The Sunburned Surveyor On GIS

Moving to Wordpress

2011-05-06T15:30:00.001-07:00

I'm consolidating most of my blogs and moving them to Wordpress. You can catch my new blog posts here:

www.redefinedhorizonsblog.com.

The Sunburned Surveyor

The Billable Hour

2011-01-25T16:35:00.001-08:00

The Economist Magazine had a recent article about why we should kill the billable hour. I know a lot of surveyor's charge their client's by the billable hour, so I wanted to share the link.

The Sunburned Surveyor

The Danger of GIS Parcel Data

2011-01-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

The newgeography web site has an intersting post about the dangers of GIS parcel data. Its worth a look at.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Map Room Book Suggestions for 2010

2010-12-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

The Map Room Blog put together a list of good books about maps released in 2010. There were a few books I hadn't heard of, and a couple that looked like they would be interesting additions to my own bookshelf. Those include Rethinking the Power of Maps and How Maps Restrict and Control.

Perhaps there are some books on the list that you would be interested in.

The Sunburned Surveyor

2010-12-10T13:07:00.000-08:00

I learned from the Map Room blog about a book review of a book on OpenStreetMap from Packt Publishing. The book was a little pricey at over $40, but I thought I would share the tidbit if any of my readers are hardcore OpenStreetMap fans.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Is Ownership Worth It?

2010-12-09T12:43:00.000-08:00

CE News Magazine has an article in its latest issue about how to make ownership in a civil engineering company worth it to young leaders already employed by the organization. I thought this was a good article with principles that would apply to many small businesses involved in the geospatial business. Many of these small businesses do a poor job of planning for the future and fail to set-up a good system for ownership transition. This is a disservice to both the employees and the clients of the business.

I commend CE News Magazine for illuminating these issues.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Using RFID Tags to Mark Underground Utility Location

2010-12-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

CE News Magazine has a short article that describes a recent transportation project in the United States where RFID tags were buried to assist with future underground utility location. I thought the article was a good example of applying RFID technology to the surveying and civil engineering realm. As RFID tags get smaller, cheaper, and more capable I'm sure we will see more applications like this one.

Eventually, everything in our world will have a unique ID that can be assigned attributes or properties. These properties will be collected by all sorts of wireless devices. How cool will it be when we can whip out our cell phone to obtain information about a land surveying monument with an embedded RFID chip!

The Sunburned Surveyor

NOAA Photo Library

2010-12-08T11:08:00.001-08:00

A recent newsletter from American Surveyor magazine probvided this link to the Coast and Geodetic Survey Collection of the NOAA Photo Library. The collection has some great photos of land surveying in the good old days.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Russia Looses 3 GLONASS Satellites in Pacific

2010-12-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

GPS World has reported that Russsia lost 3 GLONASS satellites in the Pacfic ocean when a launch when bad on Sunday Deceber 5, 2010.

Apparently the glitch as caused by bad data loaded into the software that controlled the rockets used to power the satellites into orbit.

That was an expensive programming mistake. Software testing anyone?

The Sunburned Surveyor

POB Article on Boundary Line Agreements

2010-11-30T08:24:00.000-08:00

POB has a good article on boundary line agreements and when they are allowed by law. I have always advocated the boundary line agreement as a good way to clean-up boundary and title problems. This will be an article I keep and refer to in the future.

The Sunburned Surveyor

5 Keys to Leveraging New Technology Successfully

2010-11-22T16:26:00.000-08:00

The November 2010 Issue of CE News has a short article that discusses the 5 ways to leverage new tech successfully. The five ways listed in the article are:

Full Owner/Manager Support
End-User Support
Adequate Funding
Understanding the Effort Involved
Seeking the Right Implementation Partner

This is a good read for land surveyors and other geospatial professionals that have to implement new technologies (hardware, software, or both) as part of their jobs.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Public Land Survey System Tips from the CLSA 2010 Conference

2010-11-09T14:36:00.000-08:00

I attended the California Land Surveyors Association Conference in Reno this past spring. The last talk at the conference was about the Public Land Survey System. I finally got around to typing up some of my best notes from this talk. Here are the highlights:

