Minutes of the Council Meeting, GOA, 3-4 October, 2006

Attendees

President Ian Dowman (ID)
Secretary General Orhan Altan (OA)
Congress Director Chen Jun (CJ)
First Vice President John Trinder (JT)
Second Vice President Manos Baltsavias (EB)
Treasurer Stanley Morain (SM)

In attendance for item 5 Preparations for the Congress;

XXIst ISPRS Congress Scient. Comm. Co Chair Jiang Jie (JJ)

In attendance for item 8.1 Journal;

ISPRS JOURNAL Editor in Chief Georg Vosselman (GV)

In attendance for item 9. Financial Affairs;

Amelia Budge (AB)

Partly Attended

ISAC Chair Armin Grün (AG)
ISAC Member Mustafa Önder (MO)

AGENDA

1. Opening

2. Approval of Agenda

3. Review of Council Meetings in Reno and Paris

4. Review of Symposia and Commission Activities

5. Preparations for the Congress

6. Statutes and Bylaws

7. ISPRS Membership

7.1 Report on status of Ordinary, Associate, Sustaining and Regional Members

8. ISPRS Publications

8.1 Database and Blue Book
8.2 Highlights
8.3 Home Page
8.4 Archives
8.5 Orange Book
8.6 Journal
8.7 Annual reports
8.8 Book series
8.9 Green Book
8.10 GIM Page
8.11 ISPRS Prospectus
8.12 ISPRS Brochure

9. Financial Affairs

9.1 Treasurers Report
9.2 Science initiatives

10. Awards

11. Foundation

12. ISPRS Committees
12.1 ISAC
12.2 IPAC
12.3 CIPA
12.4 ICORSE
12.5 Ad hoc Committee on Standards

13. Planning of the Celebration Centenary of the Foundation of ISPRS and Preparation of a Strategic Plan for the Society

14. Forthcoming Meetings

15. Relations with International and other Organizations (ID)

15.1 United Nations
15.2 ICSU and the GeoUnions
15.3 IEEE-GRSS
15.4 GEO
15.5 JBGIS
15.6 IPY
15.7 Others

16. Review of Decisions and Actions on Council (OA)

17. Reports from Council (All)

18. Other Business

19. Next Council Meeting

20. Close

MINUTES

1. Opening

ID opened the meeting, noting that this would be one of the important meetings of the four-year period before the Congress, and expressed hope for a fruitful exchange of ideas. He thanked Shailesh Nayak and the Indian Society for hosting the meeting.

2. Approval of Agenda

The agenda was revised by adding minor items. The revised agenda is that given above.

3. Review of Previous Council Meetings in Reno and Paris

3.1 Approval of Minutes
OA reviewed the minutes and they were accepted with minor changes.
3.2 Matters arising from the Minutes not covered in the Agenda
OA drew the attention of Council to Action Items which were initiated at previous meetings and after reviewing all closed Action Items and the AIs resulting from the CMs in Reno and Paris, it was agreed that all Cnl members should devote serious attention to the Open Actions for which they are responsible.

