Best Paper 1996

The U.V. Helava Award, sponsored by Elsevier Science B.V. and LH Systems, LLC, is a prestigious new ISPRS Award, which was established to encourage and stimulate submission of high quality scientific papers by individual authors or groups to the ISPRS Journal, to promote and advertise the Journal, and to honour the outstanding contributions of Dr. Uuno V. Helava to research and development in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

The Award is presented to authors of the best paper, written in English and published exclusively in the ISPRS Journal during the four-year period from January of a Congress year, to December of the year prior to the next Congress. The Award consists of a monetary grant of SFr. 10,000 and a plaque. A five-member jury, comprising experts of high scientific standing, whose expertise covers the main topics included in the scope of the Journal, evaluates the papers. For each year of the four-year evaluation period, the best paper is selected, and among these four papers, the one to receive the U.V. Helava Award.

The first U.V. Helava Award will be presented at the 19^th ISPRS Congress, Amsterdam, 16-23 July 2000. The five-member jury appointed by the ISPRS Council evaluated the 26 papers of 1996 and announced its decision for the Best Paper. The winner of the 1996 Best Paper is:

  3D City Models for CAAD-Supported Analysis and Design of Urban Areas

M. Sinning-Meister, A. Gruen, H. Dan

Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich

Martina Sinning-Meister	Armin Gruen	Hanbin Dan

Jury's rationale for the paper selection

The paper describes an interdisciplinary project which represents an early example of the generation of 3D city models and their visualisation, a topic that is relevant for various applications and is currently receiving considerable research attention. The article focuses upon automation of 3D building model generation from image-derived point cloud measurements through the use of a "topology builder", whereby the modelling of quite complex buildings and urban scenes is achieved. In addition to representing an interesting account of the application of an emerging technology, the paper is well written and illustrated, and provides a very readable account of the work carried out.

In the name of the ISPRS and the U.V. Helava Award jury, I would like to congratulate the authors for this distinction and thank them for their contribution. I would also like to thank the sponsors of the Award, and the jury members for their hard work and thorough evaluation.

Emmanuel P. Baltsavias

Editor-in-Chief, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing