F GeomaticsWorld 2014€¦ · Copy dates are: Editorial: 01 DecemberAdvertising: 15 December 2014...

GeomaticsWorld NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2014

Can these equations reduce

range anxiety?

Soaring and hovering at theBerlin InterGEO

Housing: does OSand Land Registry

have a solution?

The Wild-Leicastory marks 50th

anniversary

The problem ofthe part-time

surveyor

Issue No 1 : Volume 23

Surveying for geographical and spatial information in the 21st century

FREE DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION FOR PROFESSIONAL SURVEYORS see page 3

UAV’s and the biosphere

F

50 iconic yearsgetting it right in the UK

The ShardLondon’s skyline is changing dramatically. From 1710 to 1962 St Paul’s Cathedral was London’s tallest building standing at 365ft high. Canary Wharf, the Gherkin and the Shard are all new buildings on London’s skyline and dominate St Paul’s Cathedral significantly. Leica Geosystems has played a major part in changing London’s landscape over the past 50 decades including the construction of the Shard.

Leica Geosystems proposed a system of TPS total stations, four GNSS receivers and four dual-axis inclinometers located on the rig. The system offered verifiable data from more than one system. The GNSS antennas were co-located with 360° prisms to give a constant check on GNSS positions against total station readings. The combined systems fed data into GeoMoS, Leica’s monitoring software which can be installed offsite or over the web and provide early warning of any departure from design tolerances.

Great British moments, we were there.

To follow our iconic journey,50iconicyears.leica-geosystems.co.uk#50yearsLGSUK

Copy dates are: Editorial: 01 December Advertising: 15 December 2014NNNN EEEE XXXX TTTT IIII SSSS SSSS UUUU EEEE The next issue of GW will be January/February 2015.

p.05 Editorialp.06 Newsp.08 Calendarp.09 Chair’s Columnp.10 Undercurrents

p.13 Policy Watchp.24 Downunder currentsp.30 Legal Notesp.35 Products & Servicesp.38 Recruitment & Classified

Geomatics World is published bi-monthly by PV Publications Ltd on behalf of the Royal Institutionof Chartered Surveyors Geomatics Professional Groupand is distributed to group members and othersubscribing professionals.

Editor: Stephen Booth

Technical Editor: Richard Groom

Advertising: Sharon Robson

Subscriptions: Lucy Casserly

Editorial BoardIan Coddington, Pat Collins, Professor Ian Dowman,Richard Groom, Alan Haugh, James Kavanagh,Professor Jon Mills, Dr Stuart Robson, Dr Martin Smith

Overseas SourcesRoy Dale – New ZealandNick Day – USA

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Material to be PublishedWhile all material submitted for publication will behandled with care and every reasonable effort is madeto ensure the accuracy of content in Geomatics World,the publishers will have no responsibility for any errorsor omissions in the content. Furthermore, the viewsand opinions expressed in Geomatics World are notnecessarily those of the RICS.

Reprints: Reprints of all articles (including articlesfrom earlier issues) are available. Call +44 (0)1438352617 for details.

Advertising: Information about advertisement rates,schedules etc. are available in the media pack.Telephone, fax or write to PV Publications.

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Printing: The Manson Group, St Albans, UK

November / December 2014 Geomatics World 03

Contents

p.14 Can DEM’s reduce range anxiety? Buying an electric car might seem a sensible thing to do for the environmentallyconscious. But it brings with it a new syndrome: range anxiety!

p.18 Women in SurveyingOur industry is becoming more diverse with better opportunities for women. RuthBadley talks to three women, two of whom have made it to the top.

p.20 InterGEO: Berlin 2015Software and rapid data capture systems continued to shine at the industry’s annualmega show but UAV’s were the soaring and hovering stars, reports Stephen Booth.

p.25 Housing shortage: can GeoVation provide answers?Britain faces a serious housing shortage. So could Ordnance Survey and LandRegistry data help you find a place to live? Richard Groom reports.

p.26 The Wild – Leica story2014 marks the 50th anniversary of Leica Geosystems and its predecessor companytrading in the UK. With the publication of a book Stephen Booth sets the scene.

p. 32 Who wants to be a surveyor?With this simple title Richard Groom examines the promotion of education andtraining in our profession and finds that we face the problem of the part-time surveyor.

COVER STORYApplications for UAV’sare growing. The 2014InterGEO (see page20), as well as arecent show in Londonthat we’ll report onnext time, offeredmany fixed wing androtating aircraft. Ourthanks to senseFly forthis striking coverimage.

PV Publications Ltd2B North Road,Stevenage, Herts SG1 4ATT: +44(0)1438 352617W: www.pvpubs.com

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Editorial


or following childbirth. It is the technicians orprofessionals from other disciplines who dosome surveying. While this may be harmless inthe case of simple asset data collection it canbecome more serious where someone drawnfrom another profession undertakes surveywork based on a simple understanding of whatthe equipment can do rather than knowledgeof the underlying principles of surveying.

The problem needs serious attention andthe recent publication (see page 13) of the 3rdedition of the RICS Measured Surveys of land,buildings and utilities would seem an idealopportunity for the profession to reach out tocolleagues in construction and development toexplain to them just what it is that makesbeing a professional surveyor so important anddistinctive from other professions. We need toshow them how, at a tiny proportion of theoverall project cost, we can make a difference.

To round off this issue we have reports onthe Berlin InterGEO (page 20) where UAV’swere again much in evidence. Nearer home,London hosted the first UAV show in lateOctober. I went thinking it might be consumeroriented, given the media attention given toidiots flying small UAVs to disrupt footballmatches. I was instead surprised to find over80 exhibitors with a range of technologies andapplications all aimed at the business sector.There was even a bit part for the muchlamented Wankel rotary engine! We willreport on that event in the next issue.

Finally, I hope you will join me incongratulating Leica Geosystems on achievingtheir 50th anniversary of trading in the UK(page 28). I was honoured that they chose meto write and publish their history. I could nothave done it without the close assistance ofHugh Anderson and Nigel Bayford together withthe enthusiastic support of Mark Concannon.The finished book of over 100 pages has some350 photos and includes sections on surveytechnologies as well as the early history ofWild Heerbrugg and Kern of Aarau. I hopeyou’re able to secure a copy.

As this is the last issue of the year I wish allreaders a peaceful and pleasurable holidayperiod. We shall return in January 2015.

It seems incredible that there’s now only twomonths left of 2014. By the time you read thisplans for the holiday season and New Year will

be looming for many of us. So, what sort of ayear has it been? We seem to have beenconstantly reminded of the unintendedconsequences of technology like the trolls ofsocial media. Some of those consequences arebenign even if they don’t rank as time-savingexamples of what technology should be for. Iwas talking to a colleague recently who proudlytold me her daughters (all now over 30) don’twear watches; they rely on their mobile phones.Err? It cannot take any watch wearer more than2 seconds to glance at a wristwatch. To reachinto your pocket or handbag for a phone, switchit on, maybe enter a code. . . well I rest my case.

But it’s not only mobile phones and socialmedia that throw up unpredictable behaviours,as one of our articles in this issue demonstrates.Electric cars hold out much promise but usersare aware that their range is limited; and re-charging takes time and planning (page 14).While vehicles will give some indication of theamount of charge left, whether it is enough fora specific journey will depend on more than acrude calculation based on time and distance. Ifthe route chosen is hilly it could mean you runout of juice before your destination. A flatterroute might be a better option, even if it islonger in distance and time. It all gives rise to anew human syndrome: “range anxiety”. Assatnavs don’t have terrain models, a team fromthe University of Vienna has developed a seriesof equations that can be used in conjunctionwith a street map and a digital surface modelto deliver route elevation profiles, helpingdrivers choose the most appropriate route toalleviate their anxiety.

We also have an education and professionaldevelopment focus. Ruth Badley has spoken tothree women working in surveying to find outhow they’ve fared in a mainly male world(page 18). Technology changes have made it alittle easier for women. There is more deskwork and less time spent on site these days.But it can still be tough especially for families.

Richard Groom has undertaken what is athoughtful and insightful study of how weeducate, train and promote (or rather don’t)the surveying profession (page 32). He raises ahitherto unmentioned problem: that of thepart-time surveyor. We’re not talking hereabout someone returning to work after illness

This issuehighlights somesignificant issuesand technologies.But we ignore theconsequences –possibly to ourperil – especially ifthey reach thehands of thosewho are unawareof the underlyingprinciples.

Unintended consequences and part-time surveyors

The editor welcomes yourcomments and editorialcontributions by e-mail: [email protected] by post:Geomatics WorldPV Publications Ltd2B North RoadStevenageHerts SG1 4ATUnited Kingdom

Stephen Booth, Editor

NEWS

06 Geomatics World November / December 2014

Attention please!The organisers haveannounced a call for papersfor the GEO Business 2015Conference. Abstracts are to

be submitted on line by 17thDecember. Each abstract willbe reviewed and a finalprogramme will beannounced in mid-February.

Papers should address thekey commercial and technicalissues facing the industry. Thiscould include reporting onrecent cutting-edgegeospatial projects;approaches to unlock thepotential of Big Data forgeospatial professionals;smart GIS; data processing,presentation and applications;BIM meets geospatial; surveyoperations and systemsintegration; international andlocal specifications andstandards; a focus ongeospatial education; locationintelligence and emergingtechnologies; assetmanagement; hydrographicand coastal developments;boundary disputes and legalissues; or a look at geospatialdevelopments around theworld and their impact onEurope.

GEO Business takes placeat the Business DesignCentre in London from 27-28 May 2015. Visitwww.GeoBusinessShow.com

Galileo launch hitchThe fifth and sixth Galileosatellites were launched on22nd August, but notwithout a hitch. The solarwings on both satellitesfailed to open properly andthey were launched into anelliptical orbit instead of theintended circular one. Ittook the ESA SpaceOperations Centre a weekto free the wings. Thesatellites have since beendeclared healthy and fullyoperational, however it isnot clear just how usefulthese satellites will be. TheESA website reports that:“The various ESA specialists,supported by industry andFrance’s CNES space agency,are analysing differentscenarios that would yieldmaximum value for theprogramme and safeguard,as much as possible, theoriginal mission objectives.”

Nottingham ESAcompetition winA team at the University ofNottingham Ningbo China’s

(UNNC) department of civilengineering was the onlyChina-based entry amongthe winners of acompetition run by theEuropean Space Agency(ESA). The competitioninvolved accurate trackingand positioning usingEurope’s current satellitesand was entered by teamsfrom across the world. TheUNNC entry was, however,the only successful entryfrom China and made use ofthe department’s suite ofmulti global navigationsatellite system (GNSS)receivers that continuallytrack at least 30 GNSSsatellites currently in orbit,including those of theChinese BeiDou system.

Survey School’s futureIn the UK, The SurveyAssociation (TSA) has reachedagreement with IDEXCorporation over the runningand ownership of the assetsof The Survey School. TSAhas been running the surveytraining courses at the schoolsince the 1st May 2014 andwill continue to do so for theforeseeable future. It isevident that the continuationof the school is vital to bothTSA and the industry and it iswith this in mind that plansare being put in place toimprove the current courseand add further short coursesto it. Andrew Crumplerremains as the main tutorand a second tutor iscurrently being sought. Thefuture courses are alreadyfully subscribed with the nextavailable dates being inMarch 2015. A majorupgrade of the IT systems hasalready been made anddiscussions withmanufacturers about furthersupport is ongoing. Theseinitiatives guarantee that thecourse will be better thanever.

SeabedML app schemafrom OGPA move by the Oil & GasProducers (OGP) will enableopen data exchange of

Discovery brought to Life

3D laser scanning of Captain Scott’s ship, RRS Discovery wasundertaken over the winter and spring of 2013-2014 by DigitalSurveys. All the scans were carried out in full colour and a pointcloud of billions of points created. Digital Surveys’ team ofmodellers then painstakingly traced around this data to create anaccurate survey grade 3D model. Using HDR imagery collectedduring the scanning process, texture maps were created andmapped onto the model to create photo-realistic renderings. Thecompany has produced a prototype virtual reality tour of thewardroom and there are proposals to create a tour of the wholevessel, making use of the Oculus Rift 3D headset.

RICS Geomatics lectures are CPD relevant and count towardsyour CPD/LLL quota as specified within RICS regulations. Alllectures are free and open to all (especially students) unlessotherwise specified. All lectures take place at RICS GreatGeorge Street lecture hall and are timed at 17.30 for 1800unless otherwise stated.

Thursday 12 December 2014Annual Christmas Lecture, 17.30 for 18.00title: Geo Intelligence: embedding Geo-Intelligence in thefield (Afghanistan)Speaker: TBC - The Royal School of Military Survey (RSMS)

Thursday 15 January 2015Annual UK GEO Forum LectureLecture title and speaker TBC

Thursday 07 MayBIM and visualisation. Speaker TBC

Geomatics Evening Lectures 2014-15

N

NEWS


geographical features. Thedevelopment is seen asparticularly useful on web-enabled platforms andcomes following thepublication of SeaBedML, anOpen GeospatialConsortium (OGC)application schema basedon GML (geography markuplanguage) by the OGP’sGeomatics Committee’sSeabed Survey Data Model(SSDM) Task Force.

SeabedML is a GMLimplementation of theSSDM, a data model for thedelivery of seabed surveydata developed and releasedin April 2011. The availabilityof SeabedML marks animportant step towards opendata standards in the marinesurvey industry. It gives anySSDM user (e.g. oil and gascompanies and their surveycontractors) the choice ofusing an open standard fordigital data exchange, inaddition to the existing EsriArcGIS File/PersonalGeodatabase SSDM deliverytemplate that is already usedextensively in the oil and gasindustry.

The SeabedML schemafiles can be downloadedfrom the OGP GeomaticsSite: http://info.ogp.org.uk/geomatics

UN-GGIM: EuropecreatedCooperation between thegeospatial and statisticalcommunities and formalbodies such as the EuropeanCommission, will be lessfragmented and bettercoordinated as a result ofUN-GGIM: Europe. Speakingon behalf of the EuropeanCommission at the firstplenary session, WalterRadermacher, Director-General, Eurostat told themeeting in Chisinau,Moldova that: “By creatingUN-GGIM: Europe we areclosing a significant gap inEuropean public informationmanagement.” The meetingalso adopted a work planand established twoworking groups, one

focusing on core data andthe other on dataintegration. UN-GGIM:Europe will report regularlyto the Committee of Expertson Global GeospatialInformation Management.Visit www.un-ggim-europe.org

Global carbon mappingDMC International ImagingLtd (DMCii) today announcedthe completion of its flagshipproject to develop a globalsystem using EarthObservation (EO) satellitedata to measure land carbonstorage and how it changesover time. The project,supported by Innovate UK(formerly known as theTechnology Strategy Board)was developed withconsortium partners RezatecLtd, landscape intelligencedata services provider andUniversity College London’sworld-renowned remotesensing and carbonsequestration researchers.The consortium was able todevelop and deliver a uniqueapproach to assimilating andtransforming EO data fromdifferent sources andresolutions to calculatetropical forest carbon stockworldwide and provide aplatform for carbonfluctuation modelling.

SSTL measures oceanwinds and wavesSurrey Satellite TechnologyLtd (SSTL) has successfullydemonstrated an innovativemethod of measuring windsand waves from space, usingGNSS Reflectometry. Thispaves the way for a cost-effective satellite systemsupporting the maritimesector and the organisationsthat rely on this information.It also offers improvementsto weather services andclimate research.

The measurements weretaken from an instrumentdeveloped by SSTL, the SGR-ReSI, (Space GNSS ReceiverRemote Sensing Instrument)which is flying on boardTechDemoSat-1, a

Police Scotland will use five new Leica ScanStation P20 laserscanners to help reduce the amount of time that Scotland’s trunkroads are closed following serious collisions. Officers are nowbeing trained on the laser scanners, which will be located atvarious sites across the country to help in the examination andclear up of crash sites.

Police Scotland opt for laser scanners

satellites after they havebeen reflected off the oceansurface and processes theminto images called DelayDoppler Maps, from which

technology demonstrationsatellite which was launchedin July 2014. SSTL’s SGR-ReSIcollects the signals from GPSand other navigation

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ocean roughness and windspeed measurements at thesea surface can beinterpreted.

