Category Archives: Surveying

Survey Law

Seniority of Title and Forward Search I am often a part of litigation involving surveying services and research mistakes.  (I must admit that, in excess of forty years of practice, I have made my share of mistakes performing record research.)  I’ve observed five common research mistakes often made by surveyors. This article explains the common...

Surveying Statistics

The t Distribution, Part 1 In my previous article I discuss the normal distribution and how its properties can be used to isolate blunders in observations. Recall that the normal distribution is based on an infinite number of observations. However, in practice we never collect a population of data but rather a small sample from...

GPS-controlled robots can measure a site fully automatically and precisely anchor screws for the foundation of a solar plant.

Robots

Above: GPS-controlled robots can measure a site fully automatically and precisely anchor screws for the foundation of a solar plant. Measuring and Anchoring As a child I used to watch a program on BBC television called Tomorrow’s World. Once in 1981, I sat in awe as it showed a snooker-playing robot. My dreams were filled with...

Left: A hiker stands above the clouds at the Appalachian Trail’s northern terminus: the summit of Katahdin in Baxter State Park, Maine. Courtesy of Jeffrey Stylos.

Mapping the Appalachian Trail, Part 2

How the AT was brought into GIS via a collaboration among ATC staff, NSP professionals, and dedicated volunteers. Part 1 of this article (May 2015) reveals the history of the trail, particularly how the land that comprises it was surveyed. Read here about how the trail was brought into GIS.  In 1998, the Appalachian Trail...

URC Ventures CEO David Boardman demonstrates a stockpile geometry capture. The ~3,000-cubic-yard pile was imaged in ~three minutes, using only his iPhone and two safety cones placed 25 feet apart to establish scale.

Stockpile Reports

How to do enterprise inventory management from image-based 3D reconstruction, in the cloud and in your pocket. “No one wakes up in the morning thinking that they need to buy a point cloud,” says URC Ventures CEO David Boardman. “Most people would be thinking that they need to solve some business problem.” What URC Ventures...

Summertime, and the Surveying Ain’t Easy

Now that winter and even spring have finished thrashing half the country, we can officially enjoy summer. As a laser scanner operator I have a fairly easy job this season due to the limitations of the instrument—at least, it’s easier than being a field surveyor. If you’ve ever worked on a survey crew in the...