Obtain the master title plat for all townships that are parts of your boundary survey.
How do you communicate errors to BLM? (For example: The township plat and GLO field notes don't match.) Send a letter to the cadastral office of BLM with jurisdiction over the area in question on your company letter head. (It may take years to get a resolution of a problem.)
An amended protraction diagram is the plan for surveying a township that has not yet been surveyed. It is often used to issue federal leases for things like mining and grazing. The “protraction block” is one or two rows of sections with no leases around the boundaries of an unsurveyed township.
Distances shown on townships plats in parentheses are called “parenthetical distance” or “parentheticals”.
If the distances between the closing corner and ¼ corner are not in parentheses, the BLM/GLO set the 1/16 corner on the line.
The closing corner controls the distance used to set the 1/16 corner, not the senior township line.
When setting a junior ¼ corner on a baseline you correct for the latitudinal curve between closing corners and move south to place the junior ¼ corner on the senior township line.
A suspended township freezes all BLM activities in a township. The private surveying community still uses the BLM/GLO township plat for surveying of private land within the township.
The Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) is a panel of judges that decides appeals from BLM decisions relating to the use and disposal of public lands. It is the first administrative relief for private landowners that want to dispute a boundary surveying decision of the BLM. All of the decisions made by IBLA are available online.

The Sunburned Surveyor

ESRI Video Web Page

2010-10-22T13:54:00.001-07:00

ESRI has a new video web page or portal online. I haven't had time to watch any of the videos, but I plan to. I'll let you know if it is something more than a bunch of ESRI infomercials.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Testing Positional Accuracy

2010-10-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

In June 2010 Professional Surveyor Magazine had an article entitled "What do the new ALTA/ACSM standards mean?". This article had the most simple and best explanation of what a surveyor needs to do to meet a set positional accuracy standard that I have ever read.

I wanted to share it with you. The article is short, only a couple of pages, and is worth reading.

The Sunburned Surveyor

NOAA GIS Data Sources

2010-09-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

From the new rpls.com message board came a post with a link to weather data for the United States. That link led me to this PDF, which contains sources for all sorts of environmental, climate and weather data for the US that is available from NOAA web sites. I wanted to share it with my blog readers.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/gis/geospatial_data_resources_2007.pdf

The Sunburned Surveyor

High Quality Graphics From CAD

2010-09-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

I was digging around the internet for some suggestions on how to get high-quality and high-resolution graphics out of AutoCAD. I came across a couple of web sites that looked interesting. The first describes some techniques to get the vector data out of CAD and into Photoshop. The second is for a product called M-Color, which can be used to stylize CAD drawing files.

I hope these links are useful.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Creating Isometric Drawings In Sketch-Up

2010-07-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering for a few days how to create Isometric drawings in Google SketchUp. A search engine query revealed that Digital Urban had the simple solution. Here is the link to the blog post from Digital Urban that explains what you need to do in Google SketchUp to view your model in an isometric perspective.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Russia Ahead of US In Open Geospatial Data

2010-07-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

The Between the Poles Blog has an interesting post about efforts in Russia to open up government geospatial data. The Vector One has another post about the Russian Cadastre that launched in May. Is Russia slipping ahead of the United States in this area?

Its good to see recognition of the importance of open geospatial data at such a high level in the Russian government. Let's hope we see something similar on this side of the world.

The Sunburned Surveyor

CityEngine

2010-06-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

I ran across a program called CityEngine today. It allows you to dynamically create a model of a City in 3D. It has applications to urban planning and game design, and historic visualization. I haven't tried the program, but it looks pretty slick. As someone involved in surveying and cartography, I thought this was a cool example of what some talented programmers can do when they focus on a specialized geospatial application.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Conflicting California Court Decision On Public Access To GIS Data

2010-05-26T10:47:00.000-07:00

From POB comes a news story about an court decision striking down a requirement for Orange County to release is parcel GIS data to the public for only reproduction costs. This decision seems to conflict with a California Appeals Court Decision in a similar Santa Clara County court case. It sounds like Orange County is charging $350,000 for their parcel data!

