Soft computing is a new, emerging discipline rooted in a group of technologies -- such as knowledge-based systems, neural networks, fuzzy set theory, probabilistic and evidential approaches, and genetic algorithms -- that have the common characteristic of mimicking the remarkable human ability to make decisions in an environment of uncertainty and imprecision.Encouraged by the growing interest in soft computing and by the scientific efforts already undertaken within the remote sensing community, the International Workshop on Soft Computing in Remote Sensing Data Analysis (held in Milan, Italy, on December 4-5, 1995) brought together researchers and scientists engaged in related areas.In this volume, papers presented at the Workshop are grouped into four sections. The first section contains plenary lectures, the others open with two invited papers and deal with the topics of 'Remote Sensing Classification by Neural Networks and Fuzzy Sets', 'Symbolic Approaches in Geographic Information Processing', and 'Remote Sensing Image Analysis'.