4. Review of Symposia and Commission Activities

TCI
Council noted the very good attendance at the TCI Symposium in Paris and also connections established with related organizations. However the CommI WGs that are of concern are;
- WGI/7 is inactive and consideration should be given on whether to transfer the ToRs of this WG to WGsI/2 and I/6
- WGI/1 should focus more on HR satellite sensors and a new Co-Chair should be recruited
TCII
Council noted the poor attendance of ISPRS participants at the TCII Symposium in Vienna and that the importance of ISPRS Symposium at this common event was neglected by attendees,
Activities of concern in CommII WGs are;
- WG II/5 is inactive; more activity is required and TCPII should investigate whether William Cartwright will continue as chair of this WG; however new officers might be more appropriate,
- WGII/7 - poor communication between WG officers is a problem
TCIII
The TCIII Symposium in Bonn, with peer reviewed papers was a good meeting but there was limited contribution from Computer Vision community,
TCIV
Council noted the very good attendance at the TCIV Symposium in GOA, for the activities of WGs;
WG IV/2 is a concern with almost no action in the period, Council and TCP IV should decide what action to take or to scrap it. The WG should cover very popular projects and links such as including Google-Earth etc in its areas of interest.
WG IV/4 is not active enough and important areas like CG are not covered
WGIV/5 and 6 are not very active; Council to consider combining the two WGs and include LBS; Michael Hahn to go to WG IV/5 and Stephan Nebiker to WG IV/4 to strength visualisation in this WG
TCV has organized a good symposium with some high quality papers. All WGs are doing their work well. However the position of the Sergej Zheltov in WG V/5 - Development in Image Sensor Technology can be questioned. The number of papers of the WG V/6 - Medical Image Analysis, Human Motion And Body Measurement shows the long term problem of attracting people from outside ISPRS who are active in this topic. However,. in May 2006 the WGV/6 organized a good summer school in Crete with good attendance from outside ISPRS. New strategies must be developed to ensure that this topic is maintained as long term activity for TCV.
TC VI
TCVI organized a good symposium with good number of participants. All changes in personnel of non active WGs that were agreed during the TC Symposium Board Meeting have been made.
TC VII
The symposium of the TC VII was very good with high quality papers and attendance. The changes in officers of inactive WG's have been partly made. There is a need to add someone from DLR to the WGVII/2 officers.
TCVIII
As this Commission could not organize the mid-term Symposium, there was no need to discuss activities of the WGs.
The new dates of the VIII Symposium will be determined shortly.
After reviewing the status of the activities of the TCs, Council discussed and decided on the following Actions;
During the Joint Meeting the Commission Presidents expressed a common opinion that it is too early to review the new structure of Technical Commissions, however they will propose some minor changes in the ToRs.
EB suggested that TC IV ToRs are not very coherent and need to be reviewed. JT noted that ToRs need to be changed before bids are submitted for hosting the TCs during the period 2008-2012, 4 months before the Beijing Congress. Then it was decided;
There was a strong feeling that there should be combined symposia at least for TCs VII and VIII with maybe 2 symposia during the 4 year period, one in each of the locations of the Member responsible for each TC, with 6-12 months separation between them. It was then decided;

5. Preparations for the Congress

CJ explained the general technical session plan of the Congress;
After discussions and taking comments/suggestions into account from the earlier Joint Meeting it was decided that;
- There will be no workshops before the Congress except for ones organized together with external organizations, e.g. GEOSS,
- Normally there will be 5 speakers per session or one Invited paper + 3 papers; Comm. III wants only 4 papers per session,
- There will be no oral presentations for posters,
- The paper evaluation will be based on Abstract or Full Paper submission with Double Blind Peer Review Process. The Full Paper Review process will apply only by TCs: I, II, III,
- The number of parallel sessions in the first week will be 6 and in the second week 5,
- Deadline for TCPS to send information on theme sessions is by 31st October 2006,
- The authority to choose Plenary Speakers rests with the Council but suggestions from all parties are welcome,
- There is no obligation to Members to send "National Reports".

6. Statutes and Bylaws

6.1 A revised Bylaw relating to Honorary Members had been agreed in Paris and passed to LF for approval. As no response had been received it was decided to adopt the new wording and OA would circulate this to members of the GA for approval before the Congress.
6.2 EB and ID introduced proposals to change the structure of Council to include regional members and to integrate TCPs, IPAC and ISAC more into the governance of ISPRS. A number of possibilities were discussed and issues raised. It was agreed that change was desirable but that more discussion was needed, on issues such as funding, logistics, structure (e.g having an Executive Board and a Council)
It was decided that ID and EB have further discussion (at AARSE) and prepare details for further discussion. Also JT to discuss at ACRS

7. ISPRS Membership

ID introduced a paper on proposed changes to membership which was discussed at length by Council. The following decisions were made:

Associate membership.
In a case where the OrdM is not active and has not paid its subscription, but the AssM is, request the OrdM to become active and if they do not respond, invite the AssM to become the OrdM and reduce their membership to Associate member

Regional membership
Following a request from AARSE to consider reciprocal membership, it was decided that the discrepancy in fees was too great and that the practical problems in implementing this did not warrant any form of reciprocal membership at this time.

Individual membership
It was decided not to pursue this at the moment.