Hopefully this horrible court decision will be overturned on appeal.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Dot Net Programming Mailing List at OSGeo

2010-05-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

The OSGeo has set-up a new mailing list for Dot Net programmers. There are some interesting things going on in the open source geospatial Dot Net space, including MapWindow, NTS, and Whitebox.

The Sunburned Surveyor

The Problem With Design Build GIS

2010-05-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

Directions Magazine has an interesting article about the problems with the "design-build" approach to GIS implementaiton. The short article brings to light an conflict of interest inherent in many design-build GIS implementations. The article is worth a quick read.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Open Source Software At Nasa

2010-05-07T14:53:00.001-07:00

Government Computer Network has an interesting article about open source software at NASA. It is worth a quick read if you like to follow the use of open source software in government.

The Sunburned Surveyor

AutoCAD Dropping Support for VBA Customization

2010-04-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

It looks like AutoCAD is dropping support for VBA customization of its CAD products. This will be a major bummer for organizations that have a lot if time and money tied up in VBA apps.

This won't push people towards AutoCAD alternatives, as the other CAD vendors will be in the same spot because Microsoft isn't giving out VBA licenses any more.

Let's hope Autodesk doesn't kill AutoLISP next. I don't think that is as likely, since there are some CAD vendors that could draw away customers from Autodesk with their own AutoLISP support.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Good Stuff From Paul Ramsey

2010-04-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

A recent visit to Paul Ramsey's Blog revealed some good stuff related to geospatial data and open source programming:

(1) Paul did a great little presentation at Where 2.0 on the problem with spatial data accuracy entitled "Why your data sucks." You can view the "Why Your Data Sucks" video by Paul Ramsey on You Tube.

(2) Paul has some interesting discussion on the differences between the GPL and BSD and why it is the community that really makes an open source project valuable, not the code. Here is the statement that I feel hits the nail on the head: "The lesson I have taken from my observation is that the strength of open source projects resides not in the licenses or the code, but in the communities arrayed about them. Copying the code of MapServer and doing your own thing with it does not stop MapServer developers from working, and in the long run you'll probably be better off working within the community than outside it, to gain from the efforts of others. Trying to maintain a private parallel branch and patch in the changes from the open development will quickly become more effort than it is worth."

The Sunburned Surveyor

Public Domain License for Gov Data in Vancouver City?

2010-04-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

The Tyee has an interesting article that mentions the use of the PDDL for government data produced and released by Vancouver City. The article has some interesting comments on the vanity of releasing government data in closed file formats or under "agency" specific license agreements that place unnecessary restrictions on the use of the data.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the article:

In May 2009, Councillor Andrea Reimer made a motion in city council to share as much data as possible with outside parties, to adopt open data formats and to put open source software on an equal footing with commercial applications. Reimer says, "I have a kind of framework in my head around engagement and how that all works, and making sure that we're all working off of... a level playing field of information is really the first place to start." This motion passed and later that year the city launched data.vancouver.ca.

The choice of data formats also influences what can be done with other media. Videos of City Council sessions are posted online in streaming Flash video format, instead of as downloadable files which can be posted to video sharing sites like YouTube or edited into other video presentations. Reimer, a Firefox user, says that she can't watch the video feeds of city council meetings without switching to Internet Explorer. "It drives me totally nuts. You can't capture it. You can't put a debate up on YouTube. I can't watch the video on my own computer at work. I finally figured out that we don't have the Firefox codec and I have a hard time using Explorer." This was one of the examples she used in her initial motion.

Formats, however, are only part of the issue of transparency. The other part of the story is the terms under which the data is released.

Shari Wallace, acting director, information and technology, insists that, "The data is all in the public domain. There's nothing that's on that website that isn't already in the public domain." However, the city of Vancouver's terms of use specifies several restrictions, including that users of the data are liable if the city is sued, and that "The City may, in its sole discretion, cancel or suspend your access to the datasets without notice and for any reason..."

A blog posting by open source advocate Richard Weait criticizes the data licensing used by Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto. These include a lack of version numbers, differences that make it legally impossible to combine the data of different cities or with other datasets with different licenses, and liability to users if the city is sued. These licenses, Weait argues, make cities' data legally unusable for projects like OpenStreetMaps.org, a open alternative to Google and Bing maps.

