Blog
Feature: Hydrography by Remote
Surveyors in parched California measure sedimentation levels in a reservoir using a small, remote-controlled boat integrated with a survey-grade RTK. Before they even start taking measurements, surveyors often have to deal with such practical challenges as how to access and move around in their survey area—which may be rocky, filled with dense vegetation, or obstructed...
Feature: Discovering Lee’s View
A geography professor uses GIS to recreate the Battle of Gettysburg, discovering what General Lee could and could not have seen to guide his fateful decisions. Advances in tech-nology in the last 150 years have been remarkable. In our industry we have seen many changes in our surveying methods and in mapping practices in general....
Guest Editorial: How the Future Surveyor Can Be Relevant
I wrote a guest essay in the March 2013 issue of PSM portraying my vision of the future. I believe I made a miscalculation—the “future” is progressing very rapidly, and a lot of what I envisioned is already here. Here are several notable examples. Locata, the Australian-based company that developed their terrestrial-based replication of the GNSS...
Feature: UAS Applied
Surveyors provide a topographical survey of a harbor in Ireland with a UAS, thus avoiding significant disruption (and risk) that would have been created by a conventional survey. Editor’s Note: Our October 2013 issue features a UAS evaluation by a surveying firm in Ireland; they conducted field tests using UAS photogrammetry and compared the results to traditional survey techniques....
Feature: UAS and the FAA
What exactly is the current legal state of using UAS in the United States for surveyors versus hobbyists? What’s the big deal about the National Airspace System? What should surveyors do to prepare to use UAS? Few topics in the geospatial community are as fraught with misunderstanding and misinformation as the topic of unmanned aerial...
Feature: National Surveyors Week 2014
Collaboration among Pennsylvania surveyors exemplifies the spirit of the National Height Modernization campaign. The Pennsylvania Society of Land Surveyors (PSLS) recently launched a new initiative known as PSLS Reaching New Heights (PRNH). This initiative expands upon the National Geodetic Survey’s (NGS) GPS on Bench Marks Campaign (see sidebar at far right) and will be used...
Advertisement