July 2013 Archives
The Political Surveyor: The Surveyor, GIS, and Privacy
Imagine that a surveyor is contacted to provide property surveys and topographic mapping for the planning and potential design of a major new highway project. All the initial processes—the collection of parcel information to conduct a corridor analysis, to study alternative alignments for the road, to select a right-of-way, and to identify properties for which […]
Feature: Surveying Cultural Heritage
To help preserve and manage cultural heritage sites, an interdisciplinary team is using 3D laser scanning and photogrammetry to model the sites at high resolution—meeting unique challenges with innovative techniques and creating novel opportunities for surveyors. CyArk, a nonprofit organization dedicated to digitally preserving and sharing the world’s cultural heritage, uses laser scanners to generate […]
MultiStation: The Multi, the Mobile, and the Modeled
Leica Geosystems’ high-profile launch of the “MultiStation” is just part of the story of the potential for new products to significantly enrich workflows for surveyors. Three related developments in workflows caught our eye recently because they may serve as a harbinger of things to come in workflow optimization, from the activities of the individual in the […]
Feature: Never Too Steep for a UAV
A surveying company in the South Pacific significantly improves crew safety and their deliverables by mapping an open pit nickel mine using a UAV. For 140 years, nickel mining has played a critical role in the economy of New Caledonia, an archipelago nation in the South Pacific Ocean. With nearly one quarter of the world’s known […]
American Surveyors in Jolly Olde England
Five American surveyors tour England for a week, visiting historical spots significant to surveyors, meeting with the RICS, and sampling some well-deserved pints. This past March Steven Letchford and I organized a surveyor’s business/tourism trip to visit Jolly Olde England. Three surveyors from Virginia, one from Tennessee, and one from Iowa opted for what became […]
Feature: Rockfall Mitigation
A potential market for surveyors is collecting data for rapid hazard analysis, using 3D photogrammetric techniques. Every state with mountains has to deal with rockfall hazards. Helping proactively manage these hazards, i.e. rockfall mitigation, can be an opportunity for service diversification for land surveyors, especially in the mapping and analysis of suspected areas of rockfall […]