Weait says, via email, that while he supports the open data projects of Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto, "Municipalities shouldn't be in the Open Data License business." He argues that the data should be released under the Public Domain Dedication and License, created by legal experts in database law, which includes little or no restrictions on any use by anyone. "Make municipal license problems go away and get that data into the hands of as many potential users as possible."

"There may be another Open Data community with the Next Big Thing in data visualization, ready to make a splash with the Toronto data. Don't lock them out with a homegrown license with unintended restrictions."

This reminds me of the problem with the restrictions used on the geospatial data released by my local County and City. The use of these "custom" license agreements for government data that seem to be "open" or "public domain" but really aren't, is a huge problem for our society and for the use of government geospaital data.

Hopefully things will get sorted out in Vancouver City and they will set an example for Cities and Counties in their southern neighbor.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Ordnance Survey Data Being Released

2010-04-01T14:13:00.000-07:00

It sounds like the Ordnance Survey is going to be releasing some of its data into the public domain, or under a very permissive license. I don't live or work in the United Kingdom, but those interested in this news can learn more here:

http://ernestmarples.com/blog/2010/03/government-response-to-ordnance-survey-consultation-published/

The Sunburned Surveyor

Google Sketch-Up Dropping Support for CAD Formats

2010-03-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

It sounds like Google Sketch-Up is dropping its support for the DWG and DXF CAD file formats in upcoming versions of Google Sketch-Up:

http://www.ronenbekerman.com/google-sketchup-free-version-8-dropping-dwg-dxf/

That is a major bummer. I hope someone will whip up a free (and open source) plug-in that will allow the free version of Sketch-Up to import and export DXF files.

The Sunbured Surveyor

Article Ideas Inspired By The Conference

2010-03-02T20:18:00.000-08:00

While I was attending the sessions at the conference over the last couple of days I made some quick notes on articles that I would like to write. These articles would explore topics introduced at the conference in greater detail, or would expand on these topics. I'll paste a list for my article ideas below. After each article title I'll give a short description of the article.

Surveyor Surfers: The Properties of Waves and Why You Should Know About Them

Much of our surveying equipment depends on electromagnetic (or radio) waves to do its work. There are the waves used in our total station's electronic distance meters and the waves that are caught and processed by our GNSS receives. How much do surveyors actually know about the physical and mathematical properties of these waves? How much do they know about how these waves are used to measure? How much do they know about how these waves can be used to encode digital information? I think most surveyors would benefit from knowing the answers to these questions, and that it would help them understand their equipment better. I've got a book on radio waves and I've done some reading on the subject. I'd like to get some help from a couple of physics geeks or equipment manufacturers to write a good article on this topic for surveyors.

Why We Need More Surveyors That Can Sling Code: The Cure For Black Box Surveying

It became evident to me at this conference just how much we as surveyors depend on software to do our jobs. How much do we really understand about this software and how it is written? Do we even understand the basics of how computers work with numbers, do basic math calculations, and handle chunks of data? Why don't we demand more access to the source code that runs in our equipment, or at least demand more knowledge about how this software works?
How could our profession benefit if more of its members knew at least the very basics about computer programming? I don't have any formal education as a programmer, but I do regularly write computer programs as part of my work as a land surveyor and GIS hobbyist. This article seems like it would be a good fit for my background.

No More Monuments: New NGS Datums and What They Mean For You

NGS is moving towards new horizontal datums and vertical datums. As part of this migration NGS will no longer be maintaining passive control momuments? What do these changes mean for our profession? Do we still need passive control monuments? If we do, who will maintain these networks of passive monuments? I think it is important to write an article that raises and discusses some possible answers to these questions. Maybe Marti Ikehara will be kind enough to review it, if I get around to writing it.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Tidbits From "Reengineering Surveyors and Surveing Businesses"

2010-03-02T19:56:00.001-08:00

This afternoon I attended a four (4) hour session by Joe Paiva. The session was entitled "Reengineering Surveyors and Surveying Businesses". The session talked about some of the challenges facing surveyors and discussed things we could do to improve our profession. I enjoyed this session because there were a lot of great comments from the members of the audience. I could tell that many of the people in the audience cared a great deal about our profession and how it is viewed by the public. The audience participation made the session very enjoyable.

