Databases, design, and organisation


The Provincial Remote Sensing Centres



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The Provincial Remote Sensing Centres







The original plan for the National Remote Sensing Program was for the Provinces to undertake the operational interpretation of the remote sensing data. After all, the provinces carried the mandate for managing their own resources and environment within their own borders. The Canada Centre for Remote Sensing was to look after supplying the data from both aircraft and satellites as well as conducting research on new ways of applying the data. Agreement was reached with EMR and Treasury Board that the Federal Government would match provincial contributions 50:50 on the cost of setting up and operating provincial remote sensing centres. The Resource Ministers of all the provinces were officially informed of the federal government program on remote sensing and it was suggested that they set up interdepartmental committees on remote sensing to deal with the proposal. Joe Green, Minister of EMR, made a public announcement to this effect at the annual meeting of the Canadian Remote Sensing Association held at the Constellation Hotel in Toronto in Nov. 1971.





Bill Best
Jean Thie, of the Manitoba Ministry of Natural Resources actually prepared a proposal for Manitoba and obtained approval for it from his ministry. Ontario and Alberta were in the process of preparing proposals when unfortunately, Joe Green had a heart attack and had to resign. In the meantime federal provincial relationships began to deteriorate and the provinces decided they did not want to be involved in any new federal/provincial cost-shared projects, as they distorted provincial priorities. The federal government therefore cancelled all newly-proposed cost sharing arrangements with the provinces. At that time, none of the provinces decided to go ahead on their own with remote sensing centres.



Victor Zsilinszky
A few years later, due to the efforts of Victor Zsilinszky in Ontario, Jean Thie and Bill Best in Manitoba, Cal Bricker in Alberta and Herve Audet in Quebec Remote Sensing Centres were set up in these provinces, but they were all underfunded and had a very difficult time getting started. I had imagined originally that the provincial centres would become involved in the operational interpretation of the data--assisting in forest inventory mapping, conducting provincial crop inventories and making detailed land use maps and monitoring the hydrological cycle. How wrong I was. The Provincial Centres literally had to start from scratch--promoting the use of remote sensing, conducting demonstration projects and trying to get the resource and environmental managers to use the data. With a few notable exceptions, the provinces only recently (twenty-two years later), are beginning to use the data in an operational manner.



Jim Gower
Remote sensing was a technology that was developed outside the user disciplines. What was required was discipline-oriented scientists, working within their own organizations to not only change the focus of their future careers, but also to convince their superiors that they should be allowed to do this without having to change their employer. It amounted to a major mid-career change for them. We called the scientists who did this 'change agents'. Certainly, most of the initial directors of the provincial remote sensing centres were such people. Victor Zsilinszky, was a senior forester with MNR in Ontario when he changed his career. Cal Bricker was a senior engineer with the Surveys and Mapping Branch of Alberta. In Manitoba, the first Chief of the Centre was Jean Thie, originally with the Canada Land Inventory; he was succeeded by Bill Best, a forester. In the Federal service, several foresters- Leo Sayn-Wittgenstein, Peter Kourtz and amongst the topographers, Betty Fleming demonstrated how ERTS imagery could be used to update topographical maps at great savings to the government. Jim Gower of the Institute of Ocean Sciences in B.C., Roy Slaney in the Geological Survey, and Alex Mack in the Department of Agriculture stood practically alone in their own departments trying to demonstrate the value of remote sensing.



Neville Davis
I should not forget to mention again Lee Godby, Ralph Baker, Murray Strome, Neil DeVilliers, and Neville Davis from NAE, all of whom were so inspired by the idea of remote sensing that they literally put their careers on the line, by not only banking on Cabinet approving the establishment of CCRS, but by trusting that they would be hired when it finally was approved. The same applied to Ernie Gardiner of the Canadian Forces. In this respect, it was no different in the private sector. Al Gregory gave up an important career in mineral exploration to become involved in remote sensing by starting a new company "Gregory Geosciences" which became practically the only company in Canada knowledgeable in the process of updating topographical maps.

A bottom-up effort to introduce a major new organization within the government is quite similar to starting a new company in the private sector or a new department in a University. A total commitment is required and if it doesn't work out, you have lost your status in the organization with which you work and have to start all over again. When a government, University or well-established private company decides to create a new organization from the top down, your position is more or less guaranteed and you don't lose status within your old organization when you are moved to the new position--in fact, you gain status by the mere fact that you were 'selected' for the new position--you are not regarded as a 'deserter'.



Remote sensing then and now

Tape Format and Software Development







When the ERTS system was developed, a very important part was the design of the high density tape format at the ground station and also the format of the final digital product, the computer compatible tape - one for each satellite scene, which was required by the users to do digital image analysis. A NASA/CCRS working group was set up which, among other things, was to try to standardize tape formats. When Brazil and Europe, followed by Australia and Japan, also decided that they wanted to read out ERTS, the committee was expanded and became known as the 'Landsat Station Operator's Working Group' (LSOWG). By this time, NASA had decided that ERTS was no longer a technology satellite and since a follow-on was planned, the name was changed to 'Landsat' to reflect the fact that another satellite, the main application of which would be for oceanography was to be called "Seasat". In actual fact, many applications of Seasat data were for land and a lot of Landsat data had many land applications.





Florian Guertin
CCRS, in the early 70's was fortunate to obtain the services of Florian Guertin and Jenny Murphy, both scientists who had expertise in creating computer software. Over the course of the years, they have contributed greatly to the practical use of earth observation satellite data by designing standardized tape formats and software which was adopted by the LSOWG committee. They have become international experts in this field.





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