How does surveying fit into the Geospatial spectrum?

You're scaring me, Wendell.
That sounded just like P.O.B.
🙂
Don

> I was chatting with a local surveyor the other day who has found a niche in agriculture for offering surveying and geospatial-related work. Our discussion got me to thinking:
>
> How does surveying fit into the geospatial industry?

We are the Alpha and the Omega. 🙂

> I was chatting with a local surveyor the other day who has found a niche in agriculture for offering surveying and geospatial-related work. Our discussion got me to thinking:
>
> How does surveying fit into the geospatial industry?

I think it fits very well. We are measurements specialists. If we promote ourselves as such, I think the possibilities are many.

For me it fits in for whatever people will pay me to do what I am competent to do. Seriously, though, a lot of times the most important aspect of BD and marketing is imagination.

Has been a service for surveyors for years ! Sadly most surveyors let it slip by as it was seen by many as " not accurate surveying"

Suggest generally individual applications are designed and refined for large scale applications.

RADU

I notice that GIS is largely about looking up and correlating spatial information. Much of land surveying has been about boundary surveys. But the spatial information in boundary surveys has mostly been encapsulated in deeds, and the lawyers write the information that surrounds the spatial information. Due to the interests of the legal profession, deeds have always been accessed through means such as grantor and grantee names, dates, county, book, and page.

Imagine seeing a notice for a tax sale that gives the usual county, town, book & page, but also gives the latitude and longitude of the center of the lot. Do you suppose a potential purchaser might appreciate that? Do you suppose the selling government unit might make more potential purchasers aware of the sale (perhaps through robots that automatically watch for sales in areas the potential purchaser is interested in), thus achieving a higher auction price.

Suppose a land surveyor could click on a course in a CAD display and be presented with a list of recently filed deeds that contain any lines or points within x meters of the line segment.

But no one sees to be pushing this sort of spatial indexing. Indeed, many land surveyors seem to want to provide others with PDFs or GIFs rather than CAD files in order to prevent reuse of the spatial information they have gathered.

The only situation where survey information is spatially indexed is tax maps, which are not accurate enough to determine boundary questions; unfortunately because they are virtually free, lots of people misuse them when a proper survey should be obtained.

Don, should surveyors turn down work?

The work is there. If the survey group doesn't want to grab it, other (s) will.

Don, should surveyors turn down work?

> Is it a good idea to erect a wall around the profession and say "boundary is the one-and-only" and to shut out so much of our legacy and other types of honorable work.

Yes.

It's awful out here beyond the castle walls. With all this darn scanning and GIS and subsurface utility mapping work I do the pressure from the workload is almost unbearable. My guys all work overtime and I have to fly to the Caribbean or Mexico three times a year and lay on the beach for a week drinking just to relieve the stress.

Is this thing on?

Tap, tap, hey, is thing on?
Screeech *ouch!* feedback.
Cheap club, tough crowd.
Get me off this stage and give me a drink. Please.

That was a joke.

Freakin' hecklers.

Don

Personally, I think surveyors should have been involved in creating the parcel layers (and not much else) when it comes to GIS. But that ship sailed a long time ago.

The next shoe to drop will be 3D mapping with drones. I envision that a lot of (non-licensed) companies are going to try to jump in front of this when it becomes legal. In Florida, and I think a few other states, photogrammetry is licensed under surveying. There are, of course, legitimate uses for aerial-photo drones by non surveyors, and I have no problem with "in-house" use for mapping your own farmland, for example. But, I think producing topographic maps, 3D models, and maps that display planametric details would fall under the surveying laws. There may be a show down in the future, and my guess is the surveyors will lose.

Is this thing on?

>
> And btw: I'd be happy to buy you a few cold ones for being a good sport (most of the time)...;-)

Count me in, when & where?

Don, should surveyors turn down work?

options are good.
The moat isn't filled with dangerous water and fish yet.
There is a Lot of work ort there that Needs surveyors that is not boundary work

"...measurements specialists..."

Careful there fella. You'll have the Lucas squad after you. 😉