As part of National Surveyors Week, several organizations are trying to get surveyors to help improve the next geoid...
NGS 2014 GPS on benchmarks campaign
Pennsylvania Society of Land Surveyors
To be sure, these are not going to be simultaneous observations, rather data collected will be submitted to OPUS DB and then used by NGS to improve the next model. So, the occupation of a benchmark could be done at anytime, but they are trying to do it during Surveyors week to get some good publicity for the profession.
If someone wanted to get together a few receivers and do OPUS Projects, I am sure that would be appreciated as well.
We will be doing some BM's in SW PA.
Somebody clever could probably work out an automated way to search the NGS database for monuments that need to be occupied. A few years back I tried to do so by the hunt and peck method and only succeeded in wasting a few hours.
This is why it's GEOID 12A and not GEOID12 ...
Insufficient density of OPUS DB data, so NGS had to perform a number of SWAGs. As it turned out, some only qualified as WAGs.
The best way to find areas that really need GPS on BM observations is to download DSWorld and then using the PLOT option GEOID12A ACCURACY look for areas that show up as yellow to orange (there's lots of those in OK). Still using DSWorld you can then zoom in to your county or area of choice and have it plot the locations of vertical control from the NGS database. With a little bit of office recon this should provide a number of NAVD 88 marks that have never previously been GPSed to occupy and submit to OPUS-DB. In addition to helping the next geoid model these observations will play an important role in helping NGS create a better transformation tool for the next vertical/geopotential datum coming in 2022.
