Just a suggestion. Turn them in to the board instead of bashing your profession on a public forum.?ÿ?ÿ
Locally there are some high quality GIS programs accessible to anyone. Check out Teton county Wyoming for probably the best one I've seen.?ÿ
Of course, Teton county is almost all federal land with some private enclaves which are very high dollar properties making money available.
I'm a big advocate of one county's decision to switch off parcel layers when you zoom in and a ortho layer is on. You can see the parcel layer if you turn off the ortho, or you can see the ortho, but you can't see both together once you are zoomed in close. I believe that would solve many issues with GIS
@mightymoe the online GIS I looked at from here, http://www.tetonwyo.org/958/Geographic-Information-System, allowed viewing parcel data and imagery pretty close in.?ÿ Do you recall which county has the layers mutually exclusive??ÿ That is a worthwhile consideration and I'd like to see some examples.?ÿ
I have no problems with GIS techs or GISPs until they start locating utility assets.?ÿ I can't stomach turning someone in for anything less than ill intent fraud, but I keep seeing a similar scenario play out:
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Municipal Client:?ÿ You don't need to survey, we had our storm system mapped by XX Council of Governments.?ÿ?ÿ
Me: Okay, pull it up on your phone and walk with me while I check a couple catch basin depths
MC: It says this CB is 4.6ft deep.
Me: Can you read my tape?
MC: It says 6.3ft
Me: I'll bet you lunch that we be within one foot of the next one we check
I've have tried to discuss error with GIS techs but they just stare at me like I'm speaking Chinese.?ÿ Field location is like a field trip for them and they get upset when you tell them that there's is more to measuring than just internalizing the receiver specs.?ÿ?ÿ
If we're willing to call out another geospatial sector for advocating practices that we believe are detrimental to our own, or to the public/geospatial practice in general, we had better be willing to recognize the issues within our own profession. I'm not going to put my profession - or really anything at all - up on a pedestal and pretend that it's beyond reproach.
I hesitate to say cause I haven't looked at for a number of years but at one time Natrona County, Wy did it that way, which I thought was brilliant.
I don't know if they still do that, I'd imagine there was push-back.
However, if you think about it why show parcel lines that are no where near correct geographically over ortho photos that are more or less correctly referenced. It is pointless.?ÿ
We can call them out in person, discussions at association meetings, or filing a complaint with the board.?ÿ?ÿ
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We can all do better with the proper process.
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The main reason I am posting this is because the GIS community is absolutely directly looking at the license and why they can't have one. And trying to make the case why Surveying may not need to do anything but boundary.
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Let's do what we can together to keep the professional foundation of the field intact and consistent.
Seattle had a GIS professional that tried to convince them that it was worth their money to hire survey crews for their field location. She gave a presentation about 15 years ago that detailed the differences in productivity, accuracy, and metadata between an army of GIS interns and a single survey crew.?ÿ
I dont know that she won that battle, but it was interesting to me. She was a bit of an iconoclast, I think she made a lot of guys upset that thought they were smarter than her.?ÿ
I did quite a bit of locations for the local GIS managers. The data got entered into the GIS for parcel locations, and we helped them locate MH rims in town; for asbuilts on street improvements the entire suite of data including WV, storm and sewer MH, with inverts, utility lines, property markers, ect. were given to them.?ÿ
Then in the Mid 2000's they upgraded the GIS program and it's all gone now. Is the GIS better, yes for ownership, addressing, tax purposes it's clearly better.
For property locations and any of our original utility locations it's clearly not.
So they sent out crews of students having them "precisely" locate features. One day they were at the office which was one of the areas we had recently gave them all the data for, they were locating FH, utility boxes boxes, WV.
I stopped by and asked what was going on and the kid said he was locating these features so they could be entered into the city GIS.?ÿ
OK then............
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Is that surveying?
No.
Simply collecting data isn't surveying.
Rendering an opinion on that data IS surveying. Relying on that data to write a legal description: also surveying.
GIS, as it relates to accurate positioning equates to Garbage In Sink.?ÿ As soon as you throw a line on a product purporting it to be a property line, right-of-way line or an easement, you are practicing land surveying without a license, end of story.?ÿ?ÿ
Easy.?ÿ We need them almost bad much as they need us.?ÿ Almost.
Think long game here.?ÿ?ÿ
I'm going to, gently I hope, disagree.
Depends on the intended use.
For example, tax maps aren't surveying, the lines shown on Zillow aren't surveying. Other examples abound.
@tim-v-pls no need to be gentle.?ÿ LOL!?ÿ My skin is leathered up from the years in the field and thick as well.?ÿ Intended use is the key thing.?ÿ Intended use on the part of the person generating the images and data could change by the end user.
We all know tax maps are mere cartoons, however, the general public doesn't.?ÿ They see these lines on Zillow listings and think they are accurate because they were on the internet.?ÿ You are correct, there are infinite numbers of other examples as you say but public perception is a huge thing.
@dmyhill there is a electrical provider here in our area that will ask us to stake the line out for them and then send someone out with a handheld to get a lat/long at the beginning and end of the line and have their attorney write an easement stating the beginning lat/long and the ending lat/long as the center of the easement. Funny thing is at the request of the developer I had provided the electrical company a description with lat/longs and state plane coordinates (using survey grade equipment and post processing the data) at the beginning and end of the line with ties to section corners and they didn't bother using that. Go figure!
@dmyhill Any tips to find this conscientious person or her presentations??ÿ There is a very good case that surveying improves the GIS more than the cost of the surveying.?ÿ A properly done GIS is quite beautiful.?ÿ It starts with a lot of time/money on geodetic control and you still don't have anything located!?ÿ It takes a lot of courage and foresight (or a surveying background) to take this approach.?ÿ And patience, lots of patience.?ÿ While other GIS programs will have some crude taxlots on aerial imagery, this slower and better approach will have given you about 40 adjusted geodetic control points.?ÿ That isn't much to look at but if decision makers can see the future results and stay the course, doing it right pays many dividends, repeatedly.
... I can't stomach turning someone in for anything less than ill intent fraud,
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I've have tried to discuss error with GIS techs but they just stare at me like I'm speaking Chinese...
@murphy I've heard this similar approach that the licensing board is reserved for malicious actions or extreme situations.?ÿ I've also heard the approach that a trip in front of the licensing board doesn't have to be a terrible thing, in fact that it could beneficially help someone learn.?ÿ Sometimes the misguided, well-intentioned do more damage and harm than the malicious.?ÿ Without some understanding of error, there are serious questions about whether someone should be making a map trying to locate features in the world.?ÿ
