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Book in Review

This edited volume was published following the 21st International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) congress in Beijing, held on 3–11 July 2008. The book seeks to showcase progress in remote sensing and photogrammetry research since the previous congress 4 years earlier in Istanbul (12–23 July 2004). The book begins with a preface outlining the complexity of the task in summarising the broad fields of research represented in ISPRS – a significant challenge in a 500 page volume summarising eight technical commissions. To achieve this aim, the book focuses material into six sections: (1) introduction; (2) sensors and platforms; (3) data processing and analysis; (4) data modelling, management and visualisation; (5) applications, and (6) education, with 34 chapters contributed by 62 international researchers active within the ISPRS. In the preface, the book is sold as a resource for a ‘wide audience’ including scientists, researchers, university students and practitioners. On the whole, the book does deliver relevant content to each of these potential stakeholders. Strangely however, the preface contains an editorial overview of imperfections in the book, defined as: omission of some key topics (discussed later in this review); chapter content is focussed on author expertise rather than being synoptic; lack of multiple-revision cycle reviews because of time constraints; and lack of coordination between chapters. Having reviewed the book, some of these declarations of imperfection seem unfounded – the book is a useful guide to state-of-the-art advancements in specific fields, and the fact that chapters are written by research leaders results in a more focussed critical content than would otherwise be afforded by generalised reviews of techniques and technologies. Despite the overall high-quality, research-focussed nature of the book, the first chapter is turned over to a rather dry summary of the ‘historical development of ISPRS’, which is likely to be of narrow interest, with its focus towards statutes and mission aims. To the general reader, Chapter 1 acts to stifle the exciting advancements in science presented later on. Nevertheless, for those interested in a concise summary of the foundations of photogrammetry and remote sensing, the latter part of Chapter 1 is helpful, whereas Chapter 2 is considerably more interesting and provides a useful overview of key recent advancements in the field. There is a great wealth of cross-disciplinary information to welcome in this book, with a range of chapters to delight the remote sensing and photogrammetry communities equally. Section 2 provides an excellent summary and critique of the newest systems. Of particular interest are chapters on airborne digital imaging sensors, LiDAR, land mobile-mapping systems, small satellite missions, and unmanned aerial vehicles, which all provide in-depth information on techniques that tend to receive little attention in other textbooks. Perhaps a little disappointing was the fact that the strong systems-based technological focus of this section was not balanced with (even a little) insight into application. This represents a missed opportunity in demonstrating the benefits to science afforded by such advancements in technology, and could have been remedied with a short section at the end of each chapter referring to key application outputs in the past 4 years. This criticism is, to some extent, addressed in later sections. In particular, Chapter 10 (section 3) provides an excellent review of spectral, spatial, temporal, angular and polarisation signatures, with a strong critical focus on recent applications, and systems for each. Multitemporal, hyperspectral, and multi-source data are also dealt with, alongside an excellent review of LiDAR processing (including full waveform systems) in Section 3. Some of the material in these chapters is necessarily technical, and thus certain elements would only be comprehensible to an expert audience. Section 4 provides a refreshing change of focus from the technically oriented sections that precede it. Here, geographical information science issues are discussed in relation to representation of spatio-temporal data in models, database design, topologies and scaling effects. Multiple