REPORT ON TRAVEL TO OTTAWA AND MONTREAL, CANADA, 31 JULY TO 18 AUGUST 1972

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79B01709A000400040028-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 13, 2001
• Sequence Number: 28
• Publication Date: September 7, 1972
• Content Type: MF

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Referral Review by NIMA completed 3/13/01
7 September 1972
MEMORANDUM FOR: Chairman, ? COMIREX
SUBJECT : Report on Travel to Ottawa and Montreal,
Canada, 31 July to 18 August 1972
1. Purpose of Travel. From 31 July to 18 August 1972
I participated in the 22nd International Geographical Congress (IGC)
and its associated activities in Canada. The purpose was to keep
abreast of recent developments in the fields of geography and
cartography, including the collection and processing of data by
remote sensing techniques and the development of geographic
information systems. My time was about equally divided between
the UNESCO/International Geographical Union Second Symposium
on Geographical Information Systems in Ottawa, and the official
sessions of the IGC and the International Cartographic Association
in Montreal. My stay in Ottawa also provided an opportunity for
2. Activities and Findings. The Ottawa part of the
program was especially rewarding. It afforded an excellent
overview of the current state of technology for geographic data
gathering, storage, manipulation, and display, as well.as some
(albeit far too inadequate) discussion on the economics of the
various approaches. These unclassified techniques generally
parallel or follow behind those used on classified systems.
3. The first color photographs from NASA's ERTS-A
satellite were quickly put on display for this international group
of approximately 200 scientists from countries all around the world.
During the course of the seminar the opportunities and problems in
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using the ERTS materials were discussed. Individual reactions
varied widely. At one extreme were the enthusiastic representatives
of the small group of geographers who were working on U. S.
Geological Survey contracts to test the feasibility of remote sensing
techniques. The ERTS photography of the San Francisco area gave
several of them an opportunity to describe their work in some detail.
A great deal of enthusiasm about the resolution was also evident
among the personnel of the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing who were
processing the first ERTS photography obtained by the Prince Albert,
Saskatchewan, ground station. A photographic supervisor indicated
that they had been able to enlarge the imagery of one airfield
sufficiently to discern an airplane. At the other extreme, there
were numerous words of caution concerning the limited resolutions
of the photography and the lack of clearly defined programs for its
systematic exploitation. Professor D. Marble of Northwestern
University, one of the U. S. geographers most directly involved in
remote sensing, stressed the point that great masses of ERTS data
will never be exploited. After citing his own experience of stopping NASA
plans to send his university 50 magnetic tapes of ERTS data a week, he
estimated that NASA will process only about 1-2 percent of the total take,
and will make available only about 0. 1 percent.
4. Throughout the week it was clear that the collection and
processing capabilities would be far outstripping the analytical
capabilities to use the materials to good advantage. Time after time
speakers emphasized that users had to be found and their specific
requirements formulated carefully and then satisfied. This major
weakness of current geographic information systems will probably
prevail--given the resolutions of the current unclassified remote
sensors.
5. Another major problem that was evident was the strong
tendency for the U. S. specialists in the various fields of collection,
hardware, software, analytical and data display techniques to go
their individual ways. One principal objective of the symposium of
getting them to talk to each other was far from fulfilled. Even
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within a specific field, there appeared to be considerable duplication
of research effort that could have been minimized by more effort to
learn about the past experience and findings of others.
6. Aside from the Chairman of the symposium,
Roger Tomlinson of Ottawa, two individuals stood out with respect
to their overall grasp of the problems of developing geographic
information systems in conjunction with remote sensing data. One
was Dave Simonett, the Australian geographer who is now with
Earth Satellite Corporation in Washington, D. C. The second was
A. R. Boyle, an English engineer who has been working at the
University of Saskatchewan for the past seven years. I subsequently
learned the latter has been tapped to be a consultant for OBGI's
advanced cartographic systems. His unusually strong grasp of
automated hardware systems should make him a highly useful asset.
7. Most of the representatives from foreign countries
seemed to be trying hard to develop an understanding of these
modern techniques and their potential application to their domestic
problems. Mr. T. W. Plumb, a member of the Australian National
Committee on applications of earth satellite imagery, admitted
privately that other than providing ground truth on some sugar
growing areas, he was still uncertain about what other uses they
could make. Only two countries, Canada and Brazil, had any well
defined programs for utilizing data from remote sensing. Canada
has embarked upon an especially energetic program, which appears
to put it ahead of most other countries. Not only has it invested
$7, 000, 000 in the remote sensing program, but it is systematically
tying together census data with urban plans and aerial photography
and is using automated techniques for hydrographic surveying and
for topographic mapping. The Brazilian delegates to the International
Society of Photogrammetrists, which ran its conference concurrently
in Ottawa, sent over an impressive new film on "Project Radam, "
that showed how Brazil had utilized radar imagery to map vast areas
of the Amazon Basin as an initial step toward its economic development.
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They have completed 87 maps at 1:250, 000 and the program has
now been expanded to 210 map sheets. The amount of money
invested in the program was confidential, but the film made it
clear that it was a multi-million dollar effort. Apparently, the
Brazilian Government hired the Goodyear aircraft with the
advanced radar equipment. According to Simonett, who has a
consultant to the project, the radar mapping project has already
discovered a sizable mineral deposit, which he was not at liberty
to disclose at the time--it may have been the large uranium deposit
that was subsequently reported by the Brazilian Government in
mid-August.
