Category Archives: Professional Surveyor Archives
Use This Down Time to Become a Better Surveyor
Coming Out Smarter, Stronger, and More Valuable After the Surveying Slowdown is Over Unprecedented times have the world economy racing toward a potential recession and possibly taking the land surveying profession with it. In many parts of the United States surveying is at a near standstill with the shutdown of non-essential businesses due to the...
Business Angle: Surveying Software (& Hardware) Purchase Decisions
Hardware and software purchases are two of the largest expenses, outside of personnel, for surveying professionals. There was a time when a surveyor could purchase a high-quality instrument and expect to use it for a decade or more. When I was first sent out to perform field surveys, I (as the new guy) got the...
Feature: The Promise of UAS in the United States
Early adopters partner to prepare for a revolution in domestic surveying. The Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) industry in the United States is still very much in its infancy, but its potential impacts on the geospatial mapping and surveying professions are indisputable. Currently, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allows UAS flights for public and federal purposes,...
Web Waypoints: Databased Mapping
An interactive exercise merging the topo-graphical and the topo-logical Editor’s note: Just about any interaction we have with the digital world is enabled through the power of database technology: our smartphone apps, the web, shopping, work, and play. A lot of this is behind the scenes and taken for granted. Data-collection software for surveying is becoming increasingly...
Northern Lights: Mining the 55th Parallel
Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia and a bush camp in northwestern Labrador. On the surface the two communities are a nation apart, separated by more than 3,300 kms (1,865 miles) of woodland. One province flanks the Pacific Ocean as the other hugs the Atlantic. Yet geographical gap is just the tip of the iceberg of divergence....
Rules of the Game: Coordinates as Boundary Evidence
Judicial, geodetic, and practical considerations Editor’s note: Mention “coordinates” in relation to cadastral surveying to a group of land surveyors and you will likely raise eyebrows and voices—often the conversation leads to a mischaracterization of the issue as somehow being “coordinates versus monumentation.” Although many countries (and even states and individual jurisdictions in the U.S.) have already...