Tag Archives: gps
A Decade of Uncrewed Photogrammetry
Some might have had a peek at photogrammetry drones before 2013, but for me 2023 marks a decade since I first laid eyes on an uncrewed aircraft that “claimed” to do what I had been doing for years in bigger, more stable airplanes in the joyful company of pilots, copilots, camera operators, and navigators. In...
Surveying for Safety at Waipio Valley
Lush vegetation, beautiful ocean vistas, and a historic Hawaiian valley provide the setting for a complex engineering project that addresses technical and cultural concerns. The Waipio Valley on the island of Hawaii has great historical significance within Hawaiian culture. Known as the Valley of Kings, it was home to many generations of the royal family...
Rapidly Mapping Infrastructure
Could a Pittsburgh-based start-up help improve (and save) America’s bridges? Early in the morning of January 28, 2022, a Pittsburgh Regional Transit Authority bus crossing the Fern Hollow Bridge began bouncing and shaking for no apparent reason. Moments later it plummeted into a ravine along with several other vehicles as the bridge collapsed beneath them....
Add a Drone to Survey Fieldwork
Innovative drones offer a fast, accurate option for large-area survey data collection Since the first use of drones for commercial purposes in 2006, the drone industry has rapidly gained momentum and introduced new capabilities to serve a wide range of applications. Surveying and mapping projects pose unique challenges due to the importance of accuracy and...
The Cahokia Mounds
The largest single-instrument geophysical survey ever in America hopes to uncover some of the mysteries of the Cahokia Mounds Long, long before any of our great Mississippi River cities, and long before Europeans landed on New World shores and pushed westward, Native Americans were thriving in an urban center so big and so complex it...
Is High-Precision GNSS Coming to Your Smartphone?
We have seen over the past four decades how our traditional profession of making maps went from obscurity to mainstream to widely adopted, everyday reality. When I attended university for my geodesy degree in the early 80s everyone who had a car also had a road map in the glove compartment—from a basic road grid...
