of high precision at what some would regard as great
expense. Currently a number of eastern European coun
tries are bringing their cadastral mapping up to date in
conjunction with the return of land to those who owned it
in the 1940's or to their heirs. Photogrammetric practice
has been restricted to state firms, that is companies that
have been created by the break-up of the old command
economies; these state firms have inherited the old
central government equipment and staff, and often the
old practises and attitudes. The new breed of entrepre
neur has not yet been able to afford to move into the
photogrammetric arena.
There are several reasons why photogrammetry has
failed to achieve for cadastral surveying what it did for
topographic. The four most important reasons are that,
for the photogrammetrist to operate:
boundaries must be visible from the air;
there must be economies of scale so that sufficient
plots are surveyed to make the exercise cost ef
fective;
there must be no setting out of plots for this can only
be done by ground survey methods;
there must be clarification of who is licensed to do the
work.
In most cadastral systems there is a balance between the
public and private sectors so that some (and in certain
cases all) cadastral work is done by the government
sector while some may be undertaken by licensed sur
veyors. In a photogrammetric survey, there will be a pilot
and navigator, camera operator, film developer, photo
grammetric operator and a field surveyor to provide some
of the photo control. There is no professional who can
uniquely be held personally responsible for carrying out
the work a requirement in most licensed cadastral
surveyor systems. The photogrammetric operator is often
a technician and the professional field surveyor would
oppose the granting of a professional license to a tech
nician. As a result, most photogrammetric applications to
cadastral surveying have been undertaken by govern
mental bodies, not by the private sector. If quality assur
ance procedures became mandatory and the license
of an individual cadastral surveyor were replaced by a
regulation that stated that work could be undertaken by a
private company provided if it were quality assured, then
this problem would disappear. At present this position
has not been reached although some moves in this
direction have taken place in Queensland, Australia. The
concept of a professional photogrammetrist in the
sense that he or she belongs to a professional institution
with a code of conduct and peer group review of stan
dards and practises does not exist anywhere in the
world. The International Society for Photogrammetry and
Remote Sensing for example is a learned body and
although many who belong to it are professional people
there is no recognised professional qualification in photo
grammetry per se that carries international recognition.
Environmental issues
The United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED) met in June 1992 in Rio de
Janeiro, a meeting that was attended by delegations from
178 nations and over 600 non-governmental organiza
tions (NGO's). A number of issues were raised including
a call for sustainable development that would transcend
mere environmental protection. It asked that all develop
ment policies be they economical, fiscal, trade, energy,
agricultural, or industrial should be designed so as to
ensure that programmes are economically, socially and
ecologically sound.
Air pollution. Industrialised countries emit 74% of carbon dioxide.
Those unfamiliar with the facts might consider the fol
lowing 'State of the World' in 1992:
in 40 years the world population has doubled to 5.3
billion. In the next 40 years it is likely to double again;
about 10% of the planet's potentially fertile land has
been turned to waste through human interference;
over 20 million hectares of tropical forests are being
cut down each year;
about 1.3 billion people have access only to polluted
water, 2.3 billion lack sanitation facilities and 1.5 bil
lion lack sufficient fuel for cooking and heating;
the 1980's decade was the warmest of the century.
'Greenhouse' theory and measured effects are in
agreement and the consequence to ecosystems is
unpredictable a rise in sea level is one possible
outcome;
less than 25% of mankind lives in industrialized coun
tries and yet they consume 75% of the world's ener
gy, 72% of all steel production and 85% of all wood
products;
industrialised countries generate about 90% of the
world's hazardous waste, emit 74% of carbon dioxide
and almost 100% of chloro-fluoro-carbons;
by 2000, an estimated 21 cities will have populations
of more than 10 million people. Seventeen of these
cities are in the 'south' of the great 'north/south'
divide. A similar pattern exists for the 37 cities that
will have between 5 and 10 million inhabitants.
Economical growth and environmental protection must
go in parallel if living standards are to improve. It is the
manner of growth not the rate of growth on which there
needs to be focus. It is the quality not the quantity of life
that matters. To plan for such growth there is a need for
better quality land information. Given that there are four
factors in the creation of wealth capital, labour, land
and information the fact that the photogrammetrist
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