The V-Planet consortium is composed of six complementary organisations among the top-ranking ones in their respective fields of activity and based in three different European countries, thereby securing the dissemination and penetration of the project results across Europe.

End-users, coming from complementary fields of activity, will provide a perfect industrial setting for specifying and evaluating different V-Planet versions on various real-world problems: each end-user partner will validate the software on a pilot application while providing valuable information for the elaboration of best practice and marketing materials.

The V-Planet consortium is supported by the European Commission under the IST Programme.

IGN	[End User]
IGN is the French national mapping agency. IGN masters the whole production of maps, from the aerial photographs to the printing. Staff amounts to 1800 people including 350 Engineers. The statutes of IGN commission it to produce: - The national coverage of topographic maps and aerial photographs, - The maintenance of the geodetic networks, - The digitisation of geographical information. Besides the missions of production, IGN is commissioned to carry out development, research and training corresponding to its production. In the field of image and photogrammetry, IGN undertakes research on: - Scanned maps: IGN studies the automatic feature recognition on scanned maps. The objective is to obtain simplified databases or to provide additional information for the automatic interpretation of photos. - 3D in urban areas: IGN is undertaking research of the automatic restitution models in 3D of buildings with the aim to produce information at an affordable cost. The present interactive process is too expensive for the development of this market. IGN also works of the mapping of photos of the front (facade) of buildings on 3D models. - Topographic features recognition: IGN uses aerial photos to capture the geographical information in three dimensions. Scanned photographs are used to automatically localise the topographic details and to get data in 3 dimensions. In the field of geographical data management, the subjects of research are related to : - Data quality: modelling and management of the quality, standardisation of the quality. - Data updating: the concurrent updates of geographical data. -Multi-resolution databases: the matching and management of data of different accuracies. [company site]

CNES	[End User]
Created in December 1961, the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) is the French Space agency, the public body in France responsible for all sectors of space technology and activity. CNES main mission is to propose the orientations of its space policy to the French government and to implement decided programs with its partners. The structure which will be involved in the V-Planet project is "QTIS", the "Space Image Quality and Processing" Division. Within the "Orbital Systems" Direction of CNES' Toulouse Space Center, the "Space Image Quality and Processing" Division is in charge of: - guarantying the quality of the images produced by the Earth Observing Systems developed by CNES, - developing the corresponding image processing ground segments, - promoting the potential use of space images. Its 60 engineers are deeply involved in: - the conception phase of proposed projects such as Pléiades, Corot,… - the development phase of decided systems such as SPOT5, Vegetation, Polder, Helios II… - the in-orbit assessment phase of launched satellites such as SPOT1 to 4, HeliosI… [company site]

DLR	[End User]
Two divisions of the German Space Agency and Aerospace Research Centre (DLR, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt), involved in the SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) programme, will participate in the V-Planet project: -The German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD, Deutsches Fernerkundungsdatenzentrum) is part of the DLR. DFD develops and operates ground segments for German and international EO programs, including data reception, processing, archiving and distribution activities. The associated systems technologies assure continuous, long-term access by both scientific and commercial users to the data and information products of the most important earth observation satellites. These ground segment responsibilities are complemented by the development of algorithms to extract geo-scientific information from original measurement data, and to generate value added remote sensing data product. -The Remote Sensing Technology Institute of DLR (IMF, Institut für Methodik der Fernerkundung) has recently been established by units from DFD and other institutes engaged in remote sensing. IMF tasks include methodological developments for atmospheric processors, SAR and INSAR processors, DEM generation from SAR and optical observations, data fusion, information extraction from EO data, scene understanding and image information mining. Concerning tasks of information extraction and scene understanding, research is performed in the fields of learning probability distributions of sensory data, modelling scene structures and integration of phenomenology, hierarchical modelling of sensory data and reasoning probabilistically about systems that evolve in time.[company site]

CNR	[Technology Supplier]
CNR (the National Research Council) is a public organization of great relevance in the field of scientific and technological research of Italia. The Visual Computing group of the Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione (ISTI-CNR) has been active on visualisation and computer graphics since 1984. Research in graphics algorithms currently focuses on the design of algorithms, data structures and prototypal systems for Scientific Visualisation (with particular emphasis on volume datasets), 3D Surface-based Graphics, 3D Range Scanning and 3D Web Applications. In the 3D graphics and modelling area, the main activities relate to surface simplification and multi-resolution representation, with applications to terrain visualisation, cultural heritage data representation and classical CAD data. The design and implementation of new techniques for the automatic acquisition of the geometry and the pictorial detail of 3D objects or architectural scenes is the focus of the 3D Range Scanning research, with main applications to cultural heritage, rapid prototyping, multimedia and didactic systems. [company site]

CRS4	[Technology Supplier]
CRS4 (Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia) is an interdisciplinary applied research centre based in Cagliari, Italy. The centre develops and applies innovative solutions across a broad range of important areas by leveraging its key strengths in several scientific and technological disciplines. These areas encompass large-scale computational problems that require application of advanced simulation techniques supported by High Performance Computing and the timely integration of newly emerging Information and Communications Technology. CRS4 has acknowledged expertise in multi-resolution representation, time-critical graphics, and applications of virtual reality technologies to large-scale databases real-time rendering. The high quality of CRS4's research and development activities is reflected in the large number of journal papers and other publications emanating from its work, as well as in the increasing number of projects funded from the European Union and other public and private enterprise.[company site]