July 2018 Archives
TheGeoDude on The UESI Conference
I’ve attended a lot of conferences over the years. They’ve primarily been either surveying-focused or technology- (GPS, laser scanning, reality capture, CAD) focused. The recent Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute (UESI) conference, held April 22 to 24 in Pomona, California, was my first conference with a strong mix of civil engineers and surveyors; a show […]
A Surveyor Looks at 40
Ask questions, seek advice, be a mentor, and set a great example as a leader in our profession. After 20 or so years in the land surveying industry, I find myself smack dab in the middle of my lifelong career as a surveyor. I’m no longer floundering at the beginning, searching for my way, and […]
Recognition and Reasoning
How AI is going mainstream in the infrastructure industry. For years, humans have recognized images better than computers have. Our error rate has been steady at 5% while computer algorithms were at 30%. However, with the rise of computer vision and deep learning, the gap between humans and computers has slowly closed. Within the last […]
Not Everything Requires High Accuracies
How feature inspection, assessment, and reporting are now available to non-experts (and experts alike). In the early 2000s, Leon Toorenburg was in Africa mapping the locations of communications and utility towers. He was carrying a laser range finder, a camera, a GPS receiver, a laptop, and a field stick. It occurred to him that there […]
CORS Map
A First for Africa Geospatial professionals don’t need an introduction to CORS. For everyone else, it’s an acronym that stands for continuously operating reference systems: geodetic receivers that log GNSS observables continuously which, when transmitted to users with survey-grade receivers, help them achieve centimeter-accuracy measurements. CORS stations have a range of about 70 kilometers (~43 […]
The Gamification of the Geospatial Industry
Why Is It Important? With huge, sprawling maps and realistic cities now appearing in our video games, it begs the question as to how these amazing cities render so quickly, yet we geospatial experts still sit waiting for 10 minutes for our software to open. For example, the notorious Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (pictured […]