Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Surveying in the News

As part of my daily news-gathering, I come across many interesting items that involve surveying. Some are wacky, while others are sobering.

For instance, we take our system of land registration and land titling for granted. But in many parts of the world, this is not so, and ownership of land is often subject to corruption. The UN recently announced an initiative to combat this. You can read about it HERE. Corruption, especially in Africa, is rampant, as you can see HERE.

Under the category of odd, this newly-developed device might be a good thing, but I'm not sure why anyone would want to use GPS to track a simple letter through the postal system. But obviously, at least one company thinks this is something we need, and you can read about HERE.

And just today, an Escondido, CA newspaper reported about surveying and GIS is being used to retrace a 150-year-old wagon road through the town of Temecula. You can read about it HERE.