World’s oldest surveyor dies at 113, official says

Japanese ex-land surveyor drank milk every morning and avoided alcohol

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31439522/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

GPS Gone Wrong!

Homeowner Says Crews Demolished Wrong House

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/19715994/detail.html

Interesting Case from Pennsylvania

This is as big as Kelo v. City of New London

A 3Mb PDF of a newspaper article from the Potter Leader-Enterprise can be downloaded here: http://www.amerisurv.com/PDF/Potter_County_Article.pdf

Tracking employees with GPS

Q. I recently found out that the company I am working for has been tracking us through a GPS service on our mobile phones. What bothers me is that we are supposed to always have our phones with us. This means they know where I am away from work, weekends and evenings. Any employee can log on to the Web site and know where I am. Is this legal?

A. Yes, it is probably legal.

Companies probably should not track their employees when they are not on duty, but as long as you have been made aware of your company’s policy, they are not invading your privacy under the law. It is possible that this sort of action will be illegal in the future, but for now, it is acceptable.

If you want to keep your job, your options are not good. If you take a stand, you may lose your job. If you sue your employer, you must then endure the hardship of a lawsuit just to prove you were right. (And you will probably need to find a new job as well.)

Houston Chronicle - United States
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/lipman/6438192.html

Surveyors need to be registered

Surveyors need to be registered
Sunday Vision, Uganda

The way the surveying profession is being run in this country leaves a lot to be desired. Various qualified land surveyors, quantity surveyors and valuation surveyors are being deliberately denied registration by the Surveyors Registration Board.

They have made applications for registration many times which the board keeps rejecting, giving lame excuses.

The situation is quite alarming as, according to the list published last year, there are only 83 registered surveyors in Uganda. It is interesting to note that of over 200 students have graduated in Land Surveying from Makerere University since 1994 but only 10 have been registered. One wonders how the 10 were considered and the 190 rejected.

Most members of the board have there own private surveying firms. The fear of competition from the young surveyors has, therefore, resulted in them being blocked by denying them registration.

We appeal to the respective authorities to intervene to save the terrible situation in the matter of registration of surveyors in this country.

Concerned Surveyor
Kampala

http://www.sundayvision.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=7&newsCategoryId=131&newsId=681536

Trading a motorcycle for antique compasses

When I was in the Army in Germany back in the late sixties and early seventies, a friend and I each bought a BSA motorcycle. I bought the 650cc Lightning, and my friend bought the Firebird Scrambler. Both were twin-carb models, and the only other difference was that the Firebird had upswept tailpipes and a slightly different gear ratio, more suitable for off-road riding. Here's a 1970 shot in Germany:

The Army had a program whereby you could get out of the Army in Germany and you then had a year and the Army would still fly you back to the US for free. So, we both got out and drove our motorcycles all the way to the edge of the Sahara Desert in Morocco. As we were returning to Tangier, the clutch on my bike went out, so we put the bikes on a Czech freighter bound for NYC. After returning by train to Germany, we flew home, had a new clutch installed in mine in NYC, and then drove them to Oklahoma City. Just outside OKC, the oil pump on my bike went out so my parents came with a trailer and got us. And so, my bike sat in my parents' garage from the Spring of 1971. I always figured I'd get it fixed so I could putt-putt around town, but finally realized that I'd never get it fixed. Here's a shot in my parents' garage:

One of the writers for the magazine, Jeff Lock of Akron OH, has had an award-winning 35-year career in antique automobile restoration. About 10 years ago he decided to get into 18th century survey instrument restoration and he's had a few articles in the magazine about that (you can search for Jeff Lock on our website to see his outrageous photography. He even made a presentation at Oxford). When Jeff heard that I had the bike, he said he'd never done a motorcycle restoration and offered to trade the bike for an antique compass. So, on one of my road trips, I stopped by my parent's house and picked up the bike and drove it to Akron. Jeff decided that the bike was worth two compasses, and here's what I traded for (instrument shots by Jeff):

Young & Sons Explorer’s Compass: This miniature compass, made to the very high standards of Young & Sons work, is a smaller and more easier transported version often used where its diminutive size was advantageous to the surveyor. Very few of these, because of its size, are recorded.

Plane Table Compass (a.k.a. trough compass): This professionally-manufactured, Colonial plane table compass is unique in the fact that it has a complex needle lifter mechanism internal to the case. The style of needle and rope knurling of the needle lifter screw suggests a high level of competency in manufacture. The thick ivory scale, extending from 30-0-30 on each side is expertly divided and the case is constructed from Cuban mahogany and retains a warm, reddish-brown hue.

