Category Archives: Surveying

A New Perspective with Drone Photogrammetry

Geotechnical engineers say drones offer a safer, faster method of data collection to identify potential geohazards and assist with mitigation along vulnerable transportation corridors.   Mountain roadways are prime locations for geohazards, such as rockfalls, landslides, and debris flows. These events result in road closures, injuries, and property damage, sometimes triggered by thaw/freeze cycles or...

Virtual Reality and City Planning

Engaging citizens to participate actively in urban development projects can often be difficult. But rendering designs in 3D city models and transforming them into immersive virtual reality spaces might just do the trick. When it comes to reshaping cities and constructing new structures, modern architects consider public participation an essential part of creating sustainable and...

Testifying as an Expert 

Legal Boundaries A boundary dispute case, or any case involving surveying, surveyors, landowners, and property rights (“property disputes”) is a different breed of civil litigation from most others. There are many unique aspects of this type of litigation not common to other cases.   The biggest difference is that the parties are paying for the litigation...

Why Opus Projects? Part 1 of 2

Part 1 of 2The new version of the NGS suite of Online Position User Service tools simplifies many tasks By Philippe HenselWith Dan Gillins, Dan Martin and Julie Prusky  NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS) continues to improve its suite of Online Position User Service (OPUS) tools. In addition to single-point processing, OPUS offers a web-based...

Carlson Releases STEM Video Game: Hydrology Engineer

Carlson Software, celebrating its 40th anniversary as a company, has released a STEM video game—Hydrology Engineer. The video game is designed to teach hydrology, a subset of civil engineering, from a practical standpoint. Players will be introduced to both simple and complex concepts of hydrology work with the chance to compete for most efficient design...

Surveyor’s Corner: Next Generation

Putting the Future of Surveying In the Next Generation’s Hands For more than 20 years, the National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS) has organized a student competition in conjunction with its spring business meetings in Washington, D.C. Now organized by the Young Surveyors Network (YSN) of the NSPS, the competition hosts higher-education land surveying student...