Here are some tidbits that I picked up from Joe and from the other audience comments during this session:

General Land Office surveyors conducted “surveys” in a broad sense of the term. They didn't just establish property corners and boundaries. The also conducted an inventory of the land. They considered the quality of soil, timber, mineral resources, and access to water. In a sense, this represents a “GIS” heritage in land surveying. These surveyors weren't just experts at measurement, they were also geographers.
Surveying has many definitions. It doesn't just mean to measure. Do we as surveys focus to narrowly on boundary surveying or on measuring? What else does “surveying” mean? How do we offer a full breadth of “surveying” services to our client? Is this more than just property surveying or measurement?
Surveyors are critical to the operation of our societies. We offer very valuable services to our communities and clients. How do we communicate this to others?
What does it mean to be a professional? This is a discussion that we need to have among ourselves. We need to figure out what being a professional means.
Have you trained your field crews to represent the professional well? Are they dressed in a way that reflects well on the profession? Do they carry business cards? Can they answer basic questions about the tasks they are performing and about surveying in general?
What is your relationship with the local tax assessor, planning commission, realtors association, and other similar organizations? Do they view you as a valuable expert? Have you made yourself available to them?
Do we teach our junior staff and technical staff to communicate well? Do we make them practice their reading and writing skills?
Do we value the qualifications of our field crews? Are we pushing them to participate in the certified survey technician program? Are we educating and mentoring them? Or do we just hire and pay “surveying monkeys” that simply know how to push buttons on our equipment?
Do we contact members of our professional societies to see if they are getting real benefits from their membership? Do we ask them how we can offer more value as a professional society?

The Sunburned Surveyors

Tidbits From "Using GPS Optimally"

2010-03-02T19:37:00.001-08:00

This morning Joe Paiva did a four (4) hour session entitled "Surveying With GPS: How To Use GPS Optimally". Here are some tidbits I collected from this session:

There is a disconnect between surveying equipment manufacturers and “real world” surveying. For a long time surveying equipment manufacturers did not have licensed land surveyors on staff. Even now the programmers writing the software that do the bulk of the work in our equipment may have very little or know surveying knowledge or experience. Ultimately the surveyors has the responsibility to know how his GPS equipment is working.
Software development is about 70% of the cost of a GPS receiver. (I'll bet you could reduce this cost by encouraging collaborative development of the software or components of it under an open source license.) One reason for this large cost is the very complex calculations that software has to do to calculate a position from GNSS signals.
Survey grade GNSS receivers must count partial cycles of the carrier wave for sub-meter positioning. It can't directly determine the number of whole cycles between it and a particular satellite. This is called the integer ambiguity. The receiver has to “guess” at the number of whole cycles between it and each satellite it is observing. It can do this by starting with the autonomous position, which gets it in the ballpark. It then applies a branch of mathematics known as “numerical methods” to solve the integer ambiguity. (It knows that there is only one solution that will work for all satellites it is observing. This sets up some sort of system-of-equations problem.) The difference in the L1 and L2 signals may also help resolve the integer ambiguity. (I need to do some more research on this topic.)
GPS signals are actually like cork screws. I had always thought they were like big spherical waves originating from the satellite. I will have to do some more reading on this.
Because the satellites are moving so fast our GPS receivers must take into consideration the Doppler Affect, which seems to change the frequency of the signals.
We talk about GPS we must also consider the theory of relativity, which makes the atomic clocks on the satellites seem to be slower than the ones on the surface.
NGS studies the way phase centers in GPS antennas can change due to the satellite configuration that is being observed. There may be a way to utilize this data in my GPS processing software. I need to find out if this can be done and how I do it.
False RTK initialization occurs when a GPS receiver makes a wrong guess at the integer ambiguity to a satellite. This can occur when it appears that signals from a set of satellites can intersect at more than one location near the receiver. This doesn't happen with static GPS surveys because the receiver stays at one location for a much longer time. This allows the receiver to detect the wrong answer. During an RTK survey your are frequently moving the receiver into unique multi-path environments.
There are web sites you can used to calculate the azimuth and elevation angle to each WAAS satellite at a location on the surface. This can be used to determine if a WAAS satellite will be blocked at an observation location in the field. (I'll try to post links to these web sites later.)
UCT differs from GPS time because leap seconds are added to UCT. This is necessary because the earth's rotation is slowing down by a couple seconds a year.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Tidbits From "Analysis of Errors"

2010-03-02T19:01:00.000-08:00

On Monday I spent almost all of the day in Joe Paiva's sessions on analysis of errors in surveying measurements. (I would have spent all day in his sessions on this topic, but I had to leave to give my own short afternoon session.)