By flying the receivers on aconstellation of smallsatellites GNSS Reflectometrydata could be used to mapall of the Earth’s oceansurface with refreshed dataevery couple of hours. Thiswould be of enormousbenefit to the maritimeindustry which depends onwave height and wind speedpredictions for optimum shiprouting, insurance claims, oiland gas rig operations,undersea cable laying andfishing conditions.

EA reshufflesThe Environment Agencyhas completed areorganisation, which seessurveying moved fromregional to nationalmanagement under theorganisation’s Geomaticsbusiness unit. Locally based

surveyors will continue toprovide a service to the EAareas through the followingstaff: Ben Cackett (Leeds),Mike Coward (Preston), SteveElmore (Huntingdon), RichardGroom (Hatfield) and KathrynHarris (Reading).

DMCii invests for futureDMC International Imaging(DMCii), the global satelliteimagery products andservices provider, has mademajor improvements to itsdata centre, involving a fullinternal upgrade ofprocessing systems. The newfacility quadruples thecompany’s floor space,providing much needed roomfor expansion. This increasedinfrastructure supports thegrowing demand for 22mresolution multispectralimagery, as well as theforthcoming commercial2.5m panchromatic, 1m and5m multispectral imagery andSAR data.

UAV arrestCasual use of UAVs isbecoming a problem,especially at footballmatches it seems. Followinga UAV incident when anAlbanian flag was flown bythe aircraft over a matchthat was eventuallyabandoned with Serbia, theBBC reports that a man wasarrested in the UKfollowing a similar incidentafter a UAV was flown overManchester City’s homegame with TottenhamHotspur. According topolice a 41-year-old manwas arrested in the nearbyAsda car park followingCity’s 4-1 victory onSaturday 18 October. AGMP spokesman said theman was arrested onsuspicion of breaching theAir Navigation Order andreleased on police bail foreight weeks.

Septentrio backs AltusAltus Positioning Systems, asubsidiary of SeptentrioSatellite Navigation NV, hasassumed responsibility forthe latter’s products in Northand South America. BelgianSeptentrio is one of theworld’s leadingmanufacturers of high-endGNSS receivers and OEM

boards for professionalnavigation, positioning andtiming applications.

Turner to manage Burj2020Project managers Turnerhave been awarded thecontract for management ofDubai’s ‘Burj 2020’commercial district. Thedevelopment will feature theworld’s tallest commercialtower, the Burj 2020. Turnercomes with a wealth ofexperience having deliveredthe current three tallesttowers in the worldincluding the Burj Khalifa.Visit: www.dmcc.ae

Win for Chelsea in UKwatersChelsea Technologies Grouphas been awarded a majorcontract by QinetiQ foracoustic noise rangetracking equipment for usein UK waters. The design,development andmanufacturing phaseextends over a three-yearperiod and is followed byongoing spares provision,maintenance and support.Located at several sites, thesystems will provideenhanced capability to theRoyal Navy and the UKMinistry of Defence.

EE VENTS CALENDARVENTS CALENDAR 20142014• SEMINARS • CONFERENCES • EXHIBITIONS • COURSES• SEMINARS • CONFERENCES • EXHIBITIONS • COURSES

GEO Comm: The changing face of Geo11-13 November, nr. Warwick, UKwww.agi.org.uk

GEO BIM19-20 November, Amsterdamhttp://www.geo-bim.org/europe/

Training Days: Total Stations24 & 25 November, Stevenagewww.pvpubs.com/Training

Training Days: GPS/GNSS26 November, Stevenagewww.pvpubs.com/Training

HDS Symposium 20144th December, Bedfordshire UKhttp://www.leica-geosystems.co.uk/en/Events_73707.htm?id=10146

European Lidar Mapping Forum 20148-10 December, Amsterdamhttp://www.lidarmap.org/europe/

Annual UK Geoforum Lecture15 January, RICS hq London

SPAR International 2015March 30-April 2, Houston Texas USAhttp://www.sparpointgroup.com/international/

Offshore Survey 2015 conference15-16 April, Southampton, UKwww.offshoresurvey.co.uk

RIEGL LIDAR 2015May 5-8, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, Chinahttp://www.riegl.com/media-events/events/

FIG Working Week17-21 May, Sophia, Bulgariawww.fig.net/fig2015

GEO Business 201527-28 May, Business Design Centre, Londonwww.GeoBusinessShow.com

GW welcomes advance details of events of interest to the Geomatics community.Details to: [email protected]


Geomatics PGB Chair

How to ensure that you always get GeomaticsWorldIf you receive GW as part of your RICS membership, you must inform the Institution of any change of address. Aspublishers of GW we cannot change the RICS membership database for you. Call +44 (0)870 333 1600 or log onto the RICS website or write to: RICS Contact Centre, Surveyor Court, Westwood Way, Coventry, CV4 8JE, UK oremail [email protected] Subscribers to GW can call +44 (0)1438 352617 or email: [email protected]

So the summer holidays are long over and the“nitty gritty” of our day-to-day roles takesup all our time. It begs the question: “What

can be done to make the data collection onprojects that much easier?” Many have spokenabout the connected office but poor mobilecommunications are still a difficulty with this.

What about “Crowd sourcing?” This nowseems to be becoming accepted in some partsof the world for gathering data, especiallywhen funding does not permit any othermeans of collection. Two applications of thishave been brought to my attention recently.One via an RICS project related to thecollection of parcel corner data for cadastralmapping and another that appeared on theBBC website relating to crowd sourcing ofboats to map the seas: BBC newshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26231350. How comfortable with this idea dowe feel as professional surveyors? Is datagathering not our primary raison d’etre?

Have we been replaced by technology?Continuing on this theme and followingthreads on Linked In, especially with articlesfrom the US, there often come up snippets ofthought provoking material.

How is it that we do not seem to havestronger links with our transatlantic colleagues?An article of interest I read recently by J. AllisonButler, a sage who claims to have been involvedin geospatial matters for 40 years, has someinteresting views(http://www.xyht.com/surveying/post-licensing-world-surveying/). He claims that “Technologyhas replaced the mechanical skills required tofind where things are below, on, or above theEarth.” He goes on to say that although “thereare still technically difficult things to do, thelevel of professionalism—the degree of

As crowd sourcingand easy datacapture take holdChair of theGeomaticsProfessional Group,Chris Preston,asks if we should befocusing ourattention more ondata analysis ratherthan data collection.

Should we switch the focus toanalysis?

Chris Preston welcomesyour comments andthoughts so please emailto the following [email protected]

difficulty—expressed in the practice of surveyingthat exists in no other field is the discovery andevaluation of evidence.” I would be veryinterested in your views on this as it implies, atleast to me, that we should be focusing ourattention more on analysis rather than pure datacollection. Are we still selling ourselves short ordo we not want to focus on analysis?

Avoiding utility strikesThe last edition of GW had a review of PAS128– 2014, the specification for underground utilitydetection, verification and location; but how arethe drawings and records created by suchmeans to be made available to the siteoperatives who are actually digging the ground?Would they even understand them? In anattempt to improve this, an organisation calledthe Utility Strike Avoidance Group was set up toproduce an easy-to-follow best practice toolkit.Www.utilitystrikeavoidancegroup.org.uk for thedownloadable version. It is hoped that this willreduce the human suffering, costs and delayscaused by utility strikes.

Beating the drumOn another subject, the satnav manufacturerTomTom has recently celebrated ten years ofproduction with a few startling facts: 75million sold, in 35 countries; 13 millioncouples avoid arguments as they can now findwhere they are meant to go; 35 milliontourists find destinations. Every day 800million people rely on them? I am sureMalcolm Draper can find a few pithycomments to add to these.

By the time you read this the RICSGeomatics evening lectures will have startedso I look forward to seeing you in person orhearing from you via the usual e-mail on anyof the topics discussed above.

Undercurrents


Nick Day, Ian Thomson and John Brock, whowrote: “antiquarian surveyors invented thepizza so that they could cut it up intotriangular pieces with a curved end, becausethey loved anything with a compoundgeometrical shape. You may even say thatthey enjoyed calculating the number of slicesand devouring what would have beenregarded as a sort of Trig Pizza! That otherinstrument looks to me like a pizza slide ruleto calculate the number of slices from theradius of the pizza and the subtended angle atthe apex of the slice”.

Meanwhile, Hugh Anderson writes underthe heading, “Unidentified Karl Zeiss thingyon Page 11. . . ” adding, I feel you left out animportant clue! There is an inscription“kommendes ziel” which translates as“upcoming target”, which could relate [to]celestial bodies so it could be something to dowith gunnery or navigation.

The autumn season at the RoyalGeographical Society has got off to a greatstart with lectures on magic, the

gentrification of London, monsoons and“cognitive maps”, whatever they are. Theseason began with Dr Susan Conway talkingabout the arts of Tai magic and dealing withspirits in the Shan states, Myanmar andnorthern Thailand. The lecture showed howpeople in these regions, which have poorwestern style health care, strongly believe inthese ancient pratitioners and their spells. Ibrought a lawyer friend to the lecture whoactually practices magic, or conjuring as we callit. He asked the speaker whether she thoughtthis was something our National Health Servicecould utilise! Her answer was somewhatcircumspect.

But by far the best lecture so far came fromthe BBC’s Natural History Unit on capturing thedrama in their latest series, Monsoon, currentlyrunning on BBC1. A night sequence involving alarge leopard saw the animal heading straightfor the rear of their vehicle from which theywere filming. Orders were given to start theengine, just in case things turned ugly. Thenwhen the beast broached their last line ofdefence they did what any sensible English manor woman would do: they unfurled an umbrellaand shooed it away! More squeamish was anever before captured on camera event of agiant pink leech some 18 inches long eating anequally giant earthworm, accompanied by grimslurping and disgusting gulping noises.

What was it?Well, reader Phil Smart certainly startedsomething. You will recall that in the last issuewe published a photo (left) of a large circulardevice bearing the imprint of Zeiss Jena, which

Phil had snapped in Guernsey. It hastriggered more responses than we’vehad for a long time. The great DrArthur Allan was defeated as to itsorigins and purpose. He writes: “Ipresume you are asking about thedevice with the handle, because theother is a polar coordinatograph. As tothe first, I have no idea.”

Turning to the other respondents,let’s deal first with the mischievousones. A crack team of globalchartered surveyors all came up withthe same answer that Messrs Zeisswere once into making sophisticatedpizza cutters and dividers. Well done

Undercurrents veryown pub quiz inthe last issue hasshaken out lots ofcontestants. Butwho’s right andwho’s definitelywrong?

Gunnery, chain & offset or fast food?by Malcolm Draper, Rentalength

Above: the picture that launched athousand emails (well not quite but awelcome postbag).

Reader John Bradley wants to know if anyonecan identify the above devices. He knows, but istesting readers. All will be revealed in the nextissue.

know there are special survey markerson Mount Rushmore for example.

OS basherRichard O’Neill-Roe writes: “I was re-reading the GW of Jan/Feb 2014, andhad a chuckle with the OS study thatshowed that 40% of land andproperty professionals, including civilengineers, etc., etc. were using out-of-date mapping information. Onemust ask, where are they getting theout-of-date mapping? The answer isfrom the OS itself. Words fail me. Licensing andpaying does not ensure accuracy.

It must be said that the OS mappingembraces surveying techniques from modernGPS probably all the way through to planetabling. The only trouble is that one neverknows how the bit of map, that you arelooking at, was created, and there are nopaper trails to any of the data.

It is no wonder when the system ofupdating a map is so bureaucratic. The newmap has to be sent to all those affected byline changes in the boundaries. It is notsurprising that the caveat on all Land Registryplans has words to the effect that “no line onthis map is necessarily in the correct position”.

Between the OS and the Land Registry,most of the opportunities to have free updatedata have been discarded. There have beenestates where the construction mapping hasbeen embraced. But comparison with GoogleEarth on a local estate near me has showndiscrepancies. Obviously some site design hasbeen going on.”

MiscellanySeen on a Ukip poster promoting all the thingsthe party plan to do if elected: “More GPS”Good news for surveyors but what a differencean apostrophe and a lower case ‘s’ would havemade. And from the political party that wantednews readers to be in evening dress.

A letter to a paper in the US points out that ifyou’re planning to import a horse there’s a 60-day quarantine period to protect the countryagainst, amongst other things, African horsesickness. And crossing a state line with a horse(or cow) requires a certificate from aveterinarian.

The writer continues: “If I am a resident ofLiberia incubating Ebola, to enter the US all Ineed to do is present a valid visa, and liewhen asked if I have been exposed to Ebola.Within hours (no quarantine required) I can bewalking the streets of any city in the UnitedStates”.

He concludes: “I feel very fortunate to livein a country that values our animals so highly”.

Undercurrents


Whilst not providing an answer to our“pizza” cutter conundrum, John Bradleyprovides two more images of obscure surveyingdevices from his collection. Can you identifythem? Answers please to Undercurrents.

So, we’re still not absolutely sure what thedevice was used for in surveying if indeed it wasfor surveying. John Bradley has referred us tothe website of Leon and Ralph Lovett athttp://www.lovettartillery.com/ Field ArtilleryFire Direction Plotters.html where you will seean example of a coordinatograph. Any Zeissexperts out there?

Slide rule fanFinally, the publication of that photo triggeredKerry Smith, an old mate from JA Story &Partners days, to write: “Reading yourUndercurrents piece on old computingmachines set me wondering whether you hadcome across the tache slide rule. . . (is that formeasuring luxuriant moustaches? Ed) I found itrecently in my nostalgia box in the loft, tuckedbetween the Abney Level and the Littlejohnroller grip (yes, I have one of those too!).”

It’s made by Admel, but think I bought itfrom Watts when I was with JAS, when wewere very young. I remember that I had to orderit, because they were hand engraved. I neverreally used it much in anger, because Redmond’stables were more accurate, but it was a goodconversation piece, although I never pulled anyyoung ladies on the strength of it!” Kerry, leavethe loft alone and get out a bit more!

Tellurometer manual wantedJohn, by the way, also asks where he mightget a copy of the Tellurometer CD-6 EDMmanual. Your help please readers.

CORRESPONDENCESurvey marker fan

Stephen Hawkins of Laser Surveys writes:Whilst on holiday with my family in Florida Iwas watching the Disney Parade from avantage point carefully selected by my highlyexperienced land survey skills (i.e. so I couldsee as much as possible and not behind atree!), I happened to glance at my feet and loand behold spied the attached survey marker.Isn’t it nice! Took the photo much to theannoyance of my wife and kids who couldn’tbelieve that I managed to stand on it! Itwould be interesting to know how many areinstalled (the number is 1097440 - which is alot if that is the number)

It got me thinking that there are probablysome other lovely crafted survey markers fromaround the world (although probablydisappearing with the increased use of GPS)which your column might be able to bring toyour readers’ attention. There must be a few. I

Got a tale to tell?Please send letters forpublication by e-mailto the Editor: [email protected] contactUndercurrents, instrictest confidence ifyou wish (we promiseto change names,places, etc toprotect the guilty!),via e-mail:[email protected]

. . . between the OSand the LandRegistry, most ofthe opportunitiesto have freeupdate data havebeen discarded.

‘‘

’’

Above, left: the tache slide rule.Above: Disney surveyors leave theirmark.

Policy Watch


It’s been a very busy autumn forRICS Geomatics and relatedareas with a number of highprofile events and outputs. Wehave also been heavily involvedin the International Standardsinitiative and continue to work incollaboration with our kindredUK bodies on GeoBusiness 2015.The 2014-15 session of RICSGeomatics evening lectures areunderway – more details athttp://www.rics.org/uk/knowledge/news-insight/comment/rics-geomatics-evening-lectures-2014-15/

Thurs 11th December, 1730 for1800, sees the annual ChristmasLecture. The Topic is MilitarySurvey and Geointelligence.

Measured Surveys ofland, buildings andutilities 3rd ed.The long awaited revision of theindustry standard 2nd ed. waslaunched at the Thurs 23rd OctRICS geomatics evening lectureand is arguably the finest pieceof geomatics industry guidanceto be produced by RICS in manyyears. A long and often tortuousprocess of working groupmeetings, some lasting manyhours, industry consultations anddebate has resulted in aspecification and guidance notethat RICS Geomatics can bejustifiably proud of. Endorsed byboth CICES and TSA, the newedition places the relationshipbetween client and surveyor atthe heart of any survey contractand incorporates several newfeatures and concepts.

