Category Archives: Surveying
Survey Grade? Why Hiring a Licensed Surveyor is a Good Move
Only if you’re a Surveyor® Editor’s note: You can do plumbing without being a plumber, but not surgery without being a surgeon. Terms have meaning; surveying as a licensed profession is (but should not be) a term that is loosely applied. Surveyor and educator Kelly Ness offers the following thought-provoking look at the use and...
UAS: It’s Unstoppable and Headed Your Way
From time to time I like to stop and think about the mission of Pangaea and explain that mission to you. My task is exposing you to new, emerging geospatial technologies. But why bother? Here’s a little analogy I thought of to help explain why keeping abreast of new geospatial tech is critical. Imagine emerging...
Crown Stone Dedication – 250th Anniversary of the Mason and Dixon Line Survey
The Mason and Dixon Line Preservation Partnership (MDLPP) will unveil a CrownStone set on the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania by Charles Mason and JeremiahDixon, 250 years ago. The Crown Stone was lost and had not been seen for over 110years. A replica Crown Stone, showing how the original stone looked when it was set,...
What Is a Professional Land Surveyor?
As I was recently completing the comprehensive NSPS questionnaire developed as a follow-up to the Forum on the Future of Surveying (see Multiple Choices by Gavin Schrock, PLS), I found myself contemplating the many descriptions of land surveyors included along the way. After completing the questionnaire and providing some personal feedback, I couldn’t help but...
Closer Than It Looks
Above: High-definition mapping sensors (lidar, digital, and oblique imagery, here mounted on a helicopter during collection of an autonomous vehicle mapping project) provide an accurate, cost-effective approach to limit the interference and potential delays related to collecting extensive control on a right of way. A hybrid of geospatial technologies could help autonomous vehicle mapping drive...
A Correctly Weighted Least Squares Adjustment, Part 3
Estimating Standard Errors in Angular Observations In the previous articles (January and February 2016) I discuss the unreliability of standard deviations when they are computed from a small sample of observations, as well as how to estimate errors in centering an instrument over a well-defined point and how to estimate the standard error for electronically...
