Blog

3D GIS

Breaking the Wall between Consumer and Professional, the Appearance of Disappearance, Versioning An Interview with Lawrie Jordon Contrary to what the current buzz might indicate, GIS and CAD have been 3D-rich from their start (although sometimes with elevation as an attribute, not necessarily part of the core spatial definition). Even in the 1990s era of...

Exceeding the Limits

Forensic survey technology is now a need rather than a luxury as Latin America’s urban concentration accelerates. For decades the art and science of determining how a crime was commit-ted and how a car crash occurred has relied on expert hypotheses based on personal experience and memory. Experts have used tape measures, cameras, and paper...

The Political Surveyor: Defining “Geospatial” for Today’s Education and Tomorrow’s Workforce

The traditional surveying and mapping profession, which today is more commonly known as “geospatial,” has an identity crisis.  While the profession was long considered part of the broad field of engineering, the geospatial community today lacks a common and accepted definition and classification.  This could adversely affect its future workforce and hundreds of millions of...

History Corner: John Wasson: Surveyor General in Apache Land, Part 2

Part 1 in the January 2013 issue introduces John Wasson as a veteran newspaperman, beginning the role of surveyor general of Arizona Territory when it was made a separate survey district in 1870. Wasson’s political appointment stirred controversy; his early tenure included editing one of the most important newspapers in the territory and conducting his job...

Web Waypoints: Web Mapping for Canada

This month’s Web Waypoints column is by a federal geomatics officer from Canada who has had success implementing a national web map.   Last year, the Surveyor General Branch of Natural Resources Canada released a web application that provides public land survey information on Canada Lands to any interested party, the Canada Lands Survey System –...

QGIS v ArcGIS

Okay, so I’m likely to get lynched, but before all the lovers/haters come out of the woodwork I’d like to remind everyone that these two systems are both great achievements. We are looking at two software systems that have changed the way we look at the world and the way we think about the world...

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