Status and future perspectives of the application potential of digital airborne sensor systems

This contribution will give an up to date overview of digital airborne sensor systems, including both, large format camera systems and multi-sensor systems (acquiring image and laser scanning data). The survey of technical parameters for the most prominent and important systems also includes a comparison with parameters of conventional film cameras. In order to discuss the potential for topographic mapping purposes from a user's point of view a bundle of factors - which we have summarised in a so-called “heptagon of user acceptance” - will be taken into consideration and be illustrated with results of various application projects. This critical discussion stresses the missing grade of automation and transferability of scene interpretation algorithms as the critical bottleneck in the overall digital processing chain. Hence, we will finally point out not only future perspectives of sensor developments, but also several novel and important directions for the interpretation of remotely sensed scenes.