Summary Remote sensing can be a valuable tool for agricultural statistics when area frames or multiple frames are used. At the design level, remote sensing typically helps in the definition of sampling units and the stratification, but can also be exploited to optimise the sample allocation and size of sampling units. At the estimator level, classified satellite images are generally used as auxiliary variables in a regression estimator or for estimators based on confusion matrixes. The most often used satellite images are LANDSAT‐TM and SPOT‐XS. In general, classified or photo‐interpreted images should not be directly used to estimate crop areas because the proportion of pixels classified into the specific crop is often strongly biased. Vegetation indexes computed from satellite images can give in some cases a good indication of the potential crop yield.

Agricultural statistics in the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) region are well advanced. Information collected by farm structure surveys on the characteristics of farms, farmers' households and holdings is for example combined with a variety of information on the production of animal products, crops, etc. Agricultural accounts are produced on a regular basis and a large variety of indicators on agri-economic issues is available. At the level of the European Union as a whole the harmonization-forced by a stringent regulatory framework-of the collection, validation and analysis of agricultural information has led to a settled system of statistics. Recent developments in methodologies for data collection (e.g. using hand-held computers, registers and administrative sources, advanced sampling techniques and remote sensing) are shaking up the development of agricultural statistics. There is a lack of uniformity in the pace at which different countries in the UNECE region are introducing new methodologies and techniques. The need to reduce the burden on farmers and to organize the collection and analysis of data more efficiently creates a set of challenges for the countries.

The industrialization after World War II marked a severe discontinuity between rural heritage and contemporary farm buildings. Rural landscapes have thus become more and more uniform; historical buildings are often abandoned and degraded, while contemporary buildings are often disconnected from their surrounding environment. Besides aiming to protect and restore rural heritage—more and more acknowledged as a common good contributing to societal identity—attention should be paid to increasing the quality of new buildings, a crucial issue to improve landscape quality in everyday landscape contexts. Based on a series of previous studies carried out to develop and test a robust methodology allowing the analysis of the main formal features of rural buildings, organized in a comprehensive framework known as the FarmBuiLD model (Farm Building Landscape Design), this study aims to perform an integrated and compared analysis of sets of traditional and contemporary rural buildings through experimental trials on an Italian case study. In particular, the study focuses on defining and measuring indexes allowing the quantification of the level of consistency of contemporary buildings with the traditional typologies. A contemporary farm building is evaluated based on the distance of each of its formal features from those which proved to be representative of the corresponding traditional building type, evaluated through a cluster analysis of the typological characters of traditional buildings in the study area. The results showed that different degrees of dissonance can be detected. Similarities have been found, in particular with respect to the shape of buildings and their closure with regards to landscape. The major dissonances are related to the perception of buildings as flattened on the ground, due to their excessively elongated shape, and in the case of buildings completely permeable to landscape, this being necessary for structural purposes and for the type of use of historic buildings. The expected impact of this study is to provide designers and planners with indicators allowing the evaluation, on an objective basis, of the level of consistency of new buildings with local rural heritage, thus supporting both design phases and project evaluation as well as building management processes (maintenance, restoration, extension, change in use, etc.).

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