8. Professor Kardono Darmojuwono, an important
Indonesian topographer, was very much interested in using the radar
technique for mapping his country, which is situated in the equatorial
cloud belt. He was actively talking over the prospect with Dave
Simonett, who invited him to call upon the Earth Satellite Corporation
for technical advice.
9. Other miscellaneous observations from Ottawa. The
identification and precise positioning of the Canadian-acquired ERTS
photography was glossed over in the formal briefing at the Centre
for Remote Sensing as a simple task--however, direct inquiries of
the individuals who were actually doing the task indicated that it was
a frustrating and difficult task--until a library of control points is
laboriously developed on a complete set of ERTS photography. In
addition to Canada, Sweden and several U. S. states have recently
developed land information systems that are integrated to various
degrees with census data, the tax systems, planning, or new
construction, but not with remote sensing. One problem that has
arisen in some of these systems is maintaining the confidentiality
of data on individuals and commercial enterprises. According to
the photographic supervisor at the Centre for Remote Sensing, the
group of Russian photogrammetrists who visited the facility the day
before were greatly interested in the degree to which the Canadian
ERTS materials were to be available to any Canadian or even any
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foreigner. The one Russian representative to the symposium,
Vladimir Annenkov of the Institute of Geography of the Academy
of Sciences of the USSR, kept pretty much to himself. He
appears to be only in his 30's but he was nominated as a
replacement for the well known Professor B. V. Vinogradov
of Leningrad University. His geographical-cartographical
knowledge seemed deficient on such a basic point as how a
photograph can be converted into a map at another scale.
Nevertheless, he did attend the sessions regularly and listened
attentively.
10. The program in Montreal was especially heavy
generally with a number of sessions running concurrently. As
usual, the quality of the papers was uneven, and the Soviet
participants continued their practice of cancelling scheduled
papers at the last minute and presenting several unannounced
papers. Both the USSR and the European satellites continued to
play prominent roles in any activities that pertained to collecting
or standardizing geographic or cartographic data on non- Communist
parts of the world.
11. On 11 August I had a 15 minute conversation with
Ted Shabad, who flew in from his Moscow post for the New York
Times specifically for the Congress. He thanked me for the
assistance we had previously given him on political-administrative
boundaries for his recent book on the geography of Communist
China. He passed on some information concerning the availability
of a just-issued political-administrative map which is available
at the Chinese Government headquarters in New York City. He
also indicated that his first information concerning the CIA Atlas
of Communist China was from a U. S. publisher who requested
Shabad to evaluate a minor political-administrative boundary
change shown in the Atlas.
12. I asked Ted what reactions to the Soviet scene he had
developed since he began his second tour in September 1971. Aside
from the obvious points on more extensive housing construction and
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better clothing, he found it difficult to make comparisons--despite
the passage of a decade since his first Moscow assignment, he
felt he had never been away long enough to become really detached.
One definite reaction was that the consumer queues had not diminished
even after all this time. In answer to my question about the climate
of his professional contacts with Soviet geographers, he indicated
that despite all his efforts to translate and publish Soviet geographical
articles, Professor I. P. Gerasimov, the head geographer at the
Academy of Sciences, was still as cool as ever. In contrast, there
was the consistently warm attitude of the leading climatologist,
F. Davitaya. He mentioned Gerasimov's new assistant, Vladimir
Annenkov (mentioned above in paragraph 9), as also being on the
cool and formal side. I passed on the observations we had made at
Ottawa about Annenkov's gaps in understanding the transformation of
map and photo scales, and we agreed that he was bright but definitely
the political type.
13. With reference to the Soviet map distortion policy,
he provided the following comment. A geographical lecture that
he attended one evening in Moscow was devoted to the topic of
overcoming the inadequacies of Soviet tourist maps. Members of
the audience made a number of references to the security constraints,
which apparently even included the representation of specific contour
lines. Obviously, with such a severely restrictive policy, the
tourist maps will not be improved very much and the maps that are
issued for the orienteering sports groups, which require cross-
country traverses using detailed contour lines, will continue to be
grossly inadequate. It was quite ironical to hear a radio newcast
two days later reporting a statement by the Canadian Arctic specialist,
Trevor Lloyd, citing the imminent Hungarian issue of the Soviet-
initiated 1:2, 500, 000 map sheets covering Canada as being better
than anything currently available.
14. One other notable feature of the Montreal Congress
was the presentation of the British Aircraft Corporation film on
their Earth Resources Rocket, which had its first test in Australia
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in March 1972. After pointing out the difficulties that earth
satellites have in obtaining coverage of persistently cloudy
areas and raising questions about the geopolitical aspects of
one state taking photographs over territory of other states, the
film showed the first test flight of the rocket. Once set up,
the rocket can be launched to take advantage of even infrequent
breaks in the weather. Its current sensors are rated at about
100 meters resolution. The rocket assembly costs only
$125, 000 if retrieved without damage. The UK group is currently
planning a joint survey with Argentina to promote agricultural
development.
15. Commitments. I promised to send Ted Shabad
detailed information concerning the identification of the Agency
Atlas on Communist China so that he can order it from the GPO.
Problems. None
17. Conclusions and Recommendations. The Ottawa
and Montreal sessions were extremely worthwhile from the
viewpoint of professional development. They provided me with a
better understanding of ERTS potential and the technological
problems in developing geographical information systems. They
also provided me with additional insights into the potential
sovereignty problems involved in releasing high resolution satellite
photography.
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