Innovations in technology development are altering the ability to capture, manage, model and represent surveying data today. The fact is, surveyors operate under different regulations, perspectives and domains globally. Moreover, there are differences between companies that offer surveying services with some following traditional domain approaches, while others venture across disciplines and successfully engage new multi-disciplinary capabilities, often contributing in new and exciting ways.
Innovations in technology development are altering the ability to capture, manage, model and represent surveying data today. The fact is, surveyors operate under different regulations, perspectives and domains globally. Moreover, there are differences between companies that offer surveying services with some following traditional domain approaches, while others venture across disciplines and successfully engage new multi-disciplinary capabilities, often contributing in new and exciting ways.
In a recent interview with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Karl-Friedrich Thöne, President of the German Society for Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land Management (DVW) I was struck by his comments with respect to how he sees surveyors and their purpose.
As he stated, “DVW will continue to face the professional challenges and responsibilities related to globalisation, demographic change, reducing poverty, energy supply, climate change, preservation of the environment, guarantee of security or protection systems for private property. These societal demands are in direct connection to our professional work and employment today and in the future and they correspond with the thematic agenda of the upcoming conference [INTERGEO].”
This perspective, with the emphasis on connecting to the economy and attempting to engage the public more fully toward the solution is amazingly refreshing. All too often I hear the surveying communities in other places talking about the need for regulations – seemingly to keep others out.
Indeed, societal demands, as Dr. Thöne indicates, arise from a multitude of needs and pressures. And in many cases the problems being presented are asking for help, seeking aid and looking for guidance when no other sources are available, for often complex and difficult problems.
Surveyors today have a multitude of new technologies at their disposal that can be aligned toward solving these demands. Lidar, remote sensing, advanced GIS applications, CAD software and mobility tools and field technologies are all part of the arsenal that can be employed to deliver modern day surveying solutions.
In some surveying companies we see advanced services including simulation, modeling and 3d visualisation. Measurement is part of the final solution, but the delivery and distribution of products often begins with customers asking for delivery and collaborative components using social media, mobile smart phones, tablets, Android and iPhone etc. In such cases the raw measurement data is further processed and integrated toward non-traditional distribution.
As satellite imagery becomes more detailed as resolution increases, the possibilities for coupling these imagery to high accuracy measurements increase rapidly. Suddenly surveying data can be used to support feature extraction, object identification and other image related processing.
The ability to create highly detailed 3d models and simulations is dependent upon highly accurate survey data in some cases, thereby requiring the deployment of laser scanning tools and technologies. In other cases, process oriented responses and investigation, such as geotechnical and hydrological work demand higher accuracy measurement data with respect to infrastructure and topography.
As Dr. Thöne indicates, climate change, globalisation, poverty and a host of other issues relate directly to surveying. And in turn many other professions relate to (and depend on) surveyors stepping up to the plate, and out from behind a wall, to help them solve problems that surveyors are best capable to see and to provide guidance upon.
These are often complex problems, dependent on highly accurate data and transcend boundaries between disciplines. On might reasonably venture that many spatial data infrastucture (SDI) issues are representative of situations where these issues arise.
New businesses, the public and people requiring insight depend on surveyors using new and advanced technologies to work with them together.