Benefits of Membership
Council discussed a number of proposals for new benefits to members were agreed as follows:
• Free electronic subscription to Journal
• Access to online ISPRS publications only to members, protected by password.
• Reduced rates for Book Series
• Preferential treatment in application of funds from Foundation to individuals from Ord Members.

Benefits should only be available to members who are no more that 2 years in arrears.

It was decided to launch a recruitment campaign, to be discussed at the next Council Meeting.


7.1 Report on status of Ordinary, Associate, Sustaining and Regional Members
OA reported on the status of ISPRS Members as shown on the table
Current Status of Active Members;

New members;
Sustaining Member:
 GeoCad 93 Ltdi. (40092) Bulgaria
Ordinary Member:
 The Geoinformation Society of Nigeria (GEOSON) (10105) Nigeria

8. ISPRS Publications

8.1 Database and Blue Book
OA explained that the newly printed Blue Book was distributed in September 2005 and he will publish another one in early 2007.
He mentioned that the database is an essential tool for the management of the Society and Rachel Peled is continuously updating the program according new needs. She recently revised the database so that the members pages can be produced in html format in order to reduced the updating time for these pages by the ISPRS webmaster.
8.2 Highlights
The first issue of E-Highlights was distributed in June 06 the next one in October 06. The artistic layout of the pdf file should be improved.
8.3 Home Page
An agreement with the Inst. PFG ETH-Z has been finalised,
8.4 Archives
OA reported on the situation of publishing the Archives and also collaboration of ISPRS event organizers with the Headquarters (HQ), the Webmaster, GITC and ITC. It was noted that this situation is now improving.
8.5 Orange Book
OA explained that the latest version of the Orange Book is on the Website and he will not produce a printed version in near future.
8.6 Journal
GV gave a brief report on the status of the Journal. 100 papers are on the pipeline. He will manage to produce 9 issues in 2006, reducing the backlog from 5 to 2 issues by the end of 2006. The paper processing pipeline is now completely filled. Further theme issues for 2008 need to be planned. Council suggested that more papers on the topic of Remote Sensing should be published.

Concerning the proposal for free subscription for Ordinary Members, Elsevier will provide a password for each Member and are not too concerned about how it is used. Council needs to follow up on the receipt of password and its use.
Free subscriptions agreed for developing countries will be valid for year only.
Regarding the Helava Award, judging for Vol. 59 is nearly complete and it can be reported in GIM - May 2007.
8.7 Annual reports
There will be no separate publication. The Annual reports will be placed in the Web and E-Highlights.
8.8 Book series
From the Book Series report Council was informed that 2 books are to be published in 2006 and 6 are on the waiting and evaluation list.
8.9 Green Book
Council was reminded of their requirement to revise and extend the Green Book given as digital file with the CM files.
8.10 GIM Page
The responsibility table for the ISPRS Page in GIM International was discussed and the table for this 2007's contributions was decided.
8.11 Prospectus
It was reported that the Prospectus was at the printing office. 2000 copies will be printed first, then after possible revisions another 3000 copies will be printed. The prospectus is to be used mainly for PR activities and acquiring funds (for the Foundation) and attracting new members.
8.12 ISPRS Brochure
OA reported that the HQ printed 16 000 copies of the Brochures from 04 to 06 October in 3 different layouts for different events.

9. Financial Affairs

9.1 Treasurers Report
SM presented his report which is attached. The report should be completed with the income from Symposia by the next CM.
SM is investigating the proposal to pay membership dues by credit card through UBS. Council noted the need of a better communication between the Financial Committee and Treasurer.
9.2 Science initiatives
The following proposals were submitted for funding by Science Initiatives and decisions taken are shown in brackets;
1. Special Issue on RS Data Fusion in peer reviewed, refereed "International Journal of Geoinformatics" (rejected),
2. Mongolian Database for land cover validation and land cover monitoring (supported by an amount of 5000€ provided that the data will be made available publicly and a report is produced according to the guidelines at the compilation of the project),
3. 5th Imaging Spectrometry Workshop, Belgium, 23-25 April, 2007 (agreed to support Euro2000 and to remind the organizers about the preparation of a report is produced according to the guidelines at the compilation of the project),
4. ISPRS Workshop in Kiev, Ukraine, (rejected)
5. Proposal from Costas Armenakis about the support for an International Geomatics Conference dedicated to the North that would be held during the summer of 2007 in one of the Canadian Territorial Capital (Whitehorse, Yellowknife or Iqaluit), (rejected )
6. Open Dragon software sponsorship (Council was sympathetic to this proposal but need more information and positive proposals. JT to discuss with Kurt Ruhdal at ACRS)
7. Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action (ITHACA), a joint Project between the UN and Politecnico di Torino (decided to co-sponsor without financial commitment)

10. Awards

JT reminded Council that ISPRS Members should be informed about the awards schedule, especially the Brock Award, which requests input from Members 2 years in advance of the Congress.