The new guidance noterepresents a complete root andbranch review of the 1997 edition

and supersedes Surveys of land,buildings and utility services atscales of 1:500 and larger, 2nd ed.

One of the primary changesfrom the second edition is the useof a ‘survey detail accuracy bandtable’, which takes intoconsideration client requirementsfor scale independent metadataand digital data handlingenvironments. The ‘banding’ tablefeatures 1 and 2 sigma plan andheight accuracy figures andminimum feature size as relatedto legacy scale. This has enormouspotential for client education andin explaining the relationshipbetween scale, accuracy, featuresize and methodology. The‘banding’ table is also applicableoutside of the UK.

This banding table iscontained within a very in-depthsection 2, Survey accuracy,control, coordinate grid anddatum. This section focuses onsurvey control and drives homethe need to retain classical surveybest practice principles. Surveycontrol network accuracy is dealtwith (incorporating ppmprinciples) as is control output,maintenance and records.

In such a fast moving andevolving technology drivenenvironment this third edition isaimed at emphasising theimportance of classical surveyingand measurement good practice,which will hopefully stand thetest of time. It need not beconnected directly to any specificsurvey technology or method andcan be applied generally tounderpin survey products andservices. This is consideredparticularly important in light ofthe growth of building

information modelling (BIM) andits wider application to the builtenvironment. Measured buildingsurvey has an enhanced sectionof extended output and featuretables. Topographic survey alsogets a similar enhanced section.Utility, setting out andmonitoring/deformation surveysections are also included.

Another new concept withinthe new 3rd ed is the use of BIM(or more accurately Survey forBIM) as an output. The new 3rded really underlines theimportance of ‘output’ within thecontext of measured survey andalso features an extensive‘deliverables’ section.

It is also hoped that the newedition will provide a referencedocument that supportsdownstream survey data users aswell as enhanced collaborationprocesses such as BIM. Anotherchange in this edition is theintegration of the feature detailannexes into the mainspecification document accordingto survey application. Thisunderlines the fact that decisionson what to include in themeasured survey are critical tothe success of any project relyingon survey information. It is hopedthis will further complement theconcept of level of detail (LOD)and standardisation of metadatato support BIM among otherdesign, build, maintain andoperate (life cycle) processes.

This new 3rd edition alsoincorporates extensive‘recommended good practice’ and‘background information’elements within highlightedboxes. Unlike many surveyspecifications, this document isintended to provide guidance onlyand is not intended to beincorporated verbatim into thetext of individual contracts. Inparticular, it requires choices to beselected throughout thus makingalternative choices inapplicable.Specification users are free toselect the parts of thespecification that are relevant tothem to incorporate into their ownspecifications. However, the valueof this specification is its structure,which will become familiar toclients and surveyors. Users shouldtherefore ensure that they retainthe order of clauses within their

documents and acknowledge theRICS as source where used.

But the key message from thisdocument is that a good, agreedand fit-for-purpose measuredsurvey specification de-risks aproject and must be seen as anessential element by clients.

As you all know, there are anumber of other RICS publicationsrelated to the full range of landsurveying/ geomatics services,including:Code of measuring practice, 6thedition (2007)EDM calibration, 2nd edition(2008)Guidelines for the use of GNSS inland surveying and mapping, 2ndedition (2010)Terms and conditions of contractfor land surveying services, 3rdedition (2009)The new 3rd ed can be sourcedat www.rics.org/geomatics

International StandardsMany of you will be aware of thesignificance of the developmentof IPMS and the other standardswe have been exploring, theissues of Development Land andthe inappropriate use ofmeasurement or more likelymisuse of mapping information.RICS has been ‘vox-popping’ atvarious meetings and events andhas gathered quite a portfolio ofhorror stories – I’m sure we allhave our own personal ‘tales ofwoe’ on this issue and it doeshave international application.Like all the best standards, it’squite simple: measurement shouldbe appropriate for the value ofthe development. We all know theissue of an extract from anational mapping productbecoming photocopied thenscanned then inserted into adevelopment appraisal then usedto measure dimensions resultingin development that does not fitthe site with all of the ensuingcosts and liability. We have calledit the ‘International DevelopmentLand Measurement Standard’(IDLMS) and have formed a smallworking group under the auspicesof the Land & Resources GlobalBoard. If any geomatic membershave any personal experiences of‘when development doesn’t fitthe site’ then do please sendthem in to [email protected]

James Kavanagh, Director ofthe Land Group introduces thelong awaited new edition ofMeasured Surveys of land,buildings and utilities. This is amust read for the professionwith a key focus on a “surveydetail accuracy band” withapplications across the globe.

Policy Watch: it’s all about standards

R

Electric Cars and DEMs


as SRTM3.0) was released on November 20th,2013. SRTM3.0 has eliminated all voids found inprevious versions with fill primarily from ASTERGlobal Digital Elevation Model Version 2, andsecondarily from USGS GMTED2010 or USGSNational Elevation Dataset. SRTM3.0 data isprovided in WGS84 (EPSG:4326) with one-arc-second postings for the US and its territories,and three-arc-second postings (approximately90m) for the world. (NASA 2013)

The EU-DEM is a digital surface modelcovering Europe, created in the course of theCopernicus programme, funded by theEuropean Union. The data was released inNovember 2013 (INSPIRE FORUM 2013) and isprovided in EU-LAEA (EPSG:3035) at aresolution of 25m. EU-DEM is based on SRTMand ASTER GDEM data. The data is currentlyprovided without formal validation. Publicationof an independent statistical validation hasbeen announced for the course of 2014.

The open government DEM datasetpublished by the city of Vienna (from now onreferred to as Wien-DEM) is based on surfacepoints, break lines (slope edges, shoreline),and airborne laser scanning data. It wasprovided as a regular vector point grid inWGS84 (EPSG:4326) and MGI/Austria GK East(EPSG:31256) at a resolution of 5m but hassince been replaced with a 10m raster version.The DEM is regularly updated with new data.Artificial structures such as houses and bridgesare excluded from this DEM. The data isprovided free of charge under a CreativeCommons licence.

To achieve a good spatial distribution oftest routes within the analysis area, we firstgenerated a hexagonal grid with a cell size of1km² covering Vienna. The set of random testroutes was then generated by overlaying thehexagonal grid to the road graph, i.e. the GIP

Will the battery last till I get home?This will have been a familiar thoughtfor anyone who has driven an electric

vehicle. This article describes how digitalelevation models will help with estimating fuelconsumption.

The electric car problemRising prices for fossil fuels and concern aboutthe impact of greenhouse gases fromcombustion engines has led to thedevelopment of new vehicle technologies.Particularly, electric vehicles have received a lotof attention in research and development. Theirgeneral acceptance and sales numbers,however, are still low with shares of 0.3% ofcars sold in the US in 2012 and 0.21% of carssold in Western Europe in 2012. One importantproblem electric vehicles face is their limitedcruising range, leading to what is known as“range anxiety”. To address this problem, it iscrucial to provide the user with informationabout the current energy status and to reliablypredict the energy required to completeplanned routes. It is therefore necessary todevelop solid methods to estimate energyconsumption for routes prior to starting a trip.

In this study we focus on the geographicinformation used in energy consumptionmodels and evaluate the influence of thequality of different DEMs on energyconsumption estimates for routes in the city ofVienna.

DEM dataThis study compares the NASA SRTM, EU-DEMand a DEM of the city of Vienna as illustratedin Figure 1, which were used to estimate theenergy consumption for 16,500 randomlygenerated routes.

NASA SRTM V3.0 (from now on referred to

Electric cars aregrowing inpopularity andespecially at thetop end of theluxury market. Butevery driver musthave asked him orherself afundamentalquestion. This teamfrom the AustrianInstitute ofTechnology inVienna have ananswer.

DEMs reduce Range Anxiety!By Anita Graser, , Johannes Asamer and Melitta Dragaschnig

Figure 1: Representation of the hills and river side of northern Vienna in all three DEMs

Image ©Averhey, Dreamstime

Electric cars and DEMs


From (1) and (2) it is clear that either Pdriveor Prec is not null, which means that theelectric engine can be operated either as amotor or as a generator with differentconversion efficiency rates. The total energywhich has to be provided by the battery can bedescribed as the difference between totalenergy spent and recuperated energy:

E = [Pdrive/αdrive+max(-Pmax,Prec αrec)+P0 ]∆t, (3),

where α drive and αrec are the efficiency rates ofthe power train (composed of efficiency ratesfor motor/generator, gear unit, charging anddischarging) depending on the direction ofenergy flow, and ∆t is the time span. If E isnegative, energy will be restored to the battery.In this study, αdrive is set to 0.78, αrec to 0.77(Schwingshackl 2009) and the maximumrecuperation power Pmax is 10kW. The valuefor αrec is dependent on the type of vehicleand strategy for regenerative braking.

This energy consumption model (3) hasbeen applied to 16,500 routes which arecovered by all three DEM datasets. For thisevaluation, a typical average urban travellingspeed of 35km/h is assumed. The speed iskept constant on the whole route to keep thenon-elevation-dependent parameters fixedsince this evaluation focuses exclusively on theimpact of DEM quality on energy estimates.

Energy estimatesTable 1 shows a comparison of indicators forthe estimates based on all three DEMs. Thedata shows that the minimum energyconsumption values for all three DEMs arenegative, which means that electric vehicleswould be able to recuperate energy on someof the test routes. The mean energyconsumption ranges between 13.01 and15.06kWh per 100km with the lowest valuesbased on Wien-DEM and the highest valuesbased on SRTM3.0. The low overall energyconsumption values can be attributed to theconstant low vehicle speed of 35km/h which isused for the energy estimation.

SRTM3.0 EU-DEM Wien-DEM

Min kWh per 100km -8.76 -12.50 -14.67

Max kwh per 100km 67.29 64.73 66.37

Mean kWh per 100km 15.06 13.40 13.01

Standard deviation kWh/100km 6.41 6.19 6.31

Median kWh per 100km 13.86 12.69 12.36

Table 1: Energy consumption estimations

Comparing the EU-DEM and SRTM3.0 DEMsagainst the Wien DEM (the highest resolutionmodel), we find that mean energy estimatestend to be higher by 0.39 and 2.05kWh,respectively. This corresponds to errors of2.9% and 15.8% relative to the Wien-DEMmean energy consumption rate of 13.01kWhper 100km.

street network published by the city ofVienna. The road network is defined as agraph G = (V,E), where the set of vertices Vrepresents the intersections and the set ofedges E represents the street segments. Foreach neighbouring pair of cells, ten uniquepairs of randomly selected graph edges E arecreated. Cells containing fewer than ten edgesare excluded from the analysis. The minimalair-line distance between edge pairs is definedas 800m, in order to avoid too short routeswhich would distort the analysis results.

For each edge pair, the central points ofboth start and end edge were then extractedand used as input for a shortest path routing.Each route was represented by an ordered setof all geometry nodes of the graph edgescomprising it. Subsequently, route elevationprofiles were generated by extracting the DEMvalues at the node positions using nearestneighbour sampling. The resulting routes havea mean length of 2,109m. Only routes whichare completely covered by all three DEMdatasets were used in the following routeenergy consumption estimation.

Energy consumption modellingTo estimate energy consumption on a route,we use a vehicle longitudinal dynamics modelbased on Ehsani et al. (2004). This modelestimates the required energy on the drivetrain. Assumption of efficiency rates for thetransmission, electric motor, power electronicdevices and battery leads to the requiredelectric energy used for travelling a certainroute. It is worth noting that the maximumefficiency of combustion engines is limited toa small operating range for torque and speed.Since this is not the case for electric engines,efficiency is much less dependent on currentspeed and torque and therefore can beassumed as rather constant.

The total power estimate is composed ofpower to overcome acceleration resistance(Pkin), rolling resistance (Pres), wind resistance(Pair), and elevation changes (Ppot) as well asthe power (P0) for appliances such as heating,air conditioning and lights. The requiredpower on the drive train for a moving avehicle therefore is:

Pdrive = max(0,Pkin+Pres+Pair+Ppot). (1)

Since in this study we focus on the influenceof different DEM quality on energyconsumption estimates, we are mainlyinterested in changes to the term related topotential energy mg∆h where m is the mass ofthe vehicle, g is gravity, and ∆h is theelevation difference. On downhill sections, thepotential energy can outweigh acceleration,rolling and wind resistance and excessivepower can be recuperated back to the batteryup to a certain maximum. Thereforerecuperation power is described by:

Prec = min(0,Pkin+Pres+Pair+Ppot). (2)

. . . values for allthree DEMs arenegative, whichmeans that electricvehicles would beable to recuperateenergy on some ofthe test routes.

‘‘

’’

. . .Wien-DEMwhich is smootherand overall morerealistic, sinceroads for vehicletraffic are builtwith moderateslopes rather thanabrupt changes.

‘‘

’’



this becomes clearer when we compareindividual route profiles for the same routeon different DEMs. Figure 3 shows profilesfrom all three DEMs for one of the testroutes in the north-western hills. The profilesbased on EU-DEM and SRTM3.0 clearlyexhibit more elevation changes – includingsteep drops and rises – than the profile basedon Wien-DEM which is smoother and overallmore realistic, since roads for vehicle trafficare built with moderate slopes rather thanabrupt changes. The error based on EU-DEMis generally smaller than the error based onSRTM3.0 because the SRTM3.0 profileexhibits bigger and most sudden elevationchanges.

In the spatial analysis of errordistributions, two regions exhibit highererrors than the rest of the analysis area: thehills in the north-west, and the city centre.These results are consistent with otherstudies on DEM accuracy which show thatSRTM error values correlate with terraincharacteristics such as slope and aspect and

The evaluation so far represents asummary of the results for all routes withinthe analysis area. Since DEM error valuescorrelate with terrain characteristics such asslope and aspect, we also compute thespatial distribution of energy estimationerrors of the EU-DEM and SRTM3.0 DEMs(Figure 2).

Each line segment in Figure 2 representsthe mean energy estimation error of theroutes between the corresponding orderedpair of grid cell neighbours. The errors aredependent on the sequence of start and endcell. Therefore, all lines are drawn with anoffset to the right from the centre line todistinguish between the two possibledirections. Overestimation is shown in pink,underestimation in green. Wider linesrepresent bigger errors.

The statistical analysis results show thatenergy estimates tend to be higher when theestimation is based on EU-DEM or SRTM3.0than when the estimation is based on thehigh-resolution Wien-DEM. The reason for

Figure 2 Spatial distribution of energy estimation errors based on EU-DEM and SRTM3.0. The background of both maps shows contourlines at 25m intervals derived from Wien-DEM which serve as an indicator of the terrain characteristics in the different regions of Vienna.

Figure 3: Route profiles of a sample route, energy estimate difference: +12.96kWh (EU-DEM) and +31.94kWh (SRTM3.0)


of charge and capacity information will beused to derive ground truth data aboutenergy consumption. The model describedabove will then be applied to the vehicle GPSdata which makes it possible to compareestimation results and observed energydemand.

AcknowledgementsThis research was supported in part by theAustrian Climate and Energy Fund of theFederal Ministry of Transport, Innovation andTechnology within the “Electric MobilityFlagship Projects” program (project “emporA2”) and the KLIEN initiative of the Austrianbmvit (project no. 839478 Crossing Borders).

This article has been abridged from a paperHow to Reduce Range Anxiety? The Impact ofDigital Elevation Model Quality on EnergyEstimates for Electric Vehicles, presented atthe GI_Forum 2014 conference at theUniversity of Salzburg. The full paper can bedownloaded from:http://hw.oeaw.ac.at/0xc1aa500d_0x0030d58f.pdf

About the authorsAnita Graser, Johannes Asamer and MelittaDragaschnig, Austrian Institute of Technology,Vienna

that DEMs built from radar data are lessaccurate in urban and forested areas.

Conclusion and future workIn this study, route elevation profiles weregenerated using nearest neighbour samplingto extract elevation values for the routegeometry nodes. Sampling at geometrynodes is the most commonly used approachdescribed in related studies but most of themdo not report on which sampling methodwas employed. The current study thereforeserves as a base line reference. Further workwill look into possible improvements bysampling elevation values in regular intervalsalong the route and by applying moresophisticated methods such as bilinear re-sampling.