Here's some shots of me and Jeff in his workshop in Akron:

And here's Jeff's efforts thus far on the restoration:


All in all, I'm pleased with my trade. Instead of a motorcycle I hadn't seen or ridden in nearly forty years, I now have two compasses that I can enjoy every day.

February and March articles posted

Editorial: Raising the Stakes Having once spent time blue-topping hubs for I-40 west of Oklahoma City, I can probably safely say that wood pounding is something surveyors won't miss when it comes to new technology methods--like machine control... Read the Article

Point to Point: GIS Follies This just in from the You've Got To Be Kidding Department: There has been a serious attempt to develop algorithms to convert vague metes and bounds calls into mathematical data... Read the Article

The Caves of Naica Since it began operation in the late 1800s, the Naica Mine in Chihuahua, Mexico has proven to be one of the richest silver deposits in the world. In 1910, at a depth of 120 meters, a small cave was discovered. Named the Cueva de las Espadas... Read the Article

Descending to the Challenge In one sense, it was an exceptionally straightforward job: all that Illinois' V3 Companies was being asked to do was survey a mostly straight, 1,600-foot long, limestone quarry tunnel... Read the Article

Training Recruiters: A New "TwiST" A question often asked of surveyors is "Are we doing all we can to get the word out to the next generation of potential surveyors?" As a professor of geomatics at Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT)... Read the Article

A Visit to Altus Positioning Systems For Olympians "Citius, Altius, Fortius" is Latin for "faster, higher, stronger." For surveyors, Altus Positioning Systems draws its name from the Latin word meaning high and deep. High (in terms of their GNSS satellite-related equipment) and deep (from the heavyweight lineup of... Read the Article

A Visit to Septentrio Satellite Navigation I first became acquainted with Septentrio Satellite Navigation in 2001 when the company's CEO, Peter Grognard, made a presentation that was favorably received at a Civil Global Positioning System Service Interface Committee (CGSIC) conference... Read the Article

Vantage Point: Selling the Profession A few months ago, I was deposed by the plaintiff in a suit for which I was serving as expert witness. The peculiar part was that the defendant had hired me, so I had an inkling that this would be an adversarial affair... Read the Article

Parallax: Acts of Notice Years ago, making the transition from strictly construction surveying to land surveying, I took employment with a tactless, rude and crusty old surveyor that really had a massive heart of gold. This fellow suffered from an affliction that I have unfortunately witnessed far too many times in our profession ... Read the Article

March 2009 articles:

Editorial: Trimble Dimensions 2009 Defying the economy, Trimble's fourth annual user conference hosted more than 2,400 registered attendees from 67 countries. In his opening keynote, Trimble CEO Steve Berglund presented refreshingly candid remarks by saying that 15 months ago (at the last conference), participants were .... Read the Article

A Visit to Amberg Technologies As I have written before, one of the things I enjoy most about my job as editor is bringing new technology to our readers, so it gives me great pleasure to present something entirely new in this issue. Last November we journeyed to .... Read the Article

Refined Dimensions - High-definition Scanning Helps Redefine Oil Refinery Fabrication Today's modern oil refinery is a huge, efficient industrial facility that takes crude petroleum pumped from deep within the earth and turns it into useful products such as ... Read the Article

A Line Runs Through It - PLSC Supports New 40th Parallel Exhibit The northern Front Range of what is now Colorado was a pristine wilderness well into the 1850s, trampled only by a small number of trappers and explorers, and by the ... Read the Article

ASTM E57 - 3D Imaging Systems In 2003, in response to a request from the scanner manufacturers and consumers of scan data, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) agreed to develop standards and specifications for both equipment and methods. Subsequently, the American Society for .... Read the Article

Conference Review: Leica's HDS Conference Encourages New Scanning Companies In past issues of this magazine, I have been intemperate in my praise of laser scanning's potential to remake surveying, engineering and, indeed, all of infrastructure. Or was I? Because the continued .... Read the Article

A Teen's Lunar Quest Operation E.A.G.L.E is not a military project. It is a scientific endeavor undertaken by 16-year-old Rebecca England, a sophomore at Demopolis High School in Alabama. While many teenage girls are focused on celebrity ... Read the Article

Vantage Point: When Saving Is Not Equal to Preserving We try to "save" buildings for many reasons­to save a slice of history that happened there, to reflect life as it used to be, to save samples of a famous architect's work, and sometimes just for their sheer beauty. But what does it mean to "preserve" a building? Does it mean to ... Read the Article

