Category Archives: Surveying
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...
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...