Currently, one open issue with routeprofiles derived from Wien-DEM is that theycontain sudden drops and jumps at bridgesand tunnels since the DEM does not includeartificial and underground structures. Tohandle this issue more gracefully and improveenergy predictions for such routes, alternativeapproaches will be implemented andevaluated.

Further work is planned which willcompare energy consumption estimates todata collected by test vehicles. Battery state


Gender opportunities


What advice would you give a youngperson thinking of a career in surveying?From my experience I have a few questionsthat I always ask myself when I considertaking someone on, so I hope that sharingthese will help young people understand whatan employer looks for in a trainee surveyorand some of the personal qualities andbackground experience that give a positiveimpression at interview. They are:1. Has this person taken time out to research what

a career in surveying would actually involve?2. Has this person spent time looking at our

company specifically and come armed withrelevant questions about what he or she has readabout us and the work we are doing?

3. Would this person be a confident presence onsite? Does he or she have good communicationskills and the ability to be appropriately assertiveif required?

4. Does the applicant show a good level ofenthusiasm and willingness to learn in order toprogress?

5. Does he or she understand that the hours willoften be long, there will be a lot of travellingand that he or she will be required to stay awayfrom home for short periods of time? Therewards are that they will be surveying differentand interesting places and learning about, andusing the latest survey technologies.

6. Does the applicant appear to be helpful andresponsible? Have they had any experience ofvolunteering or do they have a part-time jobthey can talk about with enthusiasm?

7. Is he or she someone who likes to participate aspart of a team and to be challenged? Have theytaken part in the Duke of Edinburgh scheme orsimilar?

ANNE KING, is managing director of KingslandSurveyors Ltd, based in Surrey. Their servicesinclude topographical land surveys, measuredbuilding and architectural surveys, setting out,engineering surveys, rights of light surveys,photogrammetric measurement and 3D modelling.

How was the business started?My late husband Geoff set it up in 1996. Hehad worked in the industry since leaving schoolbut when faced with possible redundancy hetook the bold step to set up his own surveycompany and recruited many of his surveyorsfrom overseas as the business grew. A career insurveying was much more popular in countriessuch as Poland, Australia and New Zealand forboth men and women, but less so in the UK. It

Sue Stewart is a director of Laser Surveys,which operates from offices in Worcesterand Hornchurch, Essex. The company

supplies Ordnance Survey mapping and arange of products online as well as providingtopographical surveys, floor plans, elevationsand sections, laser scanning, 3D modelling,underground services surveys, groundpenetrating radar surveys, drainageconnectivity and CCTV drainage conditionsurveys, GPS surveys, re-bar surveys, preciselevel monitoring and verified photographs.

What is your background?I have no formal training as a surveyor buthave gained my surveying knowledge through27 years of experience in dealing with clientenquiries, project managing survey contractsand my interest in new survey technologiesand maps. My responsibilities include thecompany’s finance, HR, new businessdevelopment, sales and marketing, quality,health and safety and environmentalmanagement.

What significant changes have you seenin the industry?Advances in technology are bringing aboutunexpected changes. Laser scanningtechnology, for example, is making surveying amore attractive career option for women thanit used to be – for very practical reasons. Fastdata capture in the field, with the rest of thejob being completed in the office, makes thejob much more flexible and compatible withpart-time working and family life. We work allover the UK and it used to be the case that ifwe had a big topographical and measuredbuilding survey to complete in another region,it could involve several days away from home.This simply wasn’t practical for someoneworking full time with young children or forpart-time working – the job can’t be haltedbecause the surveyor doesn’t work on aWednesday! Smarter, faster ways of workingare making a real difference to groups ofpeople that might previously have thought ajob in survey was not suited to their situation.

Are you seeing an increase in applicationsfrom young women?Women are still few and far between in thesurvey world, although I am pleased to say thatwe have one young female trainee who recentlyjoined our Hornchurch Office and we arelooking for another to join our Worcester Office.

Increasingly womenare entering thegeospatial sector,with many (thoughnot all) holdinghigher degrees. Asthe industrybecomes morediverse with newopportunities, RuthBadley talks tothree women oftheir experiences,including two whoare running surveycompanies, in whatis otherwise amale-dominatedprofession.

Women and Surveyingby Ruth Badley

Sue Stewart: “Laserscanning technology, for

example, is makingsurveying a more attractive

career option for womenthan it used to be. . .”

Gender opportunities


has to be said that some of our best surveyorshave been women – they have shownthemselves to be logical, practical, hardworking,multi-taskers and real team players. Geoffoffered UK school leavers opportunities to joinas junior trainee surveyors and providedsponsorship to attend college day releasesurveying courses but there was only interestfrom male applicants, although in terms of moresenior office-based roles there were several veryeffective female members of staff.

How did you become involved?When Geoff died suddenly and unexpectedly atthe start of 2007, I took over the running of thebusiness. The support and commitment Ireceived from the staff and the key departmentmanagers helped me through that very difficulttime, ensuring continuity so the successfulbusiness model Geoff had formulated could betaken forward in his memory. We were alreadycommitted to relocating to new offices and itwas a major challenge to get the infrastructureof the business up and running so we couldcontinue to keep everyone motivated and busyand especially so against the backdrop of arecession. I am not a “hands on” surveyor butthen there are plenty of business owners thatdon’t work on the factory floor as such.Running a business is all about goodorganisation, communication, forward planningand ensuring the figures add up. On any givenday I could be tendering for new work,programming and scheduling jobs, QAdrawings, communicating with staff and clients,attending meetings and monitoring suppliers.

What is the biggest challenge in runninga survey business?Finding, recruiting and retaining good staff.We are planning to take on a couple of juniorsurveyors this year but training takes time andinvestment. Staff are key to any successfulbusiness and it is important to value and retaingood employees. Our work requires surveyorsthat are team players, so hiring people withthe right personality is also very important. Thefinished product is the survey drawing and oursurveyors are key to providing our technicianswith the right level of information needed toproduce accurate, easy to interpret, attractivedrawings. The construction industry is currentlyvery buoyant and there are plenty of jobopportunities in surveying, but it is myperception that there is a real shortage ofgood surveyors and applicants with the rightskill-set coming forward.

Do you see this situation changing?There are some positive signs and the recentstrategic initiatives in education shouldencourage more young people into theindustry. I really hope they have an impactbecause there aren’t many careers that canoffer such an interesting variety of work andchallenges. You get to work in many different

Anne King: “. . . some ofour best surveyors have

been women – they haveshown themselves to be

logical, practical,hardworking, multi-taskers

and real team players”.

Emma Blake: “I like the factthat I am involved in the

whole process – from takingthe measurements on site,

through to the presentationand deliverable”.

locations with opportunities to travel and workabroad and no two days are ever the same.

EMMA BLAKE joined Atlantic Geomatics (UK)Ltd, Cumbria as a CAD technician and surveyassistant in January 2012.

What attracted you to a job in survey?I studied architecture at university, and workedfor 18 months in practice before returning tostudy for a graduate diploma. At the end ofmy studies I’d had enough of city life andwanted to move back home to Cumbria but Istruggled to find work as an architect.Surveying requires some of the sameknowledge, allows me to use the CAD skills Ihave developed and also to learn new ones,through assisting the surveyors in the field. Itwas quite challenging to get up to speed withusing equipment like total stations and GPSand also the processing software but learningon the job is by far the best way.

What sort of projects do you work on?I spend about 80% of my time in the officeand 20% on site. I tend to work on shortprojects so there is a great variety, withsomething new every couple of weeks. Recentwork includes an overhead wire survey nearPreston, a river bank survey in the catchmentarea of the River Aire, for flood riskmanagement purposes and an elevation of ahotel building near Keswick.

What do you enjoy most about your job?Working outdoors on a glorious day in abeautiful location is great. I get to see a greatdeal of the Lake District and there are alsoopportunities to travel further afield. I like thefact that I am involved in the whole process –from taking the measurements on site,through to the presentation and deliverable.Working outside is less good in the winter butI am a local farmer’s daughter so I am used tobeing outside in all weathers.

Does being from the locality have anyother advantages?Yes. It is quite often the case that we needaccess to farmland and coming from thatbackground myself I can assist with thatapproach. I know that farmers reallyappreciate it when you take the time toexplain what you are doing. I think those smallthings go a long way to give a goodimpression of the survey industry in ruralareas. The other advantage for me in workinglocally is that I can still help out on myparent’s farm at evenings and weekends.

Where do you see your careerdeveloping?I still enjoy the creative design side but now Ihave more technical experience maybe there isa role for me in the future as an architect’stechnician or possibly in project management.

• This article wascommissioned by The SurveyAssociation (TSA), the tradebody for commercial surveycompanies in the UK. Theauthor, Ruth Badley is afreelance journalist and PRconsultant. She is based inHarrogate, North Yorkshireand works with a number ofbusinesses and organisationsin the geospatial sector.

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InterGEO


revealed it was Essen, a perfectly pleasanttown in the Ruhr but perhaps too small tohave stuck on the personal radar.

Many venues too often involve a routemarch from a station or bus stop. Hanoverwas particularly bad. Fortunately, this year itwas an easy step from the S-Bahn (regionaltrain station) to the entrance. It is after thatthe challenge can begin. My best advice(which too often I forget!) is to grab a coffee,sit down and study (intensively) the plan andtry to understand how the various halls arelinked before setting forth.

Enter any of the six halls in use this yearand you’re immediately in a busy, bustlingscene of demos, enthusiastic stand personnelthrusting leaflets and trinkets on you. As wellas gaggles of people. Worst are those whoinsist on holding ad hoc meetings in themiddle of an aisle!

This year marks the 20th anniversary ofIntergeo. The event that began in 1986 as“Geodatentag” – the German Geodesy Day –has become a three-day event with a conference,over 500 exhibitors and attracting over 17,000visitors from more than 30 countries.

Once again it’s up in the airLast year we reported that UAVs seemed to beeverywhere. Impossibly, this year they seemedeven more prevalent. The Intergeo TV channelconstantly broadcast an interview with anoperator demonstrating his helicopter UAV inthe main entrance; his job title proudlyproclaimed “Ascending Technician”. A possiblyuseful title in case the second coming shouldbegin during our sojourn.

Fortunately the market for this ubiquitoustechnology is beginning to settle betweenthose who offer an end-to-end system, likeSenseFly or Aibotix and those who sell thedevice as a platform with a specified payloadleaving you to chose your sensors: the systemintegrators choice. And there are plenty ofplayers in the sensor market. UK supplier OxTSis typical. They make a number of very neatsmall combined GNSS and inertial navigationunits that can keep a UAV stable and oncourse. The xNAV weighs in at 365 gramsthereby not eating too much into a typicalUAV payload budget of 5-10kgs. TheirxOEM500, which is just an OEM board, is evenlighter at 120 grams.

In one of the six exhibition halls of theGerman Intergeo there is a display tracingthe history of the event. Beginning in 1986,

a splendid poster board of wood and othermaterials (what I think the art world calls aninstallation) for each year marks appropriatetechnologies and locations. He literally pulledall the stops out for Leipzig (2007) with amusical tribute to JS Bach and an organkeyboard! Chatting to one of the organisersstaff he told me it is an annual labour of loveby a retired employee. Respect! Too manycompanies ignore their history in the digitalage, perhaps believing that whatever isrecorded on disk will stay around forever.Forget it! Unless an employee is given the jobof properly archiving data it will graduallydisappear as staff come and go andcomputers fail or are replaced.

I have been coming to Intergeos for morethan a decade. The event is a moveable feastthat changes, alighting on a new German cityeach year. Frankfurt, Munich, Bremen,Karlsruhe. . . I was beginning to think that thelist was almost endless but this year wereturned to Berlin, last visited 14 years ago.Like Ikea, even if the displays change eachMesse (exhibition) centre looks the same, somuch so that I was chatting with somecolleagues who regularly attend and none ofus could remember where we had been theprevious year! A check with the organisers

UAVs as platformsor systems werevery much to thefore at this year’sInterGEO. But sowas software,reports editorStephen Booth.

InterGEO:InterGEO: 17,00017,000visitors, 500+ standsvisitors, 500+ stands. . .. . .where do you start?where do you start?

Above: an array of displays markeach year of InterGEO since itbegan in 1986 as Geodatentag.

Left: a therapeutic jigsaw is just thejob for stressed-out visitors!

Above: the InterGEO pressconference was revealing.

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InterGEO


Leading playersThe major players – Trimble, Leica, Topcon –each approach Intergeo in different ways. ForLeica, the event is always pitched towards theGerman market sector (over 80% of visitorswill come from the German-speaking world).This year marked a stronger focus on thisdemographic for Trimble too, whose Germandealer HHK’s stand was close by. NeitherTrimble or Leica held press conferences and inboth cases it was not easy to get press kits(not a unique problem as I was to experiencewith a Chinese survey equipment supplier whohad invited me to his stand in advance but

Bio inspiration for UAVAt last year’s Intergeo SenseFly launched theeBee fixed-wing UAV with a choice ofintegrated sensors including RTK GNSS. Thisyear they’ve entered the helicopter dronesector with the eXom. My view is that it is thisarea that surveyors are more likely to findregular work – close-up inspections ofinaccessible or expensive to reach structureslike high-rise buildings or the underside ofbridges, are obvious apps.

Talking to SenseFly CEO Jean-ChristopheZufferey, he is intrigued by insects. They mayhave small brains but they are incrediblymanoeuvrable and totally focused on whatthey do. The eXom is therefore “bio inspired”.Indeed there is more than just a hint of theinsect world in its design. A large multi-sensor“eye” at the front uses a combination ofthermal camera, HD video and hi-res stillimages that are fed back live to the ground.Position is maintained by ultrasound andphotogrammetry from the video and stillimagery. Propulsion comes from four rotorswithin protective carbon-fibre bands.

SenseFly is rapidly growing since beingacquired by Parrot two years ago, a companywith hitherto no presence in the geo sector.From a standing start in 2009 Jean-Christophenow leads a company of 80 employees.

Right: the bioinspired SenseFlyeXom is securely

pinned whilstanother hovvers in

the backgroundbehind a safety net.

They may havesmall brains butthey are incrediblymanoeuvrableand totallyfocused. . .

‘‘

’’

The platform line-up this year includedBruce McCormack, president of EUROGIwhose conference was taking placealong side that of DVW e.V., theGerman Society for Geodesy,Geoinformation and Land Management.McCormack introduced the organisationwhich has just 23 members. But theyare state mapping and GI organisationsso represent a somewhat largerconstituency than at first sight. Theircurrent focus is on developing Europewide policies to influence the ECCommission on topics such as opendata, linked data, SME’s, the Internet ofthings, urban and regionaldevelopment. This may seem a littleprosaic but just remember that by 2012the market for geo data was already athird of the value of the world airlineindustry; and with demand growing,according to McCormackby, by 30% ayear. They are “core components of thedigital future” added Prof Karl-FriedrichThöne, president of DVW.

Responding to questions ontechnology trends, Trimble’s Erik J.Arvesen, vice president of thegeospatial division, spoke of the“technology lens” that had seen thelaunch of RTK GPS 20 years agospawning a wide array of other

technologies. “Tying it all together isnow the key challenge. Ourtechnologies are at the forefront ofinnovation” he declared. Why, Trimbleeven held “hackathons”! He did notreveal whose software or data theywere hacking. Hopefully it was notsponsored by the CIA.

For Jürgen Dold, president of LeicaGeosystems International, customersexpect consolidation of skills. Asengineering companies acquiresurveying skills they become multi-disciplinary thereby increasinginteroperability and workflow. But justremember, he emphasised, that despiteUAVs being a key push “the platformis not the message”.

I questioned both industry punditson whether we were seeing the slowdeath of the dedicated survey controllernow that people increasingly use appson phones and pad computers.

Arvesen acknowledged that he wasan advocate of ‘bring your own device’but in apps like tunnelling andcadastre there was still a need fordedicated devices. Nevertheless, newdevices were appearing all the time buthe couldn’t see them eliminating theneed for dedicated ones.

For Jürgen Dold, “because we’ve

done it for 90 years, it doesn’t meanwe’ll do it for another 90 years. We’reconstantly modernising the software forour devices as well as for mobilephones and iPads”. But these devicescan die and even fall in water (as thisreporter knows to his cost when hediscovered the “Iswim” app didn’twork!). Nevertheless, change will bedriven by customers’ habits and choices.

