All posts by Gavin Schrock
Training as Incentive for Recruitment and Retention
It would be stating the obvious that finding qualified surveying staff right now is challenging. Offering training as recruitment/retention incentive is difficult if such opportunities are limited. A renewed focus on creating more training opportunities, within the profession and supporting industries, is changing this. Training/education as an incentive to recruit and retain survey staff is...
Street-Level Lidar On Demand
As exciting as the advent of on-demand access to current, high-resolution lidar is, so are the tools available for ingesting, extracting features, analyzing, and sharing. “What we’re hearing right now, this is really an inflection point for the industry,” says Phil Christensen, vice president for reality and spatial modeling at Bentley Systems. “The software has...
When a Drone Just Can’t Do It
There is a growing ebb in the tide of UAS adoption for aerial surveying, mapping, and remote sensing—finding the right balance between manned and unmanned aerial operations Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), or just plain old “drones”—call them whatever you wish—have had a tremendous impact on geospatial industries. A decade ago,...
GNSS on Bench Marks?
The GPS on Bench Marks campaign of the National Geodetic Survey is a triumph of constituency participation to improve the nation’s geodetic infrastructure. The initiative is seeing success, but also faces challenges. Multi-constellation support, and acceptance of short RTK/RTN observations, will add a productivity boost. The “GPS on Bench Marks” program of the U.S. National...
AutoPole – Tilt, Height, and Target Identification
An innovative prism pole, the first of its kind, addresses three troublesome sources of error for robotic total station operation. Leica Geosystems (part of Hexagon) has just announced the AP20 AutoPole, a very smart new prism pole system for use with total stations. It incorporates multiple innovations that add up to—how else can I say...
The New Datum and Real-Time GNSS Networks
We asked U.S. RTN what their plans are for the upcoming changes to the National Spatial Reference System. When it comes to geodetic reference frameworks, “shift happens.” Surveyors (and others) have been through this before, like changes from NAD27 to NAD83, NGVD29 to NAVD88, from NAD83(CORS96) to NAD83(NSRS2007), and to the current NAD83(2011). Remember the...