Joe helped me appreciate how important it is for me to be more familiar with the equipment and procedures my field crews are using. I have been out of the field for so long that I become "disconnected". This is something I plan to correct immediately upon my return to the office. I plan to start by rounding up and reading all of the owners manuals for the equipment being used by my field crews. I'll pay special attention to the precision specifications, instructions for maintenance and calibration, and on the proper operating procedures. I am also going to work with our party chief to establish a regular (weekly) schedule of equipment calibration and adjustment that we will keep a written record of. I hope to personally help with this adjustment of our equipment, and I am going to set aside one (1) hour every Monday morning for this task.

Here are some tidbits related to surveying errors and surveying equipment that I enjoyed from Joe's sessions on Monday:

Black box surveying has moved the rigor of the measuring process from the mind of the surveyor to the software on our total stations, GNSS receivers, digital levels and other equipment. This results in “black box surveying”. Land surveyors often have no idea what is going on inside of the black box in their equipment.
As our instruments make the measuring process simpler and easier you actually need to know more about the measuring process and about your equipment. Our instruments make it possible to achieve very high precision but very poor accuracy.
If land surveyors don't understand more about our equipment than the lay person who can buy the equipment and uses it, what makes us different. Land surveyors should understand how their equipment works. This includes the possible sources of error when using the instrument and the proper way to use the instrument.
Think about the comparison of measuring a distance with a steel tape verus measuring the same distance with a total station. Although it may be easier to measure the distance with the total station, that measuring process is also more complex, with more calculations and possible sources for error. The total station and its software make it look easier than the steel tape, but the reality is the measuring process in the total station is more complex and abstract than the measuring process with the steel tape.
What are the make and models of the instruments being used by your field crews? Do you know? Where are the instrument manuals and when was the last time that you read them? Do you know the manufacturers recommended procedures for operating and maintaining their instrument? What are the precision specs for your equipment? Is the equipment that is being used appropriate for the type of survey?
Don't trust your equipment when you first purchase it and pull it out of the box. Don't trust your equipment when it comes back from calibration at service at the dealer or manufacturer. Have a set of points that you can use to check all of your instruments on a regular basis, including your GNSS equipment.
Total stations may have several systems that need to be adjusted within relation ship to one another. (For example: Is your EDM measuring at the location marked by the cross hairs on the scope?)
The ISO-DIN precision spec used by total station manufacturers is for a single distance and DIRECTION, not angle. This means you have to measure the angle resulting in the direction in face 1 and face 2 of the instrument to obtain the results listed in the spec for the precision of directions. Multiply the ISO-DIN spec by the square root of 2 to get the precision spec for angles, instead of directions.

Here are a couple of other tidbits I enjoyed from Joe's sessions on error analysis:

Every measurement has three (3) components. The first is the quantity that was measured. The second is the uncertainty in this quantity. The third is the confidence level I have in the uncertainty level. If I was asked to list these three components for an RTK baseline or total station side shot on one of my projects, could I? Why am I not listing the uncertainty and confidence levels that apply to my measurements on my surveys? Isn't that important information for others that are using or viewing my work?
Temperature and pressure have an impact on the PPM correction applied to my EDM. How are my crews measuring temperature and pressure during field surveys? Are we adjusting these PPM corrections daily, weekly, seasonally? Do we change them when we move from a job at sea level (near Stockton) to a job at 6,000 feet above sea level (in the Sierra Nevada Mountains)?
What is my total error budget during field surveys? Am I considering the total cumulative effect of small errors from incorrect PPM settings, out-of-plumb rods, and optical plummets and level bubbles that may need adjustment?
When was the last time I looked at mission planning software before a GPS survey? Have I gotten too comfortable with the current satellite coverage? Why would I not consider the satellite visibility and DOP before conduction a GPS field survey?
Surveyors are like race care drivers. All sorts of people drive, but race car drivers push the skill of driving and the vehicles they drive to the limit. All sorts of people measure (like tailors and carpenters), but surveyors push measuring to the limit. Race car drivers now more about cars than many “regular drivers”. How much do I know about my measuring equipment? What type of race care driver am I?

