xyHt in print December 2015 Archives
Aqua Bots
Above: The Z-Boat 1800 on a riverine hydrographic survey using sidescan sonar. Unmanned & Unlimited Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) get the lion’s share of media coverage, which is just not fair. Hardworking unmanned marine platforms, both surface and subsurface, have a lot to offer in the hydrographic surveying and inspection space. As a big bonus […]
Quarry Monitoring
In Slovenia, a team monitored slope stability in an open-pit quarry using a classic, optical precise level and Invar rod. Editor’s note: Cost-benefit analysis dictates that, for open-pit mines and quarries, steep slopes allow for the most efficient extraction of resources but at an increased risk of slope failures. This adapted paper outlines an example […]
Stretching Surveyors across the Water
Surveying the Gorgon Jetty Project on Barrow Island off Western Australia involved integrating structural, mechanical, and hydrographic surveying technologies and skills. Barrow Island is described by some as Australia’s answer to the Galapagos Islands. The 202 km2 (78 mi2) island and its surrounding ocean are home to diverse and unique fauna, including marsupials, reptiles, sea […]
Web Mapping
Part 1, The Basics Children of the millennium will never know that there was a time before the internet when we, the cartographers, engineers, and surveyors had to relate geospatial information through the medium of paper. Although the internet has been around since the late 1980s, it wasn’t until 1996 when the world got the […]
Smart Cities
They’re guided by people and powered by geospatial information. We’ve all heard the buzzword, “smart city.” But what is a smart city, and what makes it smarter than others? One of the key characteristics is the ability to make effective connections—among citizens, assets, and services—by using technology to support and improve the interaction among people […]
The Extended Entity of Autodesk
Has Autodesk become too large? Too diverse? Did the software get too complex? Or are those concerns missing the point? We’re far from the day when we can think of something we’d like and it simply materializes: there’s still a long path between ideation and realization. But, for more than three decades the path between […]