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The Photointerpretation and Remote Sensing Methodology from a Cybernetics point of view

6.1 Introduction
6.2 Living and Artificial Systems of Photointerpretation and Remote Sensing of the Environment

6.1 Introduction

1. Fundamental Concepts of Cybernetics: Traditionally, Cybernetics is concerned with complex interacting systems and their control. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of Cybernetics is “the theory or study of communication and control in living organisms or machines”. Norbert Wiener (1948) in his book Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine, revealed the similarity in mechanisms of control between animals and machines and contributed to establishing the relevant scientific basis.

2. From the Cybernetics point of view, Remote Sensing is defined as the science and technique through which both human beings (and more generally, living organisms) and machines (photographic cameras, remote sensing systems and digital image processing systems) can:

2.1 Communicate at a distance with the external world of the natural and built environment (but also, with concrete/specific objects, phenomena, facts and events),
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the variations/diversities and changes of their structural and functional, physical, chemical and biological characteristics and properties in space and time.

2.2 Collect and/or reveal an immense amount of qualitative and quantitative information on their specific natural and socioeconomic reality and their interactions, as well as their change trends in time.

2.3 Process and correlate this information by logical and/or computational methods and techniques, by using scientific methodology and result in useful conclusions for a series of applications in specific scientific fields as well as in integrated survey projects of the natural and human resources of a country/region (which constitute the most valuable infrastructure for development planning and environmental monitoring and protection).

2.4 Properly design and perform specific feedback activities in concrete phases of the above procedures, (but also, at specified reference levels), so that the:

BULLET.JPG (677 bytes) accuracy,
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of the evaluation and the answers for the problems under investigation, can prospectively increase and be optimized.

3. We could now uphold that Remote Sensing Methodology has as its kernel the synthesis and integration of the “sensible” with the “logic” through scientific methodology, so that we can always, in a dialectic and interdisciplinary way, approach:
BULLET.JPG (677 bytes) the dialectic and holistic character of the natural and socio-economic reality, as well as,
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4. Therefore, we could regard remote sensing methodology as the necessary integration of “empirical knowledge”, “logic” and specific scientific and/or interdisciplinary knowledge in the process of investigation of the problems of the external world, and that is because:
BULLET.JPG (677 bytes) “empirical knowledge” alone in the one-sided view of the dogma that “the experience of the senses constitutes the only source of knowledge”
BULLET.JPG (677 bytes) “rationalism” alone, in the equivalently one-sided view that “logic is the only source of knowledge”, (outside and apart from the mutual relations, interdependencies and interactions of the objects, facts and phenomena) but also,
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are not enough to entirely activate to the maximum degree the objective abilities of man, both as a self-sufficient remote sensing system (due to his vision, touch, etc) and as a designer and user of remote sensing methodologies and techniques (each time through the use of the proper “machines”, remote sensing systems, computers), when he tries to understand, evaluate, map, analyse, interpret, and monitor the significance of the objective reality that surrounds him and with which he multidimensionally transacts and interacts at a natural, technical, political, economic, social and cultural level.

 
6.2 Living and Artificial Systems of Photointerpretation and Remote Sensing of the Environment.

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Every human being, when observing his surrounding environment or a photo of a site, an object, or an event, makes use of the basic principles of the photointerpretation methodology, since he recognizes well-known patterns, discerns specific objects, draws conclusions about the time and the place of the "image" acquisition and finally integrates the "object" of his first perception to a series of detailed and analytic approaches and estimations on the basis of the elementary process of logic.
The function of this superior living system for photointerpretation and remote sensing of the environment is based, at the level of the "sensing" of the external world through vision, on the sensitivity of his eyes to the electromagnetic radiation reflected from the environment in the visible part of the light spectrum (ë=0.4-0.7ìm).
An artificial system of photointerpretation and remote sensing of the environment could, in theory (and in practice through the use of the relevant technology), be sensitive outside the visible region.

 

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National Technical University of Athens
Dept. of Rural & Surveying Engineering
Laboratory of Remote Sensing