The eight new Technical Commission presidents elected at the ISPRS Congress in Beijing in July 2008 have set up the Working Groups that will carry out their commissions' technical programme. Some of the groups will be continuing on from 2004-2008, and there will also be new ones.

Commission I deals with image data acquisition - sensors and platforms. An important new Working Group on Standardisation of Airborne Platform Interface has been set up to co-ordinate a forum for discussion between the international airborne science communities and to develop standards for airborne sensor interface format. Lidar and SAR remain important, along with calibration, which is extended to cover multi-platform, multi-sensor systems. Unmanned vehicle systems are recognised as being important for mapping and monitoring applications.

Commission II deals with the theory and concepts of spatial information science and many of the familiar themes such as multi-scale representation, spatial analysis and data mining, visualisation and uncertainty modelling are unchanged.

Commission III works with photogrammetric computer vision and image analysis and continues work on feature extraction, image analysis and 3D reconstruction, it adds pattern recognition from remote sensing images to its portfolio of interests.

The theme of Commission IV is geo-databases and digital mapping. New areas of interest include global DEM interoperability, geo-sensor networking and geo-GRID. There is a new Working Group, focusing on updating and maintenance of core spatial databases. GSDI and web-based services remain important.

Commission V focuses on close-range sensing: analysis and applications. Here, topics such as cultural heritage and mobile mapping systems continue to be important, but new interests are introduced, such as image-based and range-based 3D modelling and close-range morphological measurement for the earth sciences.

Commission VI deals with education and outreach, and has introduced the theme of cross-border education to emphasise the need for capacity building and joint education programmes. The Commission will work closely with GEO capacity-building programmes and will also put strong emphasis on student activities.

The final two Commissions are primarily concerned with remote sensing and cover thematic processing, modelling and analysis of remotely sensed data (Commission VII), and remote sensing applications and policies (Commission VIII). Commission VII explicitly introduces SAR interferometry, as well as remote-sensing data fusion and mining. The Working Groups of Commission VIII are closely linked to the areas of societal benefit of GEO and the areas covered have changed little from the 2004-2008 groups, including the rapidly developing application of earth observation to health and disaster management.

The ISPRS is well placed to promote and develop science in all of these important areas. The Council and Commissions will be assisted by the International Science Advisory Committee and the International Policy Advisory Committee, as well as committees on standards and knowledge transfer. The Working Groups will be active at the level of research and development; the Council will ensure that the science of photogrammetry and remote sensing will be promoted at an international level through our involvement in international organisations and fora.