BRAZILIAN QUALITY CONTROL SYSTEMS FOR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAMMETRY MAPPING PRODUCTION S. S. Sato a , I. da Silva b a Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil – a sssato@terra.com.br; b leicabr@attglobal.net Commission II, WG IV/4 KEY WORDS: Photogrammetry, Quality Control System, Digital Photogrammetric Mapping Production, Standardization. ABSTRACT: This paper discusses a quality control system developed to be applied to the digital photogrammetric process for Brazilian spatial data production. The developed quality control system is directed to aerial surveying companies and at same time it can be used as guidelines for specifications for photogrammetric products like aerial triangulation, DTM, orthophoto and mosaic generation, data collection and so on. It is based on quality management standards ISO 9000 and in the Swiss Standards Guidelines and the others. In order to detect the main problems arising during the photogrammetric products production, several aerial surveying companies as well as their customers were asked to participate in a surveying. In this way a significant part of the difficulties of photogrammetric products had been identified and analyzed and correction have been proposed to meet customers and company expectations. The main sources of errors are identified and analyzed in order to be corrected or reduced in the control quality system. During research some specific problems had been found, as for instance, quality control on the image acquisition process. In that case, the probable causes in the process had been investigated for the inclusion of corrective actions. Also, each step of the process was investigated and controlled in order to obtain individual quality parameters that, collectively, are able to assure the quality of the final product, mostly considering aspects of precision and accuracy requirements for mapping production based on the customer’s expectations. One of the main functions of the developed control quality systems is for implementation of the corrective actions in the procedure of production process. 1. INTRODUCTION For long time, several categories of companies in the area of geo-technologies have been seeking for the standardization of their products in order to obtain the quality certification ISO 9000. Among them we can include the aerial survey companies. For those companies, it was verified that besides their needs for quality certification there are also some needs to adequate their products to the customer’s expectations. In order to identify the problems involved in such area we implemented a research whose results are presented in Figure 1. PRODUCTION PROBLEMS CLASS      Standarlization and Quality Garantee Data Maintenance Expert Personal Costs & Political Support Inadequated Data/Production Figure 1 The Brazilian national quality indicator for cartographic product was officially regulated in 1984 and named as Standard of Cartographic Accuracy (PEC). The critical factor in this context is the cartographic product quality being verified only after the elaboration of the maps or the cartographic database. Being thus, after months in the wait for his product, the customer can be surprised by a cartographic product with PEC class C and not class A as expected and perhaps without guarantees of the attributes accuracy, logical consistency and the completeness as normally found in FGDS, CEN, ISO/TC 211 standards. And the problem can be bigger if, for instance, it occurs in the production of orthophotos, when the customer can be surprised with the aspect of the colorful bedspread of remnants. The control quality accomplished only in the end of the process is considered highly risky for the aerial survey companies. If some error occurred during the productive chain, it will only be detected after the edited maps testing. The products can be accurate but not necessarily it means that the customer’s expectations has been attainted. Ahead of this context, an PhD research was developed focusing on the development and the implementation of a system of quality control of digital photogrammetric processes whose objective is to assure quality enough in each step of the photogrammetric production and mainly to guarantee customer’s satisfaction. A partial result of that research is presented in this paper. 2. QUALITY CONTROL SYSTEMS The main objective of the proposed quality control system is to obtain a continuous production chain with “zero error”. The main characteristics of that quality control system are: • Quality control for every activity; • Identification of systematic errors in the production process; • Audit quality in every activity;