ABSTRACT
India can improve its per capita income ranking through better management of its rich resources by the use of Geo Information technologies. GIS, Remote Sensing, GPS, Cartography and other related technologies have emerged as highly complementary tools of providing integrated and total solutions. Liberalisation process started in 1991 and the initiatives of Department of Space in granting recognition to a host of private companies provided a boost to privatisation in GI field in India. Massive investments in cadastral surveys thematic mapping infrastructure and agriculture sectors are expected to generate over 21,000 million rupees worth of GI related work in the coming 5 years. Beginning from 1927 the use of Arial Photography evolved from simple manual techniques to the modern softcopy systems. Photogrammetry served the country in mapping on standard scales of 1:25,000 ; 1:50,000 and 1:250,000. GIS applications are operational both in the government and private sectors, thanks to the indigenously available IRS data with spatial resolution of 6 meters with stereo ability.

ABSTRACT
UAVs are unmanned aerial vehicles. Hence, UAV photogrammetry can be understood as a new photogrammetric measurement tool. UAV photogrammetry opens various new applications in the close range domain, combining aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry, but also introduces low-cost alternatives to the classical manned aerial photogrammtery. This thesis deals with the challenging task: “The use of UAV systems as photogrammetric data acquisition platforms” and the work was conducted by the author at IGP at ETH Zurich from 2003 to 2009.