic standards for vector based geographic information systems. The first group within the TC211 to deal with rasters was the project team 19124 “Imagery and Gridded Data Components”. The ISPRS “Image Transfer Standard” was taken as a guideline for the standardization of all photogrammetric and remote sensing raster data.

In order to focus the work on the heterogeneous field of different sensors a new ISO/TC211 project 19130 “Sensor and Data Models for Imagery and Gridded Data” was confirmed at the last plenary meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, in March 2001. Project leader is Liping Di, who also is the co-chair of ISPRS WG II/4. Wolfgang Kresse is the editor.

The concept of project 19130 is a stepwise approach towards a general data exchange standard. As a first step the sensor model proposed in the “Image Transfer Standard” shall be confirmed and partly extended according to the needs of the ISO members. In a second step the related metadata will be listed. Presently the US-FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee) is completing a metadata standard for remote sensing applications. A part of it is a rather extensive list of metadata for the frame camera and for the swath (pushbroom) sensor. This material can also be utilized for ISO.

Further steps will be the creation of a data model and perhaps a complete software interface for use in application systems. The documentation of the models will be written in UML.

The first official meeting of the ISPRS WG II/4 will be a joint meeting with the new ISO/TC211 project 19130. It will be held in Berlin June 18th and 19t h 2001. The meeting shall bring together the experts from both worlds: Photogrammetry/Remote Sensing and Standardization. Representatives of sensor and systems manufacturers are expected as well as scientists, ISO-experts and OGC-members. We hope to have a clearer understanding of the sensor models as well as the start of a comprehensive list of metadata after the meeting.

ISO always works with a rather tight schedule. Budgetary considerations will limit meetings of the project team 19130 to three per year. The project shall be completed within two or t hree years. Depending on the results of the Berlin meeting it will be decided how the expertise of ISPRS can be linked to the ISO effort in the future.