PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
October 2015
763
BOOK
REVIEW
This volume aims to be a concise, information-packed and
focused exposition of the salient methods and methodologies
available for and specific to remote sensing research. Its value
however is diluted due to frequent, but quite readable and in-
depth incursions into the philosophical – epistemological, logical,
ontological, and ethical underpinnings of scientific research.
Contrasting writing styles and depths of content of the
scholarly matter in its various chapters can be noticed.
Several distracting elements appear throughout the text: the
occasional omission of articles, and grammatical errors (e.g.
number agreement); awkward constructions also dot the
book. In-text referencing appears in some cases as unedited
shorthand. Inconsistent capitalization, the occasional
erroneous nomenclature and typing errors are present. The
reader is challenged to filter out the occasional colloquial tone
of the language.
On the scientific and technical side of things, this book is
affected by a noticeable flaw, such as is the pervasive use of the
term “ground truth”; the widespread use of this term brings
with it all its erroneous implications.
The Preface erroneously proclaims that the book has eight
chapters when in reality it has just seven. An eight chapter
would have been beneficial, fashioned to serve as summary
and conclusion. Chapter 1 is well written and provides a
sampling of the topics covered in greater depths in the rest of
the book. Platforms and sensors, hypotheses and observations,
methods and methodologies, and contrasting philosophical
schools of thought supporting the exploration of phenomena
and processes; they are all covered in this chapter.
Chapter 2 has some subsections which are quite readable,
such as the ones on Ontology, Epistemology and the section
on the Research Paradigm. The subsection on Deductive Logic
provides a blurred picture of what statistical inference is with
vague and reiterative usage of terms such as “confidence” and
“null hypothesis.” Understandably, the book could not have
covered the plethora of numerical and statistical methods
available for the analysis of remotely sensed data. The
discussion gets mired on what constitutes an observation, who/
what is the observer when dealing with variables, and how
to test a hypothesis – and in this case unclear as to what is a
scientific hypothesis as opposed to a statistical hypothesis. The
subsection perhaps should have been recast in terms of a more
accurate and clearer categorization of statistical methodologies
available. The next subsection is entirely too long and should
have been subdivided in to subsections for easier reading.
Chapter 3 is dedicated to characterizing the nature of remote
sensed data and their attributes such as resolutions. On the
other hand, the chapter is plagued by the use of the concept
of “ground-truth”, to which a whole subsection is dedicated.
The issue of the interplay of different levels of spatial accuracy
when dealing with various sources of positional data (e.g. GPS)
is rightly addressed; the use of GNSS instead of GPS, however
Research Methods in Remote Sensing
(Springer Briefs in Earth Sciences)
Basudeb Bhatta
Springer 2013, xiii and 125 pp., black and white and color
figures, diagrams, tables, index. ISBN 978-94-007-6593-1. ISBN
2191-5377 (electronic). ISBN 978-94-007-6594-8 (eBook). ISSN
2191-5369. Paperback $49.95.
Reviewed by:
Demetrio P. Zourarakis, PhD, GISP,
CMS-RS, CMS-GIS/LIS, Remote Sensing/GIS Analyst,
Kentucky Division of Geographic Information
would have been more appropriate. The main types of remote
sensing are discussed but LiDAR is notoriously absent from
the discussion. Sonar and radar are mentioned, and the
latter one is dealt with in sufficient length in the discussion
of microwave sensing. A subsection is dedicated to a heuristic
approach to explain information content present in different
spectral bands, as a sequential data workflow. The discussion
could have been enriched by presenting these ideas against a
backdrop of the truer, more complex multivariate nature of the
remote sensing process.
Chapter 4 sports some well written subsections; the validity
of acceptable land cover/land use classification accuracy
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 81, No. 10, October 2015, pp. 763–764.
0099-1112/15/763–764
© 2015 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.81.10.763
