Category Archives: Surveying
The Two Fences
Surveyor Igor Kidinsky, alias Eager (The Kid), could not seem to fit the fence with his calculated property corner. His calculations kept leading him to the other fence, a few feet away. Glenny Dale, alias Glutton (The Old Man), looked on, struggling to convince his logical mind that there should be two fence lines here...
Survey Law
Seniority of Title and Forward Search I am often a part of litigation involving surveying services and research mistakes. (I must admit that, in excess of forty years of practice, I have made my share of mistakes performing record research.) I’ve observed five common research mistakes often made by surveyors. This article explains the common...
Surveying Statistics
The t Distribution, Part 1 In my previous article I discuss the normal distribution and how its properties can be used to isolate blunders in observations. Recall that the normal distribution is based on an infinite number of observations. However, in practice we never collect a population of data but rather a small sample from...
Robots
Above: GPS-controlled robots can measure a site fully automatically and precisely anchor screws for the foundation of a solar plant. Measuring and Anchoring As a child I used to watch a program on BBC television called Tomorrow’s World. Once in 1981, I sat in awe as it showed a snooker-playing robot. My dreams were filled with...
Mapping the Appalachian Trail, Part 2
How the AT was brought into GIS via a collaboration among ATC staff, NSP professionals, and dedicated volunteers. Part 1 of this article (May 2015) reveals the history of the trail, particularly how the land that comprises it was surveyed. Read here about how the trail was brought into GIS. In 1998, the Appalachian Trail...
Stockpile Reports
How to do enterprise inventory management from image-based 3D reconstruction, in the cloud and in your pocket. “No one wakes up in the morning thinking that they need to buy a point cloud,” says URC Ventures CEO David Boardman. “Most people would be thinking that they need to solve some business problem.” What URC Ventures...
