1.1.1. The Institute of Geodesy, Cartography & Remote Sensing (FÖMI)
The Institute is the national body in Hungary that performs, by its staff of 175, central operational as
well as R+D duties of civil mapping. Its activities are directly supervised by the Dept. of Lands &
Mapping of the Ministry of Agriculture and are financed to some 30-40% by a budget allocated by the
Ministry. The rest of the funds come from successful R+D competition awards and special revenues
of the Institute (sale of GI products and services).
Major operative duties of the Institute include the following:
- Contracts government orders of mapping and control point development and performs official
control and acceptance of the end products of these works. Government basic data thus obtained
are collected in the central data and map archive of the Institute. Sale of data is done based on a
ministerial regulation.
- Coordinates aerial photography over the country; stores as well as supplies the photographs on demand.
- Preprocesses and distributes in Hungary satellite image data received on contract from primary space image producers.
- Maintains the central land records database and develops software modules for the EU PHARE-supported programme of computerizing the Hungarian land office network; supervises the surveying activities of the land offices.
- Performs surveying and mapping works of the national boundaries.
Major R+D projects on remote sensing and GIS, primarily financed by successful competition awards
from the National Committee for Technological Development (OMFB):
REMOTE SENSING:
FÖMI is one of the major support institutions of the Hungarian Space Office. As
such activities on this field are considered rather important. Major works in the considered period:
- The development of an experimental RS based crop monitoring system at different levels: locally, at
counties or for the whole country. Crop monitoring, identification and mapping, area estimation, crop
stage and development assessment.
- Providing enhanced, geometrically corrected satellite photoproducts, using panchromatic SPOT and
Landsat TM satellite images, for the updating of 1:25,000 - 1:100,000 scale topographic map sheets.
- CORINE Land Cover Project of the European Communities aiming at the creation of an up-to-date
database of the land surface of Europe at scale 1:100,000, using satellite imagery as basic data source.
- Monitoring the major parameters of privatization in Hungary. EOSAT GRANT PROJECT 1944.
- Use of ERS-1 SAR data for agricultural, forestry and environmental applications in East Central
Europe. Assessment of the potential of optical and microwave satellite remote sensing techniques for
land surface monitoring of the impact of land reform.
GIS research projects
GIS technology has made considerable headway in the control and
supervisory systems of the authorities of both the central government and the municipalities. The
national map series and databases produced from them provide the infrastructural basis for these
systems.
- Comprehensive geodetic control point database
- Digital geoid of Hungary
- Descriptive catalogue of Hungarian geodetic reference and projection systems
- Conceptual model of the digital basic survey (cadastral) map (draft standard)
- Suggestions connected with the authentication technology and the preparation of the standards of the digital basic survey map
in view of the legal measures and official regulations in force, and of the applied practical processes
- Elaborating the data quality for the standards of the digital basic survey map
- Guidelines on data quality for spatial datasets
- Technologies of digitizing and archivating for topographic maps
- Gazetteer-database
- Information system for the land management administration
- Database of the Hungarian administrative boundaries
- Raster and vector based databases of the 1:100.000 topographic series of Hungary
- Database of the National Digital Terrain Model
- Experiments in computerized printing plate production for topographic maps.
More details may be obtained by directly contacting the Institute
(address: H-1373 Budapest, Pf.546, Fax: +36 1 269 4560.)
Géza APAGYI
Director of the Institute FÖMI,
Dr. Pál Divényi, Dr. Éva Csató
Senior staff, FÖMI, Budapest
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