ENRICO CLERICI (1939-2012)
Dr.-Ing. ENRICO CLERICI (73) passed away on October 26, 2012 in his new home in Rivergaro / Italy after a long
and serious illness. Only a close family circle attended the funeral at the family grave in the hills of the Northern
Apennine Mountains. Thus, after having lived in many different places in Europe and the Eastern hemisphere he
finally returned to his roots.
ENRICO CLERICI was born in Milan on the 20th of January 1939 and came into photogrammetry in quite an unusual way. Immediately after school he headed for Africa and worked with a surveying party engaged in engineering
construction in Uganda. From 1959 to 1964 he served in the merchant navy and in parallel studied land surveying by
correspondence which earned him a diploma from ICS Scranton, PA/USA. With this education he joined a Dutch
engineering consultancy group and was sent to Nigeria where he surveyed dam and road construction as well as
resettlements and hydrographic projects. In 1967 he started studying at the ITC and was awarded his B.Sc. in 1968
in Delft and in 1972 his M.Sc. in Enschede. In the Netherlands he married his wife Jet and applied successfully for
Dutch nationality.
During his studies he assisted the Photogrammetric Department of the ITC in data processing and block adjustment. From 1970 he was a scientific officer in the Netherlands interdepartmental working community for the application of remote sensing techniques, focussing on geometry and applications of airborne imaging radar, infrared line
scanners and side scan sonar. Between 1971 and 1975 he headed a project group for developing surveying and mapping software within the Department of Information Processing at Rijkswaterstaat in The Hague. During this time he
consolidated his experience with sonar scanning which resulted, in 1976, with his PhD-thesis at the University of
Hannover, Germany on the use of side scan sonar for mapping the sea bottom („Über die Anwendbarkeit von Side
Scan Sonar zur Erstellung von topographischen Karten des Meeresbodens“).
In 1975 ENRICO CLERICI became Senior Lecturer at the Department of Surveying at the University of Queensland. In Brisbane the family, now with daughter Milli and son Luigi, happily made their home for the next 11 years
with an interruption from 1981 to 1983. During which period he joined CARL ZEISS in Oberkochen as project manager in the photogrammetric R&D-department and worked on software for analytical plotters. Here the author got to
know him as a sound scientist and a versatile technician. However, the family was not very happy with the rough
climate of the Schwaebische Alb and therefore returned to the subtropical way of life in Queensland. There CLERICI
became Head of the Department of Surveying at the Queensland University of Technology, as well as Director of
the Australian Key Centre for Geographic Information Systems.
But DR. ENRICO CLERICI stayed connected to ZEISS as a consultant for Australia and South East Asia (SEA). In
1986 he fully returned to the company as Regional Director (SEA) of the Geodetic and Photogrammetric Divison of
CARL ZEISS, Oberkochen temporarily working out of Hong Kong and then based in Singapore. When ZEISS in 1998
put this business into joint ventures with partners, ENRICO, who had become a close friend of the author, decided to
work on a freelance basis. From 2000 he was Managing Director of K2-PHOTOGRAMMETRY PTE. LTD., Singapore
for marketing, consulting and technical service of photogrammetric and mapping systems in Asia, which was cofounded by HERMANN KLEIN and RÜDIGER KOTOWSKI. From 2010 during his increasingly serious illness he continued to stay in close contact with the daily business.
Enrico was a self-educated person and his strength was the interaction of his ongoing theoretical interest in
mathematics and physics with his broad practical experience. This resulted not only in 15 publications but also in a
number of successful projects. He was in particular demand for the complex integration of the various components
into robust airborne systems. This combination of his curiosity in theoretical aspects coupled with his enjoyment of
practical skills also showed in his hobbies as the picture illustrates. With his ketch VAGABOND 47 he sailed from
Singapore to Phuket through the hazardous Strait of Malacca almost every year, and once as far as the Andaman
Islands. Even then he preferred to check the GPS-based positioning by astro-navigation.
Although Enrico Clerici was not often met at international congresses and European events he was a good friend
to international colleagues and an esteemed and respected expert in eastern Asia, Japan and Australia. Together with
his family we mourn his too early passing and we will always have good memories of him.
DIERK HOBBIE, Königsbronn