The information and reminders presented in Joe's session on error analysis made the whole conference worth the trip. I was ashamed I wasn't doing a better job with some of things he mentioned during the day, and I am determined to fix this immediately. I thank Joe for the wake up call.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Tidbits From "NGS Today - A National Perspective"

2010-03-01T20:22:00.000-08:00

The last session I attended on the Sunday program of the 2010 CLSA and NALS Conference. Marti gave a great presentation about the current state and future direction of NGS. I believe some of the changes at NGS that she described will have a significant impact on the way surveyors performs aspects of their work related to geodetic control, and my company will be no exception. Here are two of the most important changes that Marti mentioned during her session:

NGS will be working to establish and define a new horizontal and vertical datums by 2018. The new horizontal datum will be known as the "geometric" datum, while the new vertical datum will be known as the new "geopotential" datum. The new geometric datum will replace NAD83. While the new geopotential datum will replace NAVD 88. See the 10 year plan for NGS for more information on these new datums.
NGS will no longer be maintaining "passive" surveying monuments. Surveys and surveying data will be tied to the national spatial reference system by using CORS. This means that companies like mine will need to start incorporating baselines to and from local CORS stations in their static networks, because passive monuments on modern datums maintained by NGS are going to get harder and harder to find.

I'm paticularly interested in this migration to CORS from a network of passive monuments. These questions came to my mind:

Who will maintain the existing passive monuments now in place?
Will these slowly dissappear?
Will local government agencies step in to maintain these networks of passive monuments? How will the requirement to utilize CORS to tie to the NSRS impact land surveyors without GNSS receivers? Will these receivers now become a critical component of a land surveyors instrument collection?
Is this decision to move away from passive monuments to CORS driven be good science and changes in technology, or is it being motivated because NGS lacks the funds it needs to properly maintain a network of passive monuments?
Is a network or CORS better than a network of passive monuments?

Every time I attend a presentation given by Marti I think to myself that I should be time stamping all of my geodetic coordinates. After all, what good is a coordinate if you don't know when it is established? Marti talked about this in her session. She showed all of the different components that can make up a geodetic coordinate, including the change in horizontal position, change in ellipsoid height, and change in geoid height that can occur over time.

Here are some other tidbits that I gleaned from Marti's session:

Geoid09 is ready for use by the land surveying community. There were 36% more gravity observations within California used to calculate Geoid09 than were used to calculate Geoid03, resulting in a significant improvement in the geoid model.
NGS is working on LOCUS, which is like OPUS but works for leveling data instead.
The Grav-D project is critical to the development of the new geopotential datum, but is only 6.7% complete. If sufficient funds are not found the geopotential datum may not be ready by 2018.
You can use NGS DSWORLD and Google Earth to locate NGS geodetic control in your area.

Marti's presentation slides for this session and information on Geoid09 can be found on her FTP site:

ftp://ftp.ngs.noaa.gov/dist/marti

Marti's web site can be found at:

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/row/landsurveys/geodetic

The Sunburned Surveyor

Tidbits From "Why GIS Needs Surveyors"

2010-03-01T20:07:00.000-08:00

The second session I attended on Sunday's program of the 2010 CLSA and NALS Conference was entitled "Why GIS Needs Surveyors". This session was given by Donny Sosa with ESRI. There were two (2) tidbits from Donny's session that I wanted to share.

The first is the web site www.spatialroundtable.com. This is apparently a site where the GIS community discusses how to meet the challenges facing GIS professionals. The most recent topic involves land surveyors involvement in the development of a national parcel data layer. I hope to read this discussion and check out more of the www.spatialroundtable.com web site when I get back to Stockton.

