ISPRS Announces Winner of Brock Gold Medal

The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) has announced that Professor Dr Armin Gruen, Chair of Photogrammetry at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Switzerland is the winner of the ISPRS Brock Gold Medal for 2008.

The Medal is donated by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and is awarded for an outstanding landmark  in the evolution of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences.

Gruen in awarded the Brock Gold Medal for the many important developments in photogrammetry which he has initiated and overseen. During his post graduate studies he developed a sophisticated self-calibration method. It is particularly noteworthy that the approach developed  some three decades ago is currently being revised, since self-calibration has once again become a major issue of research, this time in order to obtain the most accurate results from digital aerial cameras. During his time at The Ohio State University, he developed a method for adaptive multiple image matching, which is implemented today in a number of commercial and research oriented photogrammetric data processing systems around the world. In Zürich produced the Digital Image Photogrammetric Station (DIPS) in which not only bundle adjustment and image matching methods, but also other approaches, such as automatic point tracking and surface generation, were integrated. These insights lead him to work on 3D city modelling, resulting in a software product for automated 3D city model generation, manipulation and visualisation, called CC-Modeller.

Gruen's scientific achievements have been backed up by a notable success in popularising photogrammetric techniques and in teaching; the most significant success was the documentation and virtual reconstruction of the Great Buddha of Bamiyan in Afghanistan. This work has created world-wide media interest and coverage in the press and on television.

The Brock Gold Medal will be formally presented at the XXIst ISPRS Congress in Beijing, China, 3 - 11 July 2008.