FeedBack Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. I enjoyed "Hidden Point Offset" by Shawn Billings [Nov 2008], but have a small bone to pick, with all due respect to Mr. Billings. If one uses Mr. Billings' formula of Nl - [(Nl - Nh)/(HRl - HRh) * HRl substituting the appropriate terms for ... Read the Article

April/May articles posted

Editorial: SPAR 2009 and the Carlson User Conference
The American Surveyor has covered a whole lot of territory since our last issue! As part of a second road trip, I attended both SPAR 2009 conference in Denver and the 2nd Annual Carlson User Conference in Lexington, Kentucky, with a quick trip out to Logan, Utah in between (more on that leg of the .... Read the Article

WowFactor: SOKKIA Mobile Reference Station As GPS has been adopted by surveyors, its proven benefits­higher productivity and efficiency­have been recognized. The unfortunate tradeoff to these benefits remains the high system cost of a traditional base and rover setup. To reduce the costs of GPS surveying, many countries have installed a permanent RTK infrastructure which .... Read the Article

A Model Home For NASA's New Space Telescope NASA commissioned construction of an environmental simulation test chamber which was completed in 1964 at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. The facility, Chamber A, was invaluable for testing spacecraft and satellites before deployment to space. By testing spacecraft in an environment similar to ... Read the Article

John Austin Survey To become an owner of land in 1824 under Mexican law one had to do certain things­pay a fee, take possession of the land, perform certain rites, and reside on and cultivate the land for a minimum of two years (this also meant defending one's life and properties against any war parties of ... Read the Article

Conference Review: GNSS - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? - Part 1 A December 2008 meeting hosted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California brought together not only the "Big 3" GNSS constellation providers but the new kids on the block as well, driving home the point that while GNSS may be "worldy" by nature it is getting "worldier" (if I can coin a term) by the .... Read the Article

Equipment Review: JAVAD GNSS Triumph-1 In the world of precision GPS, Javad Ashjaee continues to push the industry ahead with new technologies and new options. With roots that date back to the early days of Trimble Navigation, Javad was integral to the creation of the first combined GPS/ GLONASS system. More than a decade ago he was .... Read the Article

Direct Reflex vs. Standard Prism Measurements Upon reading Mr. Pepling's product review of the Spectra Precision Focus 10 in the October 2008 issue, I took notice to one of the paragraphs on page 52. Mr. Pepling, and hopefully others, thought it would be interesting to see the results of a test comparing traditional prism measurements to ... Read the Article

Field Notes: Contemplating Cooley Rules for retracing the subdivision of sections are well and good provided the rules were followed in the first place. Sometimes they were not. If you have already made that discovery for yourself, my story will sound familiar. If you have not, read on anyway. With a job like this it's better to live ... Read the Article

Vantage Point: Mapping the Zone
In March of 2007, the National Academies/National Research Council (NRC) informed me that I had been provisionally accepted as a member of "the National Research Council's Committee on FEMA Flood Maps: Accuracy Assessment and Cost-Effective Improvements". The first official meeting of ... Read the Article

Surveyors Being Blamed for Ike-damaged Homes

By Eric Dexheimer
March 3, 2009
Austin American-Statesman, Austin, TX

It’s not often we get to use the words “investigation” and “Texas Board of Professional Land Surveying” in the same sentence.

At last.

Typically, the state surveying board flies well below the public radar. The vast majority of its enforcement actions involve low-level boundary disputes, about 60 a year.

But late last month the agency recommended an unusually large $6,000 fine for each of two South Texas surveyors accused of violating state rules. The mistakes the surveyors are accused of making, however, will probably end up costing a couple dozen Texas homeowners hundreds of thousands of dollars.

First, the history, courtesy of TBPLS investigator Garey Gilley: Years ago, the Federal Emergency Management Agency let cities and counties choose if they wanted to participate in its flood insurance program. Those that did agreed not to permit any buildings below what came to be known as the base flood level.

Jefferson County decided that the ground floor of structures had to be at least one foot above base flood elevation (also known as the 100-year flood plain). Structures built above that mark were not required to have flood insurance. Local surveyors pinpointed the base flood elevation using 30-year-old federal measurements inscribed on concrete-and-brass monuments erected by the National Geodetic Survey.

In the mid-1980s, FEMA published a new flood insurance rate map, but with different measurements. It recalculated the base flood level based on a new study showing that the Beaumont-area flood plain had actually shifted about three feet since the federal government’s first measurements in the 1950s.

But, Gilley says, local surveyors didn’t know about the new map. They continued to rely on the old NGS elevation numbers. Unfortunately, that meant that people who thought their new homes were being built above flood level were actually building two feet below it.

