Category Archives: Surveying

Left: A hiker stands above the clouds at the Appalachian Trail’s northern terminus: the summit of Katahdin in Baxter State Park, Maine. Courtesy of Jeffrey Stylos.

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...

URC Ventures CEO David Boardman demonstrates a stockpile geometry capture. The ~3,000-cubic-yard pile was imaged in ~three minutes, using only his iPhone and two safety cones placed 25 feet apart to establish scale.

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...

Summertime, and the Surveying Ain’t Easy

Now that winter and even spring have finished thrashing half the country, we can officially enjoy summer. As a laser scanner operator I have a fairly easy job this season due to the limitations of the instrument—at least, it’s easier than being a field surveyor. If you’ve ever worked on a survey crew in the...

normal distribution

Surveying Statistics

Part 2: The Normal Distribution Part 1 of this series appeared in the May 2015 issue. Errors in observations can be classified as systematic or random. Systematic errors follow physical laws and can be mathematically corrected or removed by following proper field procedures with instruments. For example, the expansion or contraction of a steel tape...

Normal Distribution Curve

The Normal Distribution, Part 1

Errors in observations can be classified as systematic or random. Systematic errors are errors that follow physical laws and can be mathematically corrected or removed by following proper field procedures with instruments. For example, the expansion or contraction of a steel tape caused by temperatures that differ from the tape’s standard temperature is a systematic...

A mosiac of panoramic images provides a complete, detailed view of a processing facility. A few minutes of imaging can replace hours of more conventional surveying. The precise locations of the photostations (shown as models of the imaging rover) are measured using GNSS or total stations.

Creating Energy From Images

Geospatial information has long played an essential role in the energy industry, but now a new technology is cutting costs while improving the flow of knowledge. Editor’s note: The energy sector, oil and gas in particular, has grown more rapidly in the past half dozen years than in the past half a century. New fields,...