Examines issues related to the development and operation of publicly funded U.S. and foreign civilian remote sensing systems. Explores the military and intelligence use of data gathered by civilian satellites. Examines the outlook for privately funded and operated remote sensing systems. Numerous charts, graphs, tables and photos.

Professionals in local and national government and in the private sector frequently need to draw on Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), often in an integrated manner. This manual shows a hands-on operator how to work across the range of geospatial science and technology, whether as a user or as a contractor of services employing these technologies, and without either specialist education or substantial experience. The manual covers the fundamentals of each of these topical areas, providing the requisite mathematics, computer science and physics necessary to understand how the technologies work, assuming some elementary background in calculus and physics. It also shows how the technologies can be used together and focuses on their commonalities. A number of applications such as mapping and environmental modeling are presented, and a website accompanies the book.