American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

The American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, or ASPRS is the United States member organization of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Founded in 1934, the society is a scientific association serving over 7,000 professional members around the world. As a professional body with oversight of specialists in the arts of imagery exploitation and photographic cartography.

Mission

The mission of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing is to promote the ethical application of active and passive sensors, the disciplines of photogrammetry, remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), and other supporting geospatial technologies; to advance the understanding of the geospatial and related sciences; to expand public awareness of the profession; and to promote a balanced representation of the interests of government, academia, and to private enterprise.

Motto

ASPRS: The Imaging and Geospatial Information Society. The ASPRS has officially incorporated the tag line "The Imaging and Geospatial Information Society", as part of the ASPRS identity. This tagline is representative of the Society's "New Vision", as it makes the changes necessary to better position its focus for the future. The intent is to preserve the legal name of the Society while providing a better expression of who we are and what we do as an organization."

Officers

Membership

ASPRS members-individuals from private industry, the government, and academia are analysts/specialists, educators, engineers, managers/administrators, manufacturers/product developers, operators, technicians, trainees, marketers, and scientists/researchers. Employed in the disciplines of the mapping sciences, our members work in the fields of Agriculture/Soils, Archeology, Biology, Cartography, Ecology, Environment, Forestry/Range, Geodesy, Geography, Geology, Hydrology/water Resources, Land Appraisal/Real Estate, Medicine, Transportation, and Urban Planning/Development.

Student Membership

A student membership is a great way to start a career in the Geospatial industry. ASPRS offers a greatly reduced student membership rate, 11 yearly scholarships and opportunities to serve as student assistants or volunteers at the national conferences which includes complimentary conference registrations as well as other benefits. Several universities have student chapters which have a faculty advisor but are governed by student leadership. ASPRS also has a Student Advisory Council which assists and encourages students to present papers and or posters at both national and regional conferences as well as developing networking opportunities for students to meet industry professionals. Interested in starting a student chapter? Contact your regional ASPRS National Director.

Divisions

ASPRS has six professional divisions. They are the LiDAR Division, Remote Sensing Applications Division, Professional Practice Division, Primary Data Acquisition Division, Photogrammetric Applications Division and the GIS Division. Coming soon will be a UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) Division. Each division has two elected officers, the Director and the Assistant Director. Division meetings are held at the ASPRS National conferences are attendance is open to all members.

ASPRS Accuracy Standards

On March 2, 2015 ASPRS released the new Positional Accuracy Standards for Digital Geospatial Data. They are available at: http://www.asprs.org/Standards-Activities.html

"The new ASPRS standards address recent innovations in digital imaging and non-imaging sensors, airborne GPS, inertial measurement units (IMU) and aerial triangulation (AT) technologies. Unlike prior standards, the new standards are independent of scale and contour interval, they address higher levels of accuracies achievable by the latest technologies (e.g. unmanned aerial systems and lidar mobile mapping systems), and they provide enough flexibility to be applicable to future technologies as they are developed. Finally, the new standards provide cross references to older standards, as well as detailed guidance for a wide range of potential applications."<ASPRS>

The new standards incorporate the USGS LiDAR Base Specifications v. 1.2 released in November 2014 and are a part of the soon to be released new USACE Manual of Photogrammetry.

See also

• National LIDAR Dataset - USA (an effort co-supported by ASPRS)

External links

• ASPRS Home Page