Category Archives: Surveying

The deputy director told xyHt that NGA wanted to have a bigger role.

NGA’s Involvement With Our World

Above: The deputy director says that NGA wants to have a bigger role. Editor’s Note: On July 23, xyHt editors Gavin Schrock and Dave Doyle were invited to address an audience of professionals at the headquarters of the federal government’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in Springfield, Virginia. While this was a closed-door session held to...

Common Research Mistakes Surveyors Make, Part 2

Road Records, Easements, and Probate Records In a previous article (July 2015) I explain two of the five common mistakes made by surveyors in researching the records: mistakes made in determining senior title and the deficiency existing when a forward search is omitted. The remaining of the five common mistakes often made by surveyors are...

Forty-five feet below its final resting place, the top of the steel roof of Deep Space will be covered by layers of concrete and earth.

Raising the Roof

A survey company changes its tactics to monitor an auditorium roof before, during, and after its lift into place, using teamwork and true professionalism. American Surveying & Engineering, P.C. (with corporate headquarters in Chicago, Illinois) was approached by JP Cullen (a contractor with headquarters in Janesville, Wisconsin) with a challenging project: a particularly tricky auditorium...

Senior surveyor Nathan Farrell tasks the Trimble S8 and TSC3 controller at the Mt Mercer Wind Farm. TGM was able to provide all survey tasks with a one-person crew.

Capturing the Wind

A one-person crew provides foundational data for building a massive wind farm in Australia, using integrated survey technology. When you look at the commanding stature and aesthetically pleasing symmetry of the turbine towers at the Mt Mercer Wind Farm in southeast Australia, it is easy to gloss over the central role that surveying and engineering...

Converting paper cadastral records to a digital format is the first step in modernizing cadastres.

Geospatial PPPs

Striking the right balance in building national cadasters with private/public partnerships. Land ownership is a foundation of national economies: those who have land titles can use them to obtain credit (which is often essential to start and expand businesses), and property taxes are a key source of government funding. Therefore, authoritative and efficient land registries...

Surveying Statistics

The t Distribution, Part 2 In the previous article (July 2015), I introduce the concept of sampling distributions and the need to use these distributions to analyze small samples of data. In surveying, observing small samples is typical where angles are often observed only two or four times, and repeated distance observations simply means pushing...