Donny also briefly mentioned the types of accuracy that should be managed in a GIS. I know I've seen this list of elements before, but it was a good reminder so I thought I would post it on this blog. The six types of geospatial accuracy that I jotted down are:

Topological Accuracy
Attribute Accuracy
Spatial Accuracy
Relative Accuracy (How do features relate to one another?)
Temporal Accuracy (When were these features last updated? Do they reflect current conditions?)
Identification Accuracy (Is this feature what we say it is?)

I'll have to do some poking around to see if there are any elements of geospatial accuracy that I'm missing.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Keynote Address: New BLM Manual Content Identified

2010-03-01T19:53:00.000-08:00

The keynote address at the conference was given by Bob Abbey, the Director of the BLM. During his address he identified some of the new material that is in the recently released BLM Manual of Surveying Instructions. I wanted to share this so other surveyors will have an idea where the new content can be found. The new material in the recently released manual is on the following topics:

Water Boundaries
Standards of Evidence
Coordinates as Evidence
Mineral Surveys and Resurveys

I got to take a peek at a copy of the recently released manual owned by my fellow surveyor Keith Spencer. I was immediately surprised by sharp looking color diagrams in the section on water boundaries. I look forward to buying my own copy of the manual for a closer look at these new graphics.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Attending 2010 CLSA Conference In Reno

2010-03-01T19:50:00.000-08:00

I'm currently attending the 2010 joint CLSA and NALS conference in Reno, Nevada. I wanted to make a couple of posts about some of the interesting things I have been learning at the conference. I will tag all of these posts "clsa 2010 conference" so they are easy to locate among my other blog posts.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Natural Earth Data Set Released

2010-01-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

The Natural Earth GIS data set has been released. What is the Natural Earth data set? The web page for the Natural Earth GIS data set says:

"Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software."

It looks like a very useful data set for cartographers and map makers, and a great contribution to the public domain.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Ordnance Survey Data Going Public?

2009-11-19T09:17:00.000-08:00

Ian Turton posted a link to an article about a move to make Ordnance Survey Data public on the OSGeo Education Mailing List. I thought I would share the link here. The article contains quotes from a couple of government officials in Britian discussing the importance of transparent government.

The Sunburned Surveyor

New MRSID Viewer

2009-10-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

LizardTech has released a new free viewer for MRSID and other large image files. The viewer allows you to export the image displayed on the viewer with a world file.

I applaud LizardTech for again making a free viewer available.

You can download the viewer, name GeoViewer 4.0, from the link below:

LizardTech GeoViewer 4.0

The Sunburned Surveyor

2009-09-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

The ASPRS has released new guidelines on how obtaining services for Aerial Imagery, Photogrammetry, Lidar, and Releated Remote Sensor-Based Geospaital Mapping Services. You can find the guidelines at the link below:

http://www.asprs.org/society/divisions/ppd/guidelines/ProcurementGuidelines_SubmittalforBoardApproval_081409.pdf

The Sunburned Surveyor

Death of Spy Satellite Program Costs 4 Billion Greenbacks

2009-08-24T15:23:00.000-07:00

Someone recently posted a link to a New York Times news article about the death of a spy satellite project in the US that cost 4 billion greenbacks to put to bed. I believe the article says the total program cost about 18 billion dollars.

This is a good example of government waste in the geospatial arena.

The link to the article is below:

Expensive Death of a Spy Satellite Program

The Sunburned Surveyor

GAO Report on the 2010 Census

2009-08-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

The GAO recently put out a report on the efforts to incorporate accurate address data in the 2010 census. A link to the report was just posted to the geowanking mailing list. I haven't had a chance to read it all, but I wanted to share the link:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06272.pdf

The Sunburned Surveyor

EEF Article On "Locational Privacy"

2009-08-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

The EEF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has an article at it's website about locational privacy. You can read the artcle here.

I haven't read the article yet, but I plan to. If I have time, I will comment on the artcle at this blog.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Introduction

2009-08-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

I've set up this blog for my posts on topics related to GIS and "geospatial" in general.

My blog content on OpenJUMP, Java programming, and land surveying can be found on my other blogger.com blogs.

The Sunburned Surveyor