When would we see a consolidationof data formats, asked anotherquestioner? Jürgen Schomakers, directorof Esri Deutschland, is firmly of the viewthat we should be serving informationto devices, not downloading data. Doldacknowledged that they had to caterfor both markets. Young peopleincreasingly expect an app but there is adrawback. To do this you have to buildan interface into the native data formatwhich, slows down processing. He wasfirmly of the view that dedicateddevices would continue to bennecessary in extreme environmentswhere temperature, water and dustrestrict the use of consumer devices.

Arvesen concurred with this view,adding that for the dedicated device“speed of sensor to information meansconfidence in the solution. “It’s whatcustomers look for”.

I N T E R G E O P R E S S C O N F E R E N C E

was totally unprepared). Thereseems an excessive reliance onemails and downloads.

Topcon was a differentmatter. They held an interestingpress conference presided overby Ian Stilgoe, a Brit who hasrisen in the company to Directorof Geomatics. This year thefocus was on the“democratisation” of data,which according to Stilgoe iswhere we are heading from theold world of point capture, 2Dand visualisation. I’m sure hisanalysis is correct but howmuch data will be democratisedremains to be seen.

Topcon’s strategy is on improvingworkflows through its cloud offering,MAGNET, and a closer relationship withAutodesk and its BIM strategy, aimed atreducing waste in construction by 30%.

One product that should contribute to this is alittle trumpeted device launched last year justafter the 2013 Intergeo (delays in production?).The LN-100, which looks like a small tube-likelaser scanner, may be the next or perhaps the lastincarnation of the total station. “That’s what alltotal stations will look like one day!” quipsStilgoe. Topcon’s is a very different strategy toLeica’s. This is not a combined scanner, GNSS andtotal station but an EDM based device aimed atthe internal construction trades to maintain line,level, position and angle. The LN-100 is self-levelling and ranges to prisms (usually stuck on).Watch out for it on a site near you!

There is a growing dichotomy between thosewho see the miniaturisation of the laser scanneras the way forward and those who believe

imagery and aphotogrammetricsolution is the rightpath. Topcon is in thelatter category and theirlatest imaging totalstation, the DS-200i isthe fourth generationthat uses the company’svisualisation technology.Meanwhile theirscanner is updated tothe GILS-2000 alongwith furtherimprovements to theHybrid range of GNSSreceivers. The mass datacollection mappingsystem, the IP-S3 HDI(first adopted by Googlefor their StreetViewimagery) is now in itsthird generation.Topcon of course alsoowns Sokkia, howeverwe were assured that

InterGEO


the dual branding will continue in manymarkets. Indeed, this is not just branding asSokkia continues to make its own range ofsurvey products, the latest of which is the GNR5which utilizes 452 channels optimized to trackthe full GNSS spectrum and can assign anyvisible signal to any available receiver channel.

Topcon were also showing the latest versionof their UAV, the fixed-wing Siriuspro is acooperation with MAVinci GmbH whoseprecision timing technology with Topcon’s GNSS(sub-centimetre grade L1/L2 GPS/GLONASS RTK)offers 2-5 cms accuracy without ground control.

Around the standsOn the show floor as you wander from hall tohall there is much to see and to much to takein, even over two or three days. So friends andcolleagues are useful in alerting you tosomething interesting.

The BBC News Channel is currentlyplugging a series on China and whether it canbecome an innovator as well as a producer oftechnology. An interesting proposition. Beforeyou can innovate however I would argue thatyou need to master sales and marketing. Toomany of the Chinese exhibitors at Intergeo donot present an inviting front to visitors. Theysit at tables engaged in intense conversationwith each other rather than stand and invitecontact with the strolling visitor. Nevertheless,the snappily named MiLESEEY companymanufactures a range of laser distance meters,the latest of which includes what they claim isa world first, a green laser pointer in additionto the red dot EDM beam. Presumablysomeone was waiting for it.

Cracks show from this total station!Amongst the major suppliers Leica Geosystemsannounced a range of updates and newproducts. The UAV department, Aibotix nowhas a drone that can be kept in position andtracked without GNSS via the Leica NovaMultiStation. Why do I think that’s a bit of asledgehammer? Admittedly they suggest thisis a solution for inspection inside largebuildings like aircraft hangars but that’s a lotof expensive technology. Surely the UAV oughtto have some form crash avoidance system?

It seems amazing that it is now 15 yearssince I was in Heerbrugg and had a sneakpreview of what was coming for themillennium year. The first airborne digitalcamera system was incredibly expensive andprocessing was slow. But it began a longjourney to today’s systems like the LeicaRCD30 80Mpx camera and the ALS80 LiDARmapping solution with a scanning pulse rateof 1MHz. For hydrographic applications thiswas the first Intergeo outing for theChiroptera topo-bathy LiDAR system thatsimultaneously captures the full waveform inboth the 35kHz bathymetric channel and a500kHz topo channel. It can penetrate depthsto 15 metres and also integrate with the Leica

Above: Topcon’s latestmobile mapping laserscanner, the IP-S3

Below: the Leica Viva TS11KUMONUS with a crackscale reticule is designed forconcrete crack monitoring.

InterGEO


Meanwhile, eCognition Essentials, a basicversion of their image recognition package,performs land cover mapping tasks usingsatellite imagery and offers an intuitive imageanalysis solution that allows users of all levelsto quickly produce high-quality, GeographicInformation System (GIS)-ready deliverables.

A new version of Trimble’s mobile dataanalysis software, Trident version 7.0 isdesigned to efficiently manage, interpret andextract features from digital images and pointcloud data collected via land mobile systems.Enhancements significantly reduce the timerequired for users to transform sensor datainto relevant geospatial information used incivil engineering, transportation and GISmapping. In these applications, Trimble Tridentcan be used for surface modelling, roadwaysign and pole detection, lane markingdetection, edge and breakline detection, roadgeometry and clearance measurements.

Also announced was a new version ofthephotogrammetric software suite, Inpho.Version 6.0 provides highly automatedworkflows to process thousands of airborneimages with high precision. New automatedand interactive tools and satellite triangulationfunctionality increase efficiency and improvethe quality of deliverables.

Enhancements to the Trimble V10 ImagingRover, an integrated camera system thatprecisely captures 360-degree digital panoramicimages for visual documentation andmeasurement of the surrounding environment,include additional integration options and high-dynamic range (HDR) imagery that help usersdocument site conditions and performmeasurements in the office. The V10 ImagingRover now seamlessly integrates with Trimble’sR-Series GNSS receivers and TSC3 controller.

• There were of course many other products newto InterGEO. You can check out some of them inour Products & Services column, page 35.

RCD30 camera. UK based Pelydryn Ltd whichspecialises in the acquisition of airbornebathymetric LiDAR worldwide is one of thefirst to buy the Chiroptera .

Other updates announced included a GNSS,the Leica Viva GNSS Unlimited allowingfor easy upgrade of the sensor as thesatellite segment continues to grow;new versions of the point cloud softwareCyclone and a web based real-timeversion of the monitoring software LeicaGeoMoS Now! Also announced were arange of updates to the Leica iCONconstruction instruments range.

One of the more interesting debutshowever was Leica Viva TS11 KUMONUS,a concrete crack monitoring tool builtaround a total station equipped with aconcentric crack scale reticule. Ideal forbuilding façades, dams and othersurfaces subject to potential deformation.Existing owners can have the reticule retrofitted.

Security remains a serious issue in manymarket sectors. Leica has introduced a securitylabel for all its original accessories - prisms,tribrachs, poles and tripods and electricalequipment like batteries, cables, memory cardsand even USB sticks – so users can be assuredan item is genuine. The label allows customersto confirm the authenticity of an accessory atpurchase, wherever they are, via the LeicaGeosystems’ portal “myWorld”.

Strong software focus for TrimbleMoving on, Topcon we have mentioned butwhat of Trimble? The company introduced arange of new products across its portfolio,mainly focused on software, of which theannouncement of a new version of its laserscanning software RealWorks version 9.0, isprobably the most significant. This latest versiontransforms scanned data into “compelling 3Ddeliverables” and features revised tools and anew edition for the inspection and calibrationof vertical storage tanks.

RealWorks version 9.0 supports data fromvirtually any laser scanner, allowing users tobenefit from the powerful management,automation and analytical capabilities of thesoftware. A new Advanced-Tank Edition reducesthe time required to create inspection reportsand volume filling tables from scan data. Thereports can also be used in text and spreadsheetediting software for additional customization.

This version of RealWorks is claimed toenhance smart drawing tools and real-timecommunication with SketchUp Pro and rapidlycreate point cloud based models.

A new application for surveyors who collectasset data on oil and gas pipelines is TrimbleAccess Pipelines. The software automatescommon pipeline survey tasks, saving time bysimplifying attribute and inventory collectionand integrating all the data into one easy-to-use data collection workflow.

InterGEO sawmajor upgrades toTrimble’s softwareincludingRealWorks (above)which included aTank version andeCognition (left)which saw thelaunch of anEssentials version.

Below: the Trimble V10Imaging Rover is an unusualdevelopment for what isessentially a total stationcapable of capturing 360°panoramic imagery.

I

Downunder currents


Michael Flynn, Grace Karskens, Andrew Tink,Gary Sturgess, Jane Kelso and Jacqui Newlingtelling of Phillip’s early life with reference tosome spying on the French, his supervision ofthe First Settlement including the selection ofPort Jackson to start the colony, the firstGovernment House and even food they servedto guests. The outcome was most favourableto our patriarch.

Norfolk Island for the weekendGoing to Norfolk Island from Friday toMonday is not long enough at all but Kerima-Gae and I needed to tie up some outstandingissues, her for another tour during Bounty Dayon 8 June next year; me to chase someinformation to make a CD on my conferencelast July. We still managed to take a look atColleen McCullough’s husband Ric Robinson’sbrilliant Transport and Technology Museum,which he kindly opened early for us on theMonday morning just before our departure.His collection of antique engines, stilloperational, is incredible along with manydisplays of historic vehicles and toolsemployed in the early years of the Pitcairners’settlement, from whom nearly half of theislanders are descended – the famousmutineers of the Bounty, including Ric.

Bastardry book launchHaving a strong affinity with Rugby Leaguefootball and its history I could not turn downan invitation to a book launch at the Glebebook shop where retired solicitor Max Sollinglaunched his book about the unjustified axingof the Glebe Club from the First GradePremiership in 1929 after 20 reasonableseasons in the competition, most aptly titled:“An Act of Bastardry”! The proud workingclass Glebe Club boasted some great stars ofthe game, not the least of which was Frank“Chunky” Burge who still holds the record forscoring eight tries in one 1920 game againstanother defunct team (University) in their 41to nil win. He was also an Australianrepresentative named in the team of thecentury by the NRL in 2008 on the centenaryof the start of the code in Australia.

Since my last column I have turned 59 andtwo of my daughters had their 27th and23rd birthdays so time is rushing on. Topp

Tours took us to the tulips blooming in Bowral(in the Southern Highlands), a vintage loco traintrip to the town Moss Vale and an excursionaround the Dural area, northwest of Sydney.

Two grand luncheonsMy first visit to the oldest existing building inthe Blue Mountains west of Sydney was forlunch at Woodford Academy (1833) hostedby the National Trust of Australia followed bya great illustrated presentation on the Roadsto Sydney by Dr Siobhan Lavelle who is acouncillor of the Royal Australian HistoricalSociety.

An event I rarely miss is the AmbassadorClub Rugby League Grand Final Luncheon atthe Bankstown Sports Club with special gueststhe 1984 Canterbury side which won thecompetition in that year. Playing in that teamand present for the lunch was the manconsidered to be the best player in the world,Johnathan Thurston, currently with the NorthQueensland Cowboys and 2014 joint winnerof the Dally M Medal with American footballNFL defector Jarryd Hayne. An impressivecrowd of 560 was liberally sprinkled withmany former legends of the game includingcomedian Vince Sorrenti.

Flag Raising DinnerAt our Cumberland Group of Surveyorsmeeting at Parramatta Leagues Club we werewell debriefed on the proposed monumentand celebrations to commemorate the 200thAnniversary of the raising of the Union Jack atthe first inland town of Bathurst (about 126.5miles west from Sydney) by Governor LachlanMacquarie on 7th May 1815. LandsDepartment surveyor Joel Haasdyk detailedthe investigation and research carried out torelocate the exact position of the originalflagpole using old Crown plans and historicsketches followed by local architect HenryBialowas who brought a scale model with himof his prize winning monument to be erectedaround the site. It will become the most welldesigned tribute placed over a toilet block!

Bicentenary of Phillip’s deathAs a memoriam to the passing of our firstNSW Governor Arthur Phillip in October 1814the Museum of Sydney staged a full dayhistory seminar with the crème de la crème ofexperts regaling the full house with the mostup to date data on our country’s founder. Theeminent presenters were Michael Pembroke,

The 200thanniversary of thepassing of thecountry’s firstgovernor, surveywork to relocatethe site where theflag was raised tomark Bathurst, areturn to NorfolkIsland and rugbyleague news.

Brocky’s Diary Dates

• John Brock is a Registered Surveyor inAustralia and is a stalwart of FIG and itsPermanent Institution for the Art and History ofSurveying.


Geodata and housing

through all the ideas and select thoseentrepreneurs who will be invited to takepart in the GeoVation Camp over a weekendin January. It’s an intensive two days in whichfacilitators and the group help to develop theideas, culminating in presentation of eachidea to a panel and the other participantsand selection of those ideas which will beoffered a slice of the £101,000 funding cake.Even if you don’t win, the GeoVation Campis none-the-less a wonderful trainingopportunity.

Everyone agrees that there is a housingcrisis but for Finn Williams, founder ofCommon Office, it could be a question ofdealing with inequality as much as supply anddemand. For example, there are more roomsin London than people and, although theBritish build the smallest houses in Europe, wedon’t have the smallest floor area per person.He suggests making moving cheaper, to make‘down-sizing’ more attractive.

For this year’s GeoVation, OrdnanceSurvey has partnered with the Land Registry.Lynne Nicholson is senior project managerthere. She is looking towards thepublication of registry data to promoteeconomic growth and is in the process ofpreparing over thirty datasets for publicationover the next few years. For her, GeoVationis an opportunity to realise the benefitsfrom publishing the data.

Previous GeoVationersThe launch evening rounded off with brieftalks by four former winners of GeoVationfunding. Nicola Wheeler from Green SpaceMapper aims to identify and transformwasted and ill-used space by empoweringlocal communities. Ayo Isinkaye is workingon a project to improve the way we recycle,by realising the value in waste. Richard Pageis developing a means for farmers to offsetthe production of carbon by industry. It’s todo with raising the level of carbon in the soil.Apparently a 1% increase in carbon withinthe soil within the UK would be equivalent toremoval of 100 million tonnes of carbon fromthe atmosphere. Dan Raven-Ellison has wonfunding from two previous challenges forMission Explore (http://www.missionexplore.net/) and, throughpersonal experience, brought right home tothe audience just how critical the housingcrisis is in London.

• GW will keep readers posted on the winnersand their ideas in the new year.

Monday 15th September saw the launchof the latest GeoVation challenge –“How can we enable people in Britain

to live in better places?” As is well known, thecentral problem for anyone trying to buy orrent in Britain – at least in London or thesoutheast - is spiralling house inflation, whichevery day puts ‘a place of your own’ furtherand further out of reach.

Pow wowThis challenge started with the GeoVationPow Wow, which took place in July. For aday, pow wow participants identified fifty‘raw’ problems which boiled down to ninethemes and seventy eight ‘insights’. Of thenine themes, GeoVation has chosen toconcentrate on four: affordability, availability,access and infrastructure and making thebest use of assets.

Chris Parker, head of GeoVation kicked offproceedings with a summary of the GeoVationjourney. This is the eighth challenge in which‘GeoVationers’ use Ordnance Survey productsto find solutions to some of the UK’s pressingproblems. Previous subject areas have includedhealth, environment, community, transportand food.

Posting ideasThe first stage of the process is to put upideas and gather comments. For the housingchallenge this stage will close on 19thNovember. You can submit your ideas andcomment on others on:https://www.geovation.org.uk/geovationchallenge/On December 11th, the organisers will sift

Ordnance Survey’sannual competitionto win funding tohelp develop ideasthat make best useof the mappingagency’s data aswell as LandRegistry’slicensable data, isfocusing this yearon housing.Richard Groomreports.

