WINASEAN FOR REMOTE-SENSING DATA-ANALYSIS

The image analysis system ASEAN (Advanced System for Environmental ANa lysis with Remote Sensing Data) was designed and programmed by a softw are development group, ImaSOFT, Department of Remote Sensing Technolog y and GIS, Institute for Geography, National Centre for Natural Scienc e and Technology of Vietnam under technical cooperation with the Remot e Sensing Technology Centre of Japan and financial support from the Na tional Space Development Agency of Japan. ASEAN has been in continuous development since 1989, with different versions ranging from the simp lest one for MS-DOS with standard VGA 320x200x256 colours, through ver sions supporting SpeedStar 1.0 and SpeedStar PRO 2.0 true colour graph ics cards, up to the latest version named WinASEAN, which is designed for the Windows 3.1 operating system. The most remarkable feature of W inASEAN is the use of algorithms that speed up the image analysis proc ess, even on PC platforms. Today WinASEAN is continuously improved in cooperation with NASDA (National Space Development Agency of Japan), R ESTEC (Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan) and released as publ ic domain software for training, research and education through the Re gional Remote Sensing Seminar on Tropical Eco-system Management which is organised by NASDA and ESCAP. In this paper, the authors describe t he functionality of WinASEAN, some of the relevant analysis algorithms , and discuss its possibilities of computer-assisted teaching and trai ning of remote sensing.