Trends in use of ERS data

At the 3rd ERS symposium, held in March 97 with around 700 participants the state of the art in scientific and applicative use of ERS data was presented. This paper will summarise the trends observed in the use of ERS data both for scientific and applications use. A general trend has been observed, disregard of instrument: the scientific understanding of the working of the instruments and the resulting data captured has now progressed to a point where new and innovative uses of the data are being tried with success. Examples of this is the use of scatterometer and altimeter data over ice and land. Applicative use of this kind was not foreseen in the initial objectives of the mission, but has emerged as the scientific understanding of signal-target interaction has increased. Also we have observed that interferomery has matured from science and engineering and is now being integrated in a range of applications either as a complementary information source or as the sole method of performing key measurements.