Improved Surveying with GPS

GPS IN THE REAL WORLDJohn E. Dailey, President, The

American Congress on Surveyingand Mapping

he technical world as weknow it is again in a state

of flux. New technologies are burst-ing on the scene with frighteningregularity. What is modern today isobsolete by the time the first mod-els are delivered to the user, andthis has been facing the surveyingcommunity for the past 30 years.

It was about that time that thefirst electronic measuring devicescame on the market. They were big,bulky, heavy, and had an attitude oftheir own. But, they were the firststep forward in the surveyor's ten-league boots. What was so modernand frightening to the old-timesurveyors then has become a ne-cessity for all surveyors today.

In rapid succession came thepocket calculator, the desktopcomputer, the personal computer,the electronic distance meter, thetotal station, and the electronic da-ta book. The surveyor was standingthere with a spinning head won-dering what would come next. Andit was GPS.

The American Congress onSurveying and Mapping (ACSM)was one of the first professional so-cieties to recognize the possibili-ties and ramifications of GPS insurveying. ACSM and the NationalGeodetic Survey cosponsored aseries of coordinate workshops

GPS Solutions, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 88-89 (1995)© 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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around the country, and NGS chiefJoseph Dracup said "I will be re-tired before this happens, butsomeday you will be able to key co-ordinates or latitude and longitudeinto an instrument the size of yourpocket calculator and start movingaround. When it stops beeping, youare at the spot identified by the co-ordinates." The 40 or so surveyorsat that seminar chuckled at thatand wondered how a man of Joe'sstature could make such a ridicu-lous prediction. Isn't it funny thatnow, 20 years later, none of us arelaughing? The future was upon usbefore we could really get ready forit. And it still is.

Several years ago, the Profes-sional Land Surveyors of Ohio heldtheir annual meeting and the mainspeakers were a series of futurists.They warned us that the time toprepare for the future was yester-day because if you wait until today,it will have passed you by.

GPS burst on the scene as ahigh-priced, not very practicalgadget. In a few short years, it hasmade believers of many of us. GPSsurveying is one of the most excit-ing ideas to come along since theclosed transit and reel tape. (Youyounger people may have to go toa surveying museum to see whatthose are.) But for those of us whoworked through these changes, themiracles never seem to end.

We now had the ability to mea-sure longer distances faster, withgreater accuracy, turn angles moreprecisely, gather the informationmore quickly and accurately intoan electronic box, download it in-

to a computer, have the computerprocess the information quickly,and create a drawing without a hu-man hand touching it.

We have reached the pinnacleand now have the opportunity tomake bigger mistakes more quick-ly with a greater degree of apparentaccuracy. Life is good. Or is it?

The newest technotoy on theblock is GPS. Although there aresome of us dinosaurs who cannoteven spell it, there are a growingnumber of practitioners who areusing this new tool effectively. Sev-eral things have contributed to thisgrowth. High-quality equipment ismore readily available, the cost ofequipment is more bearable, thetraining curve is flattening, the ac-curacy is improving, the use of thismagic box is becoming more ac-ceptable, the money crunch that isforcing us to produce more withless personnel is starting to out-weigh the cost of acquiring theequipment and learning how touse it, and we, the practitioners,are becoming more confident inthe information spewing fromthese miracle tools.

If the federal government leavesus alone, we can easily generatesubcentimeter accuracy, whichshould please even the most die-hard surveyor. We can hire someyoung person out of school with adesire to be on the cutting edge oftechnology, train them, and putthem in the field gathering data.

And where does this lead us?Quite possibly into an area we donot want to be in, an area wherethe machines are taking the place

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of common sense and profession-al judgment. In the rush to befaster and more productive, wecould be losing sight of our her-itage and our duties to the peoplewe serve.

There is no substitute for qual-ity education mixed with goodhands-on experience, whether it isin the office or in the field. Scien-tists have proven that they canteach a monkey to press buttons,but someone has to know whatthe data mean and what data torecord. The schools and collegesare constantly improving theirhigher-education programs, but itis up to us, the real practitioners, tocontinue the graduate's education,their technical and professional ex-pertise. We must also be willing toexpend the time and money to pre-

pare the non-college-graduatetechnician to be a productive partof the team.

Not everything within GPS ortraditional surveying is fine. Thereare definite clouds on the horizonwhich we must prepare to meet.The technical work force is shrink-ing, the economy is forcing us to bemore competitive, and the turn-around time for information pro-cessing is getting shorter. We mustuse all the tools and experience wepossess to just survive.

Is GPS the final solution? I donot think so. It is another tool tobe used intelligently with the tra-ditional tools and methods we pos-sess. As in all things, it is not thetool or the instrument that makesthe difference; it is the hand thatcontrols it. We cannot rely on ma-

chines to replace good, solid rea-soning and intelligent decisionmaking. •

(Editor's Note: This recurring col-umn was prepared by Mr. Dailey onbehalf of the American Congress of

Surveying and Mapping, 5410Grosvenor Lane, Bethesda, MD20814-2122. Phone: 301/493-0200.ACSM is the professional organiza-

tion representing those who com-municate earth's spatial informa-tion using precisely prepared plats,

charts, maps, and digital carto-graphic and related data systems.It is the society's goal to promote ef-fective management of earth's re-sources for the benefit of membersas well as the public.)

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