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ISPRS Commission Iii Symposium: Photogrammetric Computer Vision 2006

The mid-term Symposium of ISPRS Commission III (Photogrammetric computer vision and image analysis) was held in Bonn, Germany, from September 20th to 22nd 2006. The event, organised by Wolfgang Förstner, comprised 44 papers (24 oral presentations and 20 posters) and was also sponsored by the German Association for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (DGPF). Entitled ‘‘Photogrammetric Computer Vision 2006’’ (PCV’06), the Symposium was attended by 123 delegates from 20 countries. The majority of research focused on feature extraction from both images and laser scanning data. Much of this activity covered methods for the extraction of objects from sole data sources, with relatively little work demonstrating the benefits of integration of data capture and/or processing. From a national mapping agency’s point of view this represents a somewhat narrow view. The neglect of opportunities to use pre-existing mapping data and vectors can be explicable for developing methods for mapping and modelling in remote or inaccessible areas. However, mapping data has an important role to play in enhancing the efficiency of innovative methods, particularly for building extraction. Indeed, many of the benefits of new, improving, data sources can only be fully exploited in an integrated environment. It will be interesting to see whether, over the next few years, there will be an increase in the number of researchers widening these feature extraction techniques to alternative data sources. Similarly, the transferability of research is an important issue. Researchers in laser scanning are currently coping with the new challenge of processing waveform laser data, and there is also the possibility that future laser scanning will use hyperspectral sensors; in this situation it will be imperative that research is conducted in a multi-disciplinary environment using transferable methods. The conference was opened by Wolfgang Förstner with an introduction by Ian Dowman (UCL, UK), President of ISPRS. The keynote was given by Reinhard Klein who presented the work on shape detection in point clouds being undertaken by Bonn University’s Computer Graphics Group. By detecting primitive shapes, this work allows semantic labelling of, and increased interaction with, data derived from point clouds. This fast and robust tool can be seen to be increasingly relevant when both photogrammetry and laser scanning are enabling the capture of point cloud data over an expanding range of applications. The first session, Image Analysis, was both opened and closed by Matthias Butenuth (Leibniz University, Hanover) discussing network snakes for image segmentation. This work extends the use of parametric active contours beyond the detection of objects with closed boundaries and the paper was awarded the Symposium prize for ‘‘best paper’’. The two Building Extraction sessions on 20th and 21st September presented techniques that ranged from detecting roof parts in scale space (Martin Drauschke, University of Bonn), capturing 3D geometry of the whole building (Mélanie Durupt, Institut Géographique National Photogrammetric Record 22(117): 88–90 (March 2007)