Can geodata help people find betterplaces to live?

Can geodata help solveBritain’s acute housingshortage? Last year 122,590new homes were bulit, up23% on 2012.Image © Stocksolutions dreamstime

Wild-Leica history


no longer manufactured, there are stillthousands of Wild T2s in everyday use aroundthe world. So, after a hard days surveyingwhen you’re relaxing in the evening, raise aglass to Heinrich Wild.

Like Kern, Wild too served hisapprenticeship in Germany but with the CarlZeiss company. He returned to Switzerlandand the little town of Heerbrugg in 1921 toestablish his business as Wild Heerbrugg. Hewas responsible for many significantdevelopments to surveying and mappinginstruments before leaving in 1935 to joinKern where he continued to design andimprove many instruments.

Meanwhile, Wild Heerbrugg carried ongrowing and in the 1930s launched theworld’s first stereo plotter – a device that wasin demand by both sides in the Second WorldWar as photo-reconnaissance came of age andinvading armies demanded maps quickly.Together with Wild’s aerial and close-rangeterrestrial cameras, these vast opto-mechanicalstereo plotters remained the mainstay of mapproduction organisations andphotogrammetric applications until the digitalage made them redundant.

The UK burgeonsThe immediate post war years presented manyopportunities for companies like WildHeerbrugg as Europe re-built and expanded itsinfrastructure. In Britain by the 1960s work wasin full swing on many major projects. The M1had been completed in 1959 and during thenext decade over 600 miles were added to themotorway network. Trunk roads too wereimproving rapidly. Journeys that once took 8hours shrunk in some cases to half that.Everywhere you looked Britain seemed to bebusy with construction: bridges, undergroundrailways (the Victoria Line), iron & steel works,nuclear power stations, sewerage schemes andoil platforms. In addition, new towns wereestablished including one in Buckingham shirethat was to play a significant role in our story.

Wild Heerbrugg decided to establish a UKbranch in 1964. Previously distributed in theUK by drawing office suppliers Hall Harding,Wild’s world renowned instruments would

Two small towns in Switzerland –Heerbrugg and Aarau – have played amajor role in the evolution of

measurement technology. Their two names areintertwined in the histories of Wild Heerbruggand Kern of Aarau, two of the companies thatnow comprise Leica Geosystems. They cantrace their origins back nearly 200 years to thefounding of Kern in Aarau in 1819.

As Europe began to get back to normalityafter the Napoleonic wars, Jakob Kern returnedto his native land after serving an apprenticeshipas a mechanic in Germany. His workshop firstmanufactured mathematical instruments butwith the arrival of the steam age and thedemand for surveying instruments he movedinto optics. Kern’s instruments were used on theconstruction of the Simplon and Gotthardtunnels under the Alps as well as other majorinfrastructure projects during the 19th century.

Kern’s business grew and prospered throughtwo centuries, built on a reputation for thehighest possible quality. Kern had alwaysremained a family business, so much so that itwas the fifth generation of the family that waseventually forced to merge with Wild Heerbrugg.

Wild and the T2The second significant name is of courseHeinrich Wild, the designer of the renownedT2 theodolite, a mainstay of surveying for 90years and in production for over half a centurywith some 90,000 produced. Today, although

This year LeicaGeosystems marks50 years of tradingin the UK. Tocelebrate, thecompanycommissioned editorStephen Booth toauthor a history ofthe company in theUK. Below hepresents anabridged version forGW readers.

TTTT hhhh eeee WWWWiiii llll dddd ---- LLLL eeee iiii cccc aaaa ssss tttt oooo rrrr yyyy

Below:HM The Queen is shown Wild instruments at theopening of Ordnance Survey’s new headquarters in1969. Right (top) Jack Simpson, Wild’s first UK MD, right(bottom) his successor Brian Snelling

W

Wild-Leica history


image from an earlynewsletter shows aselection of battered anddented instrument caseswith their contents allrequiring a health checkat the Chatham servicedepartment.

Rapid technologicalchangeThe 1970s and 80s werea time of rapidtechnologicaldevelopment. Surveyinginstruments in 1964 still relied entirely onmechanical and optical engineering principles.But the first EDMs like the Wild DI10Distomat, used electronics for their operationand it was a logical further step to incorporateelectronics in a theodolite so the two couldcommunicate with each other. What wasmissing was some way of recording thereadings. The answer was the Wild GEOMEMdata memory. The days of the surveyor’s fieldbook were now numbered. By the late 1970sdistance measurement and data recording hadall merged into the Wild Tachymat TC1, thefirst modern total station, incorporating angleand distance measurement and a means ofrecording. It was an instrument that surveyorscould only have dreamed about in the firsthalf of the 20th century.

Launched in 1977, the TC1 remained inproduction until 1983 when it was succeededby the TC2000. With greater accuracy, betterbattery life and functionality, the TC2000along with the TC1600 were to become amainstay of professional surveyors and siteengineers throughout the 1980s and well intothe 1990s before being superseded by theLeica TPS 300/900 and Flexline series in 1998.

Significant new technologies appearTwo decades after Wild set up in the UK theworld was a very different place. Theoffice PC had arrived and there was an airof digital innovation throughout businessand industry. Suddenly everyone wastalking about computers andmicroprocessors. It was a time whencomputers were definitely saying “Yes”.

Several significant technologies that werely on today for measurement firstemerged in the late 1980s. In 1986 theDIOR 3002 reflector less EDM wasannounced. Suddenly it was possible tomeasure to points without visiting ortouching them. A decade later and thetechnology was available across much ofLeica’s total station range. Reflectorlesstechnology was to pave the way for severalimportant applications including Longdin &Browning’s Clear Cone mobile roadsurveying system and ultimately, the rapid3D scene-capturing laser scanners of today.

now be sold directly. The business began inChurch Street, Maidstone Kent in August1964 under the directorship of Major Jack(“Stiffy”) Simpson, previously the company’sUK representative servicing blue-chipcustomers like Military Survey, academia andGreat Britain’s mapping organisation OrdnanceSurvey, whose activities at that time extendedway beyond our shores through theDirectorate of Overseas Surveys.

Leadership honed in battleJack Simpson led the company for 12 years;and a leader he certainly was. Like so manysenior people back then Major Simpson hadbeen tested and not found wanting in theSecond World War. He fought at Arnhem in1944 (vividly recorded in Cornelius Ryan’s film“A Bridge Too Far”) and was one of only foursoldiers from that battle to escape and returnto England. He was awarded the Military Cross.

The choice of Kent as a base for WildHeerbrugg UK made good business sense. Therecently built M2 motorway was nearby withgood links to the Channel ports for importingequipment as well as to London, thenenjoying a construction boom. Within twoyears a sales manager was needed and BrianSnelling joined, later to succeed Jack as MD.

In May 1969 Wild Heerbrugg UK washonoured to be invited to the opening by HMThe Queen of Ordnance Survey’s newheadquarters in Southampton. Her Majestyand the Duke of Edinburgh were shown avariety of Wild equipment by MD JackSimpson including the newly introduced WildDI10 Distomat, T4 Universal Theodolite andN3 precision level.

Precision technologyBefore the days of lasers and total stations, inthe right hands a Wild precision level andtheodolite was an ideal way of maintainingaccuracy. One customer in the aviationbusiness, where everything has to berigorously checked in line with ministryspecifications and accuracies to a few thou,used three Wild N3 precision levels for re-jigging helicopter fuselages and precisionaircraft components. They found thecombination with a Wild T2 theodoliteenabled them to “achieve otherwiseimpossible accuracies.”

Service to the power of threeThe writer once asked a surveyor what threethings he looked for in a total station. Hisreply was, ‘Service, service and service’. Inconstruction, despite the operator’s care (orlack of it!), surveying equipment does notalways fare well. Instruments occasionally getdropped or even hit by moving machines. Itwas therefore an early priority for Wild UK toestablish a repair and maintenance facility tosave the expense and time of returninginstruments to the factory in Switzerland. One

Above, left: The WildDI10 Distomat was a major

step forward in distancemeasurement. Coupled toa T2 it was an embryonic

total station.

Far right: The Wild TC1 totalstation finally enabled

surveyors to measure angles,distances and importantly,

store the results

Champagne corks popped in 1956to mark the production of the50,000th T2.

Wild-Leica history


alignment and terrain modelling. Systems likeMOSS and BIPS were early pioneers. But onesystem, CADACS developed by a Polishsurveyor Joe Cieslewicz, was used for theplanning and setting out of a certain newtown in Buckinghamshire that was to play asignificant part in the Wild-Leica story.

On the move againIn 1987 Wild became part of the Wild-LeitzGroup, which included the world renownedLeica 35mm camera. A year later the groupwas joined by the venerable instrumentmanufacturers Kern of Aarau, whose EDMsand photogrammetric systems and theodolitebased coordinate measurement system wereto lead to the Leica Laser Tracker system.Several of Kern’s technologies were state ofthe art and were regarded at the time asbeing the equal of Wild’s. The new group’sportfolio now included the Kern Mekometer, asuper accurate EDM that took distancemeasurement to new levels of accuracy andprecision and could be used for reference andcalibration of existing instruments.

By the late 1980s Wild’s Chathamheadquarters were bursting at the seams andthe hunt was on for a new base. The rapidlyexpanding new town of Milton Keynes inBuckinghamshire – located in the heart ofEngland with easy links to the M1 motorway –was ideally placed to service customers. Themove came in September 1989 to theKnowlhill area and into newly built award-winning premises.

Following a brief period trading as Wild-Leitz, the name of the company name settledto Leica although the Wild name continuedfor awhile as a brand. The company was nowpoised for rapid advancement across itsvarious businesses. It was a time that wouldsee a number of world firsts in the fields ofvision, measurement and analysis. It was alsotime for a new man at the helm. BrianSnelling retired in 1987 and died peacefullylast year. His successor, Neil Vancans wasinitially sales director before becoming in 1992managing director of Leica UK Ltd.

New technologiesNew technologies which appeared at this timeincluded the Wild NA2000 bar-code readingdigital level (1990) and the Disto (1993). At thetime the Disto was launched Leica was nervousof the likely uptake as the cost was severaltimes that of otherwise competing ultrasoundmeasurers. They needn’t have worried.Surveyors loved it. For the first time they had anaccurate and reliable handheld EDM, even if thefirst models were the size of a house brick!

GPS too became more practical for day-to-day survey applications, driven by Leica’sspectacular launch of their first GPS field surveyreceiver, the Wild GPS System 200. Hundreds ofsurveyors and engineers remember the dry iceand carefully scripted “New Era” roadshows

Navigation and positioning bysatellitesThe next development was ofeven more fundamental impact;one that touches so many aspectsof our daily lives today.Navigation, tracking, location,positioning, mobile phones. . . allnow rely on GPS (or GNSS as it iscorrectly called today).

In the early 1980s Wild hadbeen watching the emergence of the firstsatellite receivers for surveying. Because of therelatively few satellites in orbit and weight ofthe equipment, applications were restrictedmainly to long distance baseline measurement– an essential for accurate mapping and linearprojects. In 1984 Wild announced apartnership with US receiver developerMagnavox. The first Wild receivers werelaunched the following year.

Computers and electronicsMany older surveyors will recall that whenthey started out a computer was not anelectronic device but a human being; indeed,a very important one who usually presidedwith much authority over log tables, Peter’stables, mechanical calculators and youngsurveyors who failed to book their readingsclearly in the correct form.

Electronics began to impinge on thesurveying world from the mid 1960s onwardsthrough instruments like the Distomats. But itwas the 1970s when people became fully awareof the potential that computers held for survey.

With the arrival of the Wild’s first fullyelectronic total station, the TC1 in 1977 theway ahead was open to develop the transfer ofmeasured data into a digital mapping systemor to CAD. At that time is was estimated thata computer system could do design work in 8hours that a traditional draftsman and drawingoffice would take 90 hours. Clearly there werebig savings to be made even if the kit washorrendously expensive. Typically a drawingplotter using ink-pen technology could cost£20,000 or more.

Several pioneering survey companies wereactive in this field, especially for road

Above: The Wild GPSSystem 200, launched to

much razzamatazz atHeathrow, was the

company’s first field surveyGPS system.

It was soon joined by theWild CR233 controller.

Technology was powering ahead in the 1980s. Far left:Wild’s first GPS receiver the WM101 was reminiscent of aghetto blaster! Centre: the first reflectorless EDM theDIOR 3002 and data logger. Above: The Kern Mekometer.

Wild-Leica history


a line of scanners under the HDS branding.High definition surveying had arrived and thepoint cloud is increasingly today thedeliverable survey companies give to clients.

The futureThe late 1980s and early 90s saw the rise of themulti-national global company. Although WildHeerbrugg had many companies around theworld, including in the UK, it still had somethingof the friendly Swiss family business it began lifeas in the 1920s. In 1998 Leica became part ofthe Investec group and by the early years of the21st century the Wild name was no more andLeica Geosystems, now led by Mark Concannonand John Fraser, was part of the multi-nationale3bn turnover Hexagon Group.

Today Leica Geosystems produces not onlytotal stations, GNSS receivers and laser scannersbut airborne systems like the ADS and ALSseries of LiDARs and digital sensors, terrestrialmapping systems like Pegasus and has recentlybegun exploiting the potential of UAVs throughthe acquisition of the Swiss company Aibotix.

These measurement technologies play a partin so many industries and sectors. Agriculture,environmental monitoring, remote sensing andsecurity can all be added to Leica’s core businessof supporting infrastructure developmentthrough building and civil engineering as well asplaying a key role in systems like BIM, GIS andfacility management.

Let us conclude by stating that predictingwhere measurement technologies will go overthe next 50 years is beyond the crystal ballgazing of this history. But one thing is certain,Leica Geosystems or its successors will be atthe forefront.

that marked its arrival. But what surveyors werewaiting for was completion of the GPS satelliteconstellation which became fully operational in1995. In 2006 GPS surveying (by nowincreasingly known as GNSS) took a furtherstep forward with the launch of Leica’sSmartNet service based on Ordnance Survey’snetwork of continuously operating staticreceivers. The service now enabled users tosurvey with only one GNSS receiver. Real-timekinematic (RTK) surveying had arrived andLeica’s competitors soon followed.

Meanwhile the total station had advancedrapidly, driven by competition from rivalmanufacturers. Following the Wild TCI, themainstay of the 1980s and early 1990s werethe TC1600 and TC2000 models whichincluded much easier data recording andtransfer to the growing number of office CADand terrain modelling systems. These modelswere succeeded in 1998 by the TPS 300/1100models which added features like reflectorlessEDM, laser plummets, colour touch screensand with the launch in 2005 of theSmartStation, GPS. These developments led tothe “MergeTech” technology of today, seen inthe Leica MS50 Nova Multistation whichincludes a laser scanning option.

The rise of the machinesAnother technology, or rather an application,that has come of age is machine control. Oncelasers became commercially available severalcompanies began using them to maintain lineand level for construction machinery. But ithas only been since the arrival of GNSS that ithas been possible to introduce very finecontrol to machines like pavers, graders, bulldozers and excavators.

From the late 1980s static rotating laserslike the Wild LNA30 were used as a referencefor machines. But with the availability of GNSSmuch more sophisticated machine control hasbecome available. With the acquisition in2006 of Scanlaser by Leica’s parent Hexagon,the company was able to develop a wholerange of machine control solutions. Todaythose solutions mainly rely on surveytechnologies like the Leica iCon range thatunderscores the company’s vision of the “fullyconnected construction site”.

An EDM on what?Probably the most significant technology of allthat was to emerge in the 1990s was laserscanning. Pioneered by a number ofcompanies on both sides of the Atlantic, CyraTechnologies’ Cyrax 2400 scanner firstappeared in the UK in 1999 at the World ofSurveying show at the Motorcycle Museum. Atthe time, one wag described it as “like anEDM on steroids!” He wasn’t far wrong andLeica (by now calling themselves LeicaGeosystems) were so impressed they investedin Cyra and bought the company two yearslater. That move heralded the development of

• Leica Geosystems is marking its 50thanniversary year with various eventsand the publication of a book thattraces the history of the company withover 350 photographs. If you are aregular customer of Leica’s then youwill probably receive a copy. If youdon’t, PV Publications has a limitedstock that will be available forpurchase in the new year. More detailsfrom +44 (0)1438 352617.