11. Foundation

JT reported sumarized the results of the Board of Trustees meeting in Paris on 5 July and the new officers, who are: Chair - Dieter Fritsch, Operations Officer - John Trinder, Financial Officer - Lawrence Fritz,

The allocation of the available Foundation funds for 2007, approximately $US5, 000, was discussed and it was concluded that they could be used to hold a summer school in Costa Rica during the ICRSE conference. The final decision on how and when to publicize travel grants to attend the school will be made when more is known about holding the event.

ID reported that it had been agreed that money would be available from the Amsterdam Fund for travel support in 2007 but did not have details.
[ID subsequently confirmed that the Board of the ITC-Fonds met a few weeks ago and decided to make 5000 Euro available from the Amsterdam 2000 Fund for workshops in Africa and Latin America, possibly on capacity building in 2007 to support participants of these workshops.]
The travel grants from the Foundation to attend the Symposia and the CATCON prizes should be publicized in GIM magazine.

12. ISPRS Committees

12.1 ISAC
A brain storming session with the ISAC Chair resulted in the conclusion that the composition and ToRs of this committee should be renewed.
12.2 IPAC
12.3 CIPA
OA gave an explanation about the forthcoming meetings in Cyprus 2006 and Athens in 2007
12.4 ICORSE
ID outlined the current position on ISPRS participation in ISRSE.
12.5 Ad hoc Committee on Standards
Council welcomed the detailed report of the Committee Chair and his proposal for the Special Session at the Congress

13. Planning of the Celebration Centenary of the Foundation of ISPRS and Preparation of a Strategic Plan for the Society

OA explained the plans for the celebration of the Centenary of the Foundation of ISPRS and a new strategic plan which can be announced at the celebration.
Council welcomed this initiative and suggested having more Members and/orTCPs in the Preparatory Committee and to have a separate committee for the preparations of the strategic plan, which should be an initiative of the Council.

14. Forthcoming Meetings

A list attached to this minute is discussed.

15. Relations with International and other Organizations (ID)

15.1 United Nations
ID told the meeting about the proposed celebrations for the 50th anniversary of COPUOS in June 07 in Vienna and the possibility of having display materials at the exhibition,
15.2 ICSU and the GeoUnions
ID told the meeting about the initiative of GeoUnions in ICSU to achieve a transparent decision making mechanism. A letter had been written to the ICSU Secretariat.
15.3 IEEE-GRSS
ID reported continued collaboration over the GEOSS Workshops and exchange of datasets between the societies.
15.4 GEO
ID reported continued participation in the GEO Committees and the Plenary.
15.5 JBGIS
A meeting had been held in Vienna and the minutes circulated. JBGIS had agreed on ISPRS proposals for capacity building and ID was organizing a JBGIS Capacity Building session at Map World Forum, especially in collaboration with National Mapping Agencies.
15.6 IPY
15.7 Others

16. Review of Decisions and Actions on Council (OA)

A list of Actions from the previous period was discussed and reviewed. The action items of this meeting have been added to this list, .

17. Reports from Council (All)

Reports of the Council Members on their activities since the previous CM were presented.

18. Other Business

OA noted the necessity to use ISPRS codes for communication and urged Council to give an urgent attention to this matter,

19. Next Council Meeting

Next Council Meeting will be in Vienna 3-5 March 2007.
The following meeting will be in Beijing on the 20 and 24 August 2007 with a site visit of the Congress Building on the 22th August.

20. Close

There were no other items to be discussed and ID thanked the participants for their contributions and reminded them of very urgent business matters arising from this meeting.
ID closed the meeting and once again thanked Shailesh Nayak and Indian Society for hosting this meeting.