Remote sensing data quality model: from data sources to lifecycle phases

The importance of data quality assessment has significantly increased with the boom of information technology and the growing demand for remote sensing (RS) data. The Remote Sensing Data Quality Working Group of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing aimed to conduct an investigation on the principles of data quality. Literature review revealed that most publications introduce data quality models for application specific processing chains and quality schemes are built case by case with particular domain indicators only. Yet no general concept independent from applications has been developed so far. This paper focuses on the formulation of a RS quality concept adopted from information technology domain describing a triangular RS data quality scheme that relates data sources, quality dimensions and lifecycle phases. Following the introduction it provides examples of international standards and fundamentals of theoretic quality modelling. After a short overview on platforms/sensors, definitions of different quality dimensions are presented with their metrics organised in clusters (like resolution or accuracy). The main achievement of the paper relates lifecycle phases to different quality dimensions of high relevance. The objective is not only to address experts of RS but to raise awareness of uncertainty for the general RS user community.