Gilley says about 20 homes near LaBelle were mis-constructed. “That’s what got the surveyors in trouble,” he says. “They never looked at the new FEMA map.”

The three-foot difference became crystal clear in 2008, when Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast. Some residents whose homes should have been above the flooding found themselves wading in water instead.

Worse, because of the wrong measurements, they had not bought flood insurance. And now that the homes were in a recognized flood plain, FEMA would not permit them to be rebuilt.

Although two surveyors — Soutex Surveyors Inc., of Port Arthur and Harold F. Locke and Associates, of Port Neches — are the current target of the Board of Professional Land Surveying action (see the agency’s report here) Gilley says other surveyors are being investigated for making the same expensive mistake. The three-foot discrepancy has also spawned a half-dozen lawsuits against Soutex.

According to Gilley, there are many similar areas across Texas, where, unbeknownst to homeowners, new FEMA maps disagree with old federal measurements. “There are absolutely more situations like this,” he says.

Judge Awards $405K in Lincoln Flood Plain Suit

By Lori Pilger
Lincoln Journal Star - Saturday, Dec 27, 2008

A Lancaster County judge has ordered the city of Lincoln to pay $405,000 to three couples given city-issued building permits but not told that their new homes would be in a 10-year flood plain.

The city owes Troy and Shari Stonacek $165,000, Brad and Jennifer Sheaff $140,000 and George and Lori Bristol $100,000 in damages for not informing the families when it gave the permits for them to build, according to the ruling by District Judge Steven Burns.

Government officials told the families at a meeting in May 2005 their homes were in a flood plain - prompting three lawsuits.

In 2007, Burns found the city negligent after a bench trial.

On Dec. 1 and Dec. 4, he heard testimony again in the cases.

At issue was the amount of damage the couples had as a result of the city's actions.

Experts for the couples and for the city didn't vary greatly as to how much the homes in the Cardwell Woods subdivision in southwest Lincoln would be worth if they weren't in a 10-year flood plain, where 4 to 5 inches of rain in 24 hours causes a flood.

The Stonaceks' home would be worth $600,000 to $630,000; the Bristols' $300,000 to $330,000; and the Sheaffs' $500,000 to $525,000, they said, according to the order.

"However, there is significant difference between the experts on the method of determining the amount of damage to the properties in this case," Burns wrote.

John Bredemeyer, the expert for the plaintiffs, put total damages at $755,000. Defense expert Frank Frost put it at $178,125.

In the end, Burns ruled almost smack in the middle.

According to the order, Bredemeyer considered that the couples essentially could not use their basements; that homes within a flood plain were valued 5 percent less than comparable homes outside the flood plain; and that the homes were affected more because they were in a 10-year flood plain rather than a 100-year flood plain.

Frost argued that method unfairly compounded damages. He said the only question necessary was if the property was in or out of a flood plain. He said he relied on three studies that reflected an 8- to 12-percent difference in price between homes in a flood plain and homes that aren't. It was his opinion the homes had been damaged by 12.5 percent.

But Burns' order said it was unclear how he arrived at 12.5 percent. He said Frost testified that he had found two homes in a flood plain in Lincoln that sold for 18-19 percent less than homes like them that were not in a flood plain.

"The court is persuaded that it must guard against overlapping impact on value from the variables considered," Burns wrote.

But, he said, he was persuaded to take three factors argued by the plaintiffs into consideration:

1.) That there is a distinction between a home with a dry basement and one that takes on water, regardless of if it's in a flood plain;

2.) That a home in a flood plain would be valued differently than the same home in another location, and;

3.) That the frequency of flooding probably also would affect what someone would pay for it.

Burns said he found it is "more than probable than not" that the plaintiffs have been damaged in the three areas.

"Having made this finding, the court of necessity must engage in some degree of estimation - speculation, if you will - as to the amount of the damage," he said.

Then Burns entered judgment for the Stonaceks for $165,000, the Sheaffs for $140,000 and the Bristols for $100,000.

According to court records, the city knew well before 2005, even before the families purchased the lots, the area was in a flood plain.

A state Natural Resources study of the area, completed and submitted to the city in January 1997, showed a flood-elevation level of 1,208 feet.

City employees put the map in the Cardwell Woods file at the Building and Safety office. Yet, when the city issued building permits to the families between 1998 and 2003, each was given a flood plain elevation based on an older, and inaccurate, FEMA map.

At trial, the city argued - among other things - that it had no legal obligation to the families. It also contended it was immune from the claims because whether or not its employees disclosed the Natural Resources map to the plaintiffs was a "discretionary act" and, thus, protected by tort law.

Burns rejected the arguments.