ALPMON FINAL REPORT - ARC systems research

Contract ENV4-CT96-0359 ALPMON
3.1.1 Number and accuracy of parameters
The assessment of the results against the success criteria should be performed by the following
measures:
� Accuracy levels obtained by means of remote sensing methods compared to customer
requirements (taking into account tolerance ranges defined by the customer).
� Accuracy levels obtained by means of remote sensing methods compared to those obtained by
conventional techniques (as far as available).
� Results of remote sensing techniques compared with conventional methods currently used by the
customer.
For all applications on national level respectively test sites the number and accuracy of parameters as
required by the customer vs. the parameters derived by means of remote sensing for ALPMON are
compared in Annex 6. Therefore, they are not discussed in detail here. As far as applicable, the remote
sensing approach is also compared to conventional methods. It has to be stated that in most cases no
conventional methods, such as aerial photo interpretation or field work, have been used by the
customer before – especially not for the entire area to be investigated. Therefore, a comparison in
most cases was not possible.
As the land use classes required for the data base of the Alpine Convention are not as detailed as
those obtained for the national applications, it can be stated that these parameters could be acquired
with good spatial as well as thematic accuracy. The second requirement of the Alpine Convention, the
assessment of vegetation damage, could not be fulfilled within the ALPMON project. Forest damage
has been investigated in more detail in the EC-project SEMEFOR (ENV4-CT97-0398), and methods
for deriving this parameter were deduced from there. Furthermore, the assessment of the succession
status was of interest for the AC. This parameter can easily be deduced from comparison of the land
cover classification results, as they were derived in the ALPMON project, from different years by
monitoring techniques. A method for vegetation monitoring in the Alps has been developed by Gallaun
et al. (1999), which can be applied to the monitoring of succession status. Mono-temporally, the
satellite image classification can only give information on the actual vegetation cover, but not on
succession, which is a process of several years. Finally, topographical information, which is at least a
pre-requisite for satellite image pre-processing, in all test sites was provided by means of digital
elevation models. Quality and resolution of the DEM in all cases are sufficient for the Alpine
Convention. As no high resolution DEM (25m) is available for the entire Alps, it could even be
considered to introduce the MONA DEM with 80m resolution to the AC data base.
Concluding it can be stated, that in many cases the customer requirements could be fulfilled. In some
feasibility studies, some parameters required by the customers could not be extracted from remote
sensing data or not with sufficient accuracy. However, even in these cases, the results derived from
earth observation data represent a valuable information source which significantly improves the actual
sate of available information for the customers. With respect to the new very high resolution satellite
data this positive effect is expected to be even increasing, as the classification of some parameters
was restricted due to the coarse resolution of the satellite data available for this study.
3.1.2 Cost estimation
Not only the potential of satellite imagery to derive certain land cover parameters, but also the costs of
such an approach are decisive for the decision of various customers to introduce earth observation
methods into their specific applications. With this respect, the costs for the remote sensing approach
were estimated and compared to the costs of conventional methods (as far as applicable).
The cost estimation has been performed for three different investigation scales:
� Scale 1:250,000 (with respect to the Alpine Convention, using WIFS data): forest/non-forest and
forest type
� Scale 1:50,000 to 1:100,000 (with respect to the Alpine Convention, using Landsat 7 TM data):
Alpine Convention nomenclature
� Scale 1:50,000 and better (with respect to the national customers; with additional parameters
relevant for these customers; on the assumption that higher resolution data is used).
The cost estimation for the national applications with a scale of 1:50.000 or better is given in Table 14
(in EURO) and Table 15 (in person hours). The figures concerning the person hours do not consider
JR, RSDE, ALU, LMU, Seibersdorf, WSL 65