Two revolutionary products from the 1990s. Above left: the WildNA2000 digital level. Above right: The Leica Disto.

Below: With the arrival ofthe laser scanner the pointcloud has increasinglybecome the deliverable.

W

Legal Notes


France, Germany and many othercountries. Judicial Review is a way ofproviding that function.

b) Where a public body has acted unlawfully,the court may, as an exercise of itsdiscretion, decline to grant judicial reviewif it is certain that the outcome would bethe same were the decision to be re-takenlawfully. A central function of judicialreview is to ensure that decisions areproperly taken by those whose function itis to take them. As a general rule, a judicialreview will not look at the substance of theunderlying decision, but will simply check ithas been taken lawfully. It is for the courtsto ensure that decisions are taken inaccordance with the law, but for theexecutive to take the substance of thosedecisions.

Lord Diplock in Council of Civil ServiceUnions v Minister for the Civil Service[1985] AC 374 gave three grounds tochallenge administrative decisions:

• Illegality• Irrationality (Unreasonableness)• Procedural impropriety

The first two are often referred to assubstantive grounds because they referdirectly to the substance of the disputeddecision. The third, procedural improprietyis a procedural ground as it is aimed at thedecision-making procedure rather than thecontent of the decision itself. The threegrounds are mere indications: the same setof facts may give rise to two or all threegrounds for judicial review.So, judicial review is there to keep a checkon administrative decisions which cannotbe, or are with difficulty, challenged in otherways.

c) The changes outlined in the bill are due tothe Government’s view that judicial review‘has expanded massively’. The bill proposesthat courts must refuse an application forjudicial review if it appears highly likelythat the ‘outcome for the applicant would

The reason for the subject matter – JudicialReview – is that it is part of the currentCriminal Justice and Courts Bill currently

(20 October 2014) in the House of Lords. In thatBill, Part 4 sets out changes both to the waythat Judicial Review operates and also limitsthose who can invoke it. Judicial Review is oneof the few ways in which government or thosein public office can be held to account.

A report published on 4 July 2014 by theHouse of Lords constitution committee on theBill warns that the changes may undermineaccess to justice and weaken the ability ofcitizens to challenge decisions of governmentor state agencies. Lord Lang of Monkton (chairof the committee) said: ‘Judicial review is animportant means for citizens to challenge thelegality of decisions by the state, so access tothe process should not be unduly restrained.’

In particular, the proposals raise concernsover the tightening of the criteria for grantingjudicial reviews, changes to the rules on thelegal costs of interveners in judicial reviews,and proposals to make it easier for cases to‘leapfrog’ the Court of Appeal.

Central to the rule of lawThe report stresses that judicial review iscentral to the rule of law, as it provides theprimary means through which parties maychallenge the lawfulness of decisions made bythe government and other public bodies.

So, there are three questions. Firstly a) whatis judicial review? Secondly b) why have it?and finally, c) why change it?

a) Judicial review is the mechanism by whichcitizens may hold the state to account. It isa powerful and fundamental tool of ourdemocracy. It is a directly accessible checkon abuse of power, holding the executiveto account and requiring it to act inaccordance with the rule of law.

“There is no principle more basic to oursystem of law than the maintenance ofrule of law itself and the constitutionalprotection afforded by judicial review.”Lord Dyson, now Master of the Rolls, in R (Cart)

v Upper Tribunal[2011] UKSC 2.

The UK has no constitutional court, unlike

The rule of law isfundamental todemocracyeverywhere. Butunlike othercountries Britain hasno writtenconstitution orconstitutional courtto settle disputes.We have to use theprocess of JudicialReview, which is nowunder threat arguesCarl Calvert.

. . . themechanism bywhich citizensmay hold thestate to account.

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Judicial Review – a proposed changeto the perception of ‘The rule of law’?By Carl Calvert

Legal Notes


not have been substantially different if theconduct complained of had not occurred’.The Lord’s committee says this could leadto ‘unlawful administrative action goingunremedied’. Currently the law states thatcourts should refuse an application only ifit is inevitable that the conduct complainedof would have made no difference to theresult.

The following are provided for in the CriminalJustice and Courts Billi:

– allowing cases being appealed to ‘leapfrog’directly to the Supreme Court in a widerrange of circumstances;

– a package of financial measures, includingreforming Protective Costs Orders, WastedCosts Orders, interveners’ costs and thirdparty funding;

– introducing changes so that claims basedon defects that are highly unlikely to haveaffected the outcome are dealt withproportionately; and

– requiring the permission of the High Courtbefore challenging certain planningdecisions.

ConcernsThere are concerns that the changes restrict theway that maladministration and withholdingnatural justice by those in public office andstatutory bodies can be challenged ‘as they willfundamentally affect the extent to whichgovernment can be held to account by citizensof all political persuasions and none. Parliamentmust be aware that the proposals threaten toundermine our constitution and destabilise ourdemocracy.’ii In any event the proposals tochange Judicial Review limit the opportunity andavailability to engage with ‘the rule of law.’

Referencesi https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/

system/uploads/attachment_data/file/324926/fact-sheet-judicial-review.pdf

ii http://www.publiclawproject.org.uk/data/resources/159/PLP-Parliamentary-Briefing-Paper-11-March-LONG.pdf

• Carl Calvert MA MSc PgDLaw FRICS CITPMBCS, is the sole principal of CalvertConsulting, specialis ing in Boundary litigation.He also lectures part-time in GIS law.www.calvertconsulting.co.ukEmail: [email protected] or 023 8086 4643.

UEL’s School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering (ACE) has places to study in Surveying, Construction, and Engineering courses, starting September 2015 including:

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Apply nowSeptember

2015

The Lord’scommittee saysthis could lead to‘unlawfuladministrativeaction goingunremedied’.

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This is reflectedin the haphazardway in whichmany of us enterthe profession.

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Education


processing and presentation tools. In generalthis is accompanied by easier operation,although one could argue that a Wild T2 waseasier to operate than a high end total station.

Perhaps GIS demonstrates most clearlywhat has happened. It used to be the preserveof a few highly paid specialists whounderstood the theory and were able to worklarge, slow and temperamental programs. GISis now used by millions to carry out simplequeries but only a few understand itthoroughly and are able to provide advice fordesign and implementation of systems. Inother words, there are a great many GIS userswith skills gained through training and veryfew GIS professionals.

We live in a push-button world, butsurveyors bring to that world qualities thatmake the best of the amazing technology thatis available. As John Hallett-Jones of GlanvilleGeomatics says: “There is one aspect (oftechnical training) that is never talked aboutand that is the value of experience and theability to have an ‘eye for the ground’, to takereality and to best represent that in the mostefficient communicative way. We find that thisaspect takes a good deal of nurturing withnew employees and is a priceless attribute tohave, but is often overlooked.”

Part-time surveyorsDoes current geomatics education and trainingreflect this new reality? It does, in the sensethat the opportunities for appropriateeducation and training are there. But whethersurveyors actually follow them is anothermatter and that is largely down to perceptionsof our profession by others and indeed by ourown perceptions. In Britain, many people carryout surveying work and most of them probablydo not have surveying qualifications. Indeed,for many, I suspect they (or their bosses) believethat there is little more needed than to buy thekit and follow the quick-start manual. There isno doubt that field surveying has been ‘de-skilled’ over the years, but every survey shouldfollow principles that will assure its quality. Thepublic at large (and fellow professionals whoshould know better) can see the fieldequipment in operation and it looks easy, butthey do not see the planning that goes onbefore the survey, or the data processing andanalysis that follows in the office, and these arestill very much skilled activities.

These part-time surveyors are usuallytechnicians or professionals from otherdisciplines carrying out surveying at a technicallevel. They use surveying tools for particular

Thanks to technology, we are now able tosurvey more detail, faster and morecheaply than ever before. The surveying

profession has expanded well beyond itsorigins in ‘Land’ to encompass ‘Geospatial’and ‘Spatial’. If it’s physical we can measure itin 2D, 3D, 4D and more. It’s an exciting world,above and below water, made even morestimulating by our ability to model the datathat we survey, to analyse and display itsattributes, bring it to life (throughvisualisation), show how objects change andmost importantly, compute the hard figuresneeded to optimise designs.

It’s a world which should enthuse youngpeople and have them clamouring to join in, butsadly this is not the case. Universities cannotattract the best students and employers complainthat there are not enough potential employees ofthe right calibre in the market place.

We can think of education and training astaking place on three levels:

• Education of the general public• Education and training of technicians• Education of professionals

Educating the publicThis article concentrates on promotion of theindustry to the general public. This is highlevel education for people who should knowenough about our industry to decide whetherthey want to join it and if they don’t, who weare and what we do.

A higher general awareness of geomatics asa profession would trickle down to more andmore suitable candidates for technician andprofessional education and training, andconsequently, better recognition for thosewho are qualified to practise. In Britain onehas to admit that, for various reasons,including the fragmented nature of ourprofession, there has been very little effort inthis regard. This is reflected in the haphazardway in which many of us enter the profession.

Technical education and trainingAt technician level, the lack of government-sponsored courses has resulted in The SurveyAssociation setting up the Survey School inWorcester and recently in taking overownership. The school meets the needs of thesurveying companies and its qualifications arerecognised by the industry.

The surveying and mapping industry hasexpanded beyond belief over the past thirtyyears. On the mapping side, CAD and GIS haveprovided the impetus. On the surveying side, ithas been new, better and faster data collection,

GW Technical EditorRichard Groompresents a personalview, withcontributions fromothers, of issuessurrounding thepromotion,education andtraining of surveyors.A particular problemhe identifies for theprofession is that ofthe part-timesurveyor.

Who wants to be a surveyor?

Left: students at a Surveying Spectacular in NSW.

Education


competent, but many are not. The lesscompetent, when faced with a tenderevaluation will make their judgement basedupon ignorance, or the parts of the tenderthat they do understand – like Health andSafety – with the result that they promote the‘race to the bottom’ by failing to weed outtechnically inadequate submissions and failingto accept the best value bid that meets therequirements of the job. When it all goeswrong, you can bet that it will be thecontractor’s, or the profession’s fault. Perhapssurveyor licensing is the answer, but surely wecan achieve a better result through adequateeducation, training and regulation.

Most surveying work is required to supportprojects and another frequent hindrance togood surveying is the current passion for‘project management’: an activity which is thepreserve of generalists who, as Chris Preston,RICS Geomatics Professional Group Chair,says, “know a little about a lot of things butnot too much about anything! Unfortunately,that ‘anything’ usually does not includesurveying, geomatics or associated fields. It ispurely about delivering a project to budget, ontime and hopefully what was needed.Geospatial engineering is now considered veryspecialised and those who do the actual datacollecting, lowly skilled.”

The challenge for surveyors is to express thevalue of their work, because this frequentlymanifests as ‘savings’ or as risk mitigation, towhich the client could well be blind or sceptical,whereas he can see the costs without any help.Also, those benefits and savings arise over thelifetime of assets rather than of projects, whichis therefore beyond the deliberately blinkeredview of the project manager. BIM looks atlifecycle asset management, so it should help toovercome the short-term mentality, but it is stillmore likely that individual phases of the BIMlifecycle will be managed as individual projectsand that the long-term benefits of survey will beoverlooked.

Are we powerless?We appear powerless to break this prejudice.However, there are a very few organisationsthat do employ professional surveyors tooversee their geospatial activities. Their role isto advise within the organisation, ensure thatsurveying is fit for purpose and provides valuefor money, maintain the surveyinginfrastructure and manage and archivesurveying data. The success that they achieveis largely down to just ‘being there’ andtherefore being in a position to influence,even if only at the lower levels of theorganisation. They have to cultivate championsto survive, usually with no support from theprofession and yet their presence is crucial tothe health of the industry as a whole.

Promoting the professionSo, what are we doing to promote our

purposes and see no need for training beyond,by analogy, the expertise they would need touse MS Word to write a report. Many do notsee a need to learn the basic principles ofsurveying – and possibly don’t even recognisethat there are any.

From a client’s point of view, whatconstitutes adequate education and training forthis group of technicians? If they come from acivil engineering background they probablyreceive some surveying education and trainingas part of their civil engineering course, but is itfit for purpose? Would surveyors consider thatthe lecturers are competent to convey ‘thesurveying body of knowledge’ to theirstudents? Anecdotal evidence suggests that thisquestion needs addressing. If the surveyingmodule in non-surveying courses is taught to ashallow level by poorly qualified lecturersfocusing primarily on the array of technologyavailable, the students will see ‘specialist’surveyors as experts in the trivial, which iswholly damaging to us.

When part time surveyors enter the worldof work, or are called-upon to do ‘somesurvey work’, how do they learn to select anduse the right equipment for the job, process,report and manage the results? Surveyors (orrather, their clients) should be crying out formodular structured training, with associatededucation, that includes meaningfulcertification of courses (and certification forgraduates), and those modules should buildtowards a chartered qualification. Also, clientsshould value certification: the benefit of beingable to recognise ‘good’, as an assurance ofcompetent work. As Graham Mills of Technicssays “Certification through a recognised bodywould help to raise the bar.”

The surveying consultantUnfortunately, part time surveyors also tend toact as the client’s agent, when commissioninglarger projects. When working in an advisoryand supervisory capacity they should, at least,be intelligent clients, which arguably meansthat they are working in the third of thecategories listed at the beginning of thisarticle. They are doing consultancy work,potentially demanding a much deeperunderstanding of geomatics, which theyseldom possess or, just as importantly,sufficient understanding to know the boundsof their knowledge and when they need tohire a consultant. In large organisations, this iswork that should be carried out, or at leastoverseen, by qualified professional surveyors.

But local and national governmentdepartments, consulting engineering andarchitectural practices, almost withoutexception, do not employ a single professionalsurveyor in this capacity and neither do theyemploy external consultant surveyors toadvise. Surveying, they appear to believe, is atechnician’s job which can be managed by thepeople who will use the data. Some are

. . . surveyors bringto that worldqualities thatmake the best ofthe amazingtechnology that isavailable.

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Students on a SurveyingSpectacular get to usemodern instruments underenthusiastic instruction.

S

Education


why-we-need-geographers-the-go-geo-campaign/

Surveying spectacularsSeveral years ago, in New South Wales,Australia the problem was approached fromseveral angles, as described by Roberts andIredale in GW Jan/Feb 2011. They reported thatwork experience placements can be useful,provided that the company offering theplacement is whole-hearted about it, otherwiseit can be a destructive experience not just forthe student but also for the industry – badnews travels even more rapidly than goodnews. In Britain, work experience placementsare offered to children at age 15/16 andgenerally too often arranged by the student’sparents. Three organisations in New SouthWales clubbed together to produce a successfulDVD. They also arranged ‘SurveyingSpectaculars’ otherwise known as ‘Maths inSurveying Days’ in schools and formed linkswith the state-wide association of careersadvisors – perhaps the most valuable means ofconnecting limited surveying resources with themaximum number of students. They have alsoworked with the NSW department of educationto put surveying examples in the mathematicscurriculum and with the author of a textbookwith the same objective in mind. Frequentlyschool students see topics like geometry ascompletely irrelevant, yet geometry is pivotal togeomatics and some surveying involvementcould be highly motivational.

Identify the problemIn the course of writing this article it has beenbecome clear to the writer that we shouldtarget our efforts in two directions, firstlytowards the public at large, particularly atschool age and secondly towards theprofessional advisors from other disciplineswho hold such sway over our industry and cancause it such damage.

Co-operation is the keyA feature of the Australian experience is thatthey could only muster the resources neededthrough the co-operation of severalprofessional bodies. When it comes to highlevel promotion of the industry, that co-operation could extend across all thegeospatial disciplines, including GIS andcartography through, for example, UKGeoForum or the kind of co-operation thatresulted in GeoBusiness. Funding should comefrom the institutions, which means pushingthe subject higher up the agenda and perhapsthat could be supplemented by crowd fundingcontributions for a specific project?

Acknowledgements:Contributions gratefully acknowledged fromMike Coward, John Hallett-Jones, GrahamMills, Chris Preston and the GW EditorialBoard members.

profession in Britain? Ten years ago, NewcastleUniversity established a website –www.geomatics.org.uk which was excellentfor its time and well received, but it reliedupon support from industry bodies as well asa hefty grant and is now no longer operating.The professional institutions have websiteswhich give descriptions of the profession. TheRICS has recently taken substantial adverts inThe Guardian, but one has to questionwhether the audience of prospectivegeomatics surveyors reads that paper.

There are occasional TV programmes thatfeature surveying in some form or other. Forexample, surveying has played a bit-part inTime Team, there was a fascinatingprogramme featuring survey control surveyingin the Andes a few years ago, and morerecently the use of LiDAR was used to uncoverthe mysteries of Angkor, in Cambodia. Thelatter did not mention surveying or geomatics– just the technology, thus reinforcing theunhelpful notion that the tools areparamount. Of more relevance to 8-15 yearolds is Minecraft. It introduces the concepts ofmapping and to some degree design andengineering through the gaming environment.Perhaps there is a way to use this to helppromote our profession. To read more aboutthis link see the August issue of our sister titleGIS Professional.

In Britain there is a recent initiative topromote construction in schools. Class of YourOwn (COYO) is a British charity aiming todispel the negative image of construction as acareer path. Surveying is included within thescope of COYO but therein lies anotherproblem: the perception that surveying is justa service to engineering and construction.Whilst COYO is a commendable idea, it doesnothing to tackle the surveyors’ identity crisisand promote the distinctive qualities thatsurveyors offer. Stemnet (Science TechnologyEngineering and Mathematics Networkwww.stemnet.org.uk) is an organisation witha similar role to COYO but with a moregeneral remit. A unique aspect of its strategyis STEM Ambassadors. There are 27,000volunteer ambassadors who act as role modelsand promote STEM subjects to young learners.Stemnet also has a STEM Clubs Programme,which provides free, impartial, expert adviceand support to schools that want to set up ordevelop a STEM Club. The clubs are a fun andrewarding way to boost enjoyment andlearning across STEM, outside the classroom.

The geomatics skills shortage is not just aproblem in Britain. A European project –GeoSkills (http://www.geoskillsplus.eu/) aimsto identify and set up optimal ways to RaiseAwareness of GEO studies and increasestudent enrolment in the EU. The Netherlandsis also having difficulty attracting youngpeople into surveying. That country’s solutionwas to club together to produce a veryimpressive video: http://geo-pickmeup.com/

Frequentlyschool studentssee topics likegeometry ascompletelyirrelevant. . .

‘‘

’’

PRODUCTS & SERVICES


Leica RCD30 – betterresolutionLeica Geosystems’ RCD30 PentaOblique system is now availablewith new optics. The camera isnow available with 80 mm and150 mm focal length respectively.In combination with the new 80Mpx CCD sensor, the RCD30provides data with even moredetail. These features make theRCD30 the only oblique systemable of acquiring 4-channelRGBN multispectral data with 10centimetre Ground SamplingDistance (GSD) from an altitudeof 3,000 metres.

ZEB1 for tree surveysThe ZEB1 handheld laser scanneris helping researchers in NewZealand develop new workingpractices to characterise foreststands for management andresearch purposes. The team atScion, a NZ Crown ResearchInstitute (CRI), required apractical means for accuratelylocating and measuring individualtrees on the ground. Using theZEB1 they achieved significantadvantages in speed of datacapture, quality of the resultingpoint cloud and ease of use ofthe system. Scion purchased theZEB1 from 3D Laser Mapping,following successful trials of the

technology. The project teamaims to extract tree diameters,locations and stem shapes fromthe point clouds.

LiDAR from LeicaLeica Geosystems has introducedits next generation of airborneLiDAR solutions, the Leica ALS80.By incorporating advanced lasertechnology, new high-speed pointcloud generation, fasteracquisition and processing timeare now possible. Users benefitfrom the new Leica ALS80-CMand ALS80-HP systems’ expandedMultiple Pulse in Air (MPiA)capabilities and a new scanninggeometry that offers pulse ratesof up to 1.0 MHz. This technologygreatly expands pulse ratecapability throughout the entirerange of flying heights, allowingfaster collection rates and shorterflight times. For users operatingin mountainous terrain, theALS80-HA offers significantlyincreased pulse rates duringhigh-altitude operation.

Pointfuse standalonePointfuse, an automated pointcloud processing software, hasbeen released as standalonesoftware, offering a fast, precise,yet flexible way of convertinglaser scanner point clouds into

highly accurate vector models. Itwas previously only available asSoftware as a Service (SaaS). Inaddition to the paid version ofPointfuse, a free viewer and iOSAPP will also be available thatallows point cloud data to beconverted to a vector model thatcan be visualised as 3D or 2D.

Pointfuse is fully mobilecompatible, and can process datafrom mobile scanners as easilyand quickly as from terrestrial orairborne systems and its resultscan be output and used onstandard handheld mobiledevices for use in the field. Thesoftware also offers automaticfeature extraction, automaticallyidentifyings features such aspower-lines, bridges, gantries andcrash barriers within the pointcloud and extracting them withina matter of minutes.

Civil engineering contractorSkanska has found Pointfusesoftware greatly speeds up thecreation of line drawings forhighways schemes thanks toautomated point cloudprocessing. The company hassuccessfully trialled automatedextraction of features from amobile mapping system on astretch of motorway. Pointfusewas used to process the largepoint cloud, recognising andextracting features automaticallyin a matter of minutes.

Building modelling The automatic creation of GIS-ready 3D city models andtextured buildings from aerialimages or LiDAR is rapidlygaining importance as nationalmapping agencies andmunicipalities are seeking toconvert their cadastre or basemap from 2D to 3D to supportbetter planning, taxation, civicengagement and the growingnumber of smart cityapplications. Unfortunately, themajority of the world’s countrieslack accurate land information orexisting building footprints. Thiscombined with rapid urbanchange and regionally uniquearchitecture styles have made theautomated extraction of buildingsfrom airborne images with similaraccuracy and recognition rate areal challenge. Leica’s tridiconBuilding Finder solves this and

the company’s customers arenow able to automatically createhighly accurate 3D City Modelsfrom airborne images withoutany prior knowledge. Results canbe further improved whencombined with the Leica RCD30oblique camera system.

Geodetic receiverTopcon has announced the nextgeneration of its geodetic GNSSreference receivers and antennas:the NET-G5 receiver and CR-G5-Cantenna. Using Vanguard andUniversal Tracking technologies,the NET-G5 receiver incorporates452 channels capable of trackingthe full GNSS signal spectrum,including modernized GPS,GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, QZSSand SBAS signals. UniversalTracking has the advantage andcapability to assign any visibleGNSS signal to any availablereceiver channel.

The CR-G5-C is a full-wavegeodetic choke-ring antennadesigned to address evolvingrequirements for referencenetworks and infrastructuremonitoring applications. The CR-G5 antenna has excellent verticalphase centre stability over theentire GNSS frequency band,providing superior performance intracking low elevation satellitesignals. It also employs cavityfilter technology to moreaggressively combat radiofrequency interference in difficultenvironments.

GNSS/INS for UAVsApplanix has announced theAPX-15 UAV GNSS-Inertialsystem for small UAVs byreducing - or even eliminating -ground control points. Sidelap isalso significantly reduced,increasing the area flown permission. APX-15 UAV includesPOSPac UAV post-missionsoftware to produce highlyaccurate position and orientationfor direct georeferencing ofcameras, LIDARs and other UASsensors. The APX-15 UAV,measuring just 6cm × 6.7cm andweighing only 60 grams, featuresa high-performance, survey-grade, multi-frequency GNSSreceiver and state-of-the-art low-noise MEMS inertial sensors, allon a single board.

Arithmetica has released a suite of software solutions designed tocomplement its 360° video capture systems and services. vMap360and RouteView360 video mapping software allow for theregistration of 360° video imagery to floor plans, maps, aerialphotography and online mapping systems like Google Maps,allowing users to explore remote locations from the comfort oftheir desktop.

SphereVision Video Mapping Software

Optech releases LMS 3.0Optech has announced therelease of Optech LMS 3.0, alidar mapping suite for airborneand mobile workflows. The suiterepresents a major advancementfor users of Optech ALTM, Lynxand digital imaging product linesfor high-precision surveyingapplications.

Hyperspectral for UAVLeica Geosystems, Aibotix andHeadwall Photonics haveannounced an integrated highperformance airborne sensorutilising a hyperspectral imagerand the Aibot X6 UAV. The Nano-Hyperspec sensor has beenoptimized in terms of size,weight, and power to enable theaerial acquisition of all spectraland spatial data within the sceneof interest. Precision agriculture,forestry, geological research, andenvironmental monitoring aretypical application areas thatcould benefit from this system.The sensor measures only76.2mm × 76.2mm × 119.4mmand weighs less than 0.68kg.Integrated data storage is 480Gband will yield more than twohours at a frame-rate collectionrate of about 100fps, matched tothe actual performance of theUAV itself.

New LiDAR sensorOptech has announced the ALTMGalaxy with PulseTRAKtechnology enabling a continuousoperating envelope that solvesthe challenge of coverage gapsand density variation in themulti-pulse transition/blindzones; up to 8 returns peremitted pulse, which eliminatesthe storage and processingburden previously required forincreased vertical density.

Handheld’s NAUTIZ X8Handheld Group has announcedthe NAUTIZ X8 rugged PDA, ahandheld computer built fortough field conditions primarilyin GIS, land surveying, publicsafety, forestry and militaryapplications. It has an IP67ingress protection rating andmeets stringent MIL-STD-810Gmilitary test standards.

The device has a TexasInstruments 4470 dual-core 1.5

GHz processor, 1Gb of RAM, 4Gbof iNAND Flash and a 5200 mAhLi-ion battery that lasts up to 12hours on a single charge. TheNautiz X8 has a large 4.7” ultra-bright capacitive multi-touchscreen with chemicallystrengthened Asahi Dragontrailglass. The unit weighs 490 grams.

Leica Cyclone 9.0Significantly faster and easierscan registration, plus better 2Dand 3D drafting tools and steelmodelling are features of LeicaCyclone 9.0, which include major,patent-pending innovations.Cyclone 9.0 allows users to scalefor larger, more complex projectswhile ensuring high qualitydeliverables consistently.

Cyclone 9.0 automaticallyprocesses scans and, if available,digital images to create groups ofoverlapping scans that areinitially aligned to each other.Once scan alignment is complete,algorithmic registration is appliedfor final registration. This newworkflow option can also be usedin conjunction with targetregistration methods.

Seismic monitoringTrimble has introduced anintegrated GNSS referencereceiver, broadband seismicrecorder and a force-balancetriaxial accelerometer forinfrastructure and precisescientific applications. The TrimbleSG160-09 SeismoGeodeticsystem provides real-time GNSSpositioning and seismic data forearthquake early warning andvolcano monitoring as well asinfrastructure monitoring forbuildings, bridges, dams andother natural and manmadestructures.

High end robotic andgeodetic receiverSokkia has announced therelease of the latest addition toits line of high-accuracymeasuring total stations, the NETAXII. Designed for precision-intensive tasks such asmonitoring, bridge construction,and other highly detailedengineering projects. The seriesincludes the NET1 AXII and theNET05 AXII with 1” angleaccuracy and 0.5” angle

accuracy, respectively.Sokkia has also announced a

GNSS reference receiver, theGNR5, which utilizes 452channels and is optimized totrack the full GNSS spectrum. TheGNR5 is designed to assign anyvisible signal to any availablereceiver channel and is capableof tracking the GPS, GLONASS,Galileo, Beidou, QZSS and SBASconstellations.

Topcon UAV with RTKTopcon and MAVinci GmbH haveannounced the latest version ofthe Sirius Pro surveying UAV,designed to be compatible withexisting RTK base stations orNTRIP (network transport ofRTCM data over IP). Byconnecting an external basestation, Sirius Pro will receive theRTCM correction signals anddeliver 2-5 centimetre accuracywithout using ground controlpoints.

Data Marketplace forInSphere Trimble has announced a new

Data Marketplace service for itsInSphere geospatial informationmanagement platform, whichallows geospatial professionals toquickly search, locate and obtainspatial data on demand. InSphereusers can now find and useadditional free and premiumspatial data layers, includingaerial and satellite imagery,terrain, elevation and topographicmaps, building footprints andother third-party data. Inaddition, new capabilities havebeen added to a variety ofInSphere applications tostreamline geospatial dataaccess.

Routescene mobilemapping solutionRoutescene has launchedLidarPod, a new turnkey 3Dmobile mapping solution thatuses Velodyne LiDAR technologyto provide rapid 3D datacollection and automatedprocessing. It is simple to operateand enables rapid deployment inthe field and has been developedspecifically for use on UAVs but

Mobile spatial imaging

UK Trimble supplier KOREC has introduced latest addition to itsmobile spatial imaging portfolio. The Trimble MX2 is an easy-to-use vehicle-mounted spatial imaging system, which combineshigh-resolution laser scanning and precise positioning to collectgeo-referenced point clouds and 360° images for multipleapplications. The system is available with one or two laser headswith the dual-head system using a ‘butterfly’ LiDAR configurationto minimise shadowing. Both variants come with the option of a360° camera. Survey results are processed with the includedTrimble Trident software to swiftly extract and analyse the rawdata to turn it into useful geospatial intelligence.

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SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, COMPUTING &ENGINEERING

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Geomatics/Land Surveying

Salary: £37,660 to 41,938 per annum inclusive of London Weighting

The University of East London is a dynamic and rapidly expanding university in theheart of Europe's largest regeneration area and adjacent to the site of QueenElizabeth Olympic Park, Canary Wharf, and London City Airport. UEL is in the topten of modern universities for research in the most recent RAE exercise.

The School of Architecture Computing and Engineering (ACE) is currentlyundergoing a period of considerable change especially in its enhancedcommitment to a significant research profile. As a result we wish to appoint ahighly talented academic staff member with a strong and growing national orinternational reputation to an established subject area.

Expertise is sought within one of the following areas: Geomatics, Cadastre, Landor Sea Surveying. You will deliver lectures, tutorials and practical sessionsincluding field schemes. Alongside, preparing teaching materials to conductrelated assessments in accordance to UEL’s quality standards. In addition, you willbe expected pursue research and/or knowledge transfer which will involveobtaining research grants and funding and contribute to the School’s vibrantresearch activities.

You should possess a post graduate qualification, have industrial experience andmembership of an appropriate professional body such as the RICS or CICES orhave a PhD, proven research track record and significant industrial experience.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to either Professor Hassan Abdalla, Dean ofArchitecture, Computing and Engineering, by email at [email protected],telephone +44 (0)20 8223 2523, or Brian Whiting Leader in Surveying by [email protected], by telephone +44(0)208 223 2515.

To obtain further details about this vacancy, visit our website athttp://jobs.uel.ac.uk/ (reference number 127a2014). The closing date forapplications is 5th December 2014.

CVs without completed application forms will not be accepted.

We are working actively to improve the diversity of our staff

www.workstream.co.uk

Land SurveyorsCompetitive Salary

Workstream Construction Services is a specialist provider ofrecruitment, engineering and site logistics expertise to all sectors of theconstruction industry. Following successful expansion within theEngineering Services department, Workstream is now looking to recruitLand Surveyors.

Based either at our Hemel Hempstead or London office, the roles willinvolve carrying out a variety of topographical and measured buildingsurveys, and site contributions to our clients in the constructionindustry, mainly in and around London and the home counties, butoccasionally further afield.

Working at senior and intermediate levels, the successful candidateswould be expected to be confidently involved in all stages of the surveyprocess, including client enquiry, field works, preparation and delivery ofhigh quality finished drawings.

The positions are likely to be filled by persons with a proven knowledgeof a wide range of survey procedures and methods, including usingsuch instruments as traditional Total Stations, Robotic GPS equipmentand HD Laser Scanners. It is unlikely that an applicant with less thanthree years’ experience would be considered.

These roles are intended as career opportunities as we strengthen andgrow our team for the future.

To apply, please email a current CV and a covering letter [email protected].

R E C R U I T M E N T

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· Welcome drinks and gala dinner offering a chance to network and socialise with colleagues old and new

For more information on the event visit

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F GeomaticsWorld 2014€¦ · Copy dates are: Editorial: 01 DecemberAdvertising: 15 December 2014...

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Transcript of F GeomaticsWorld 2014€¦ · Copy dates are: Editorial: 01 DecemberAdvertising: 15 December 2014...