Surveying, Mapping and GIS

In Pennsylvania, the position of County Surveyor was abolished decades ago. Elsewhere, some states do still have County Surveyors - yet where still in use, it has in some instances become politicized, or may have duties which are either murky, inconsistent from one place to another, or even a position without any duties. Many consider the position "antiquated".

Here, the County Surveyor could be responsible for reviewing submitted plans, for working with other local surveyors toward getting surveyed parcels, subdivisions, rights-of-ways and so on tied to a consistent system of monumentation, via GPS and other means, and so on, tying deeds and land records data to GIS data - toward iteratively refining the cadastre toward providing ever-increasing degrees of accuracy and reliability. Similarly, the County Surveyor could work with his counterparts in adjoining counties collaboratively toward building and bolstering regional, and ultimately statewide partnerships such as PAMAP here in Pennsylvania, which was a collaborative effort toward leveraging investments for obtaining aerial imagery - similar approaches can be taken toward gathering a host of other core datasets and mapping, such as LIDAR data, hydrology, roads, utilities, buildings and structures, and so on.

The maxim in the surveying community of "GIS = Get It Surveyed" is still alive and well, where cadastral GIS is concerned.

Some GIS horror stories du jour:

• Community in New Hampshire that's assigning parcel IDs to gaps and overlaps found in their GIS system


• A county in Oregon that took the above one step further, and actually decided to try and auction off those gap and overlap "parcels" (fortunately the county surveyor stepped in and advised them otherwise)
  
• Central New York state - a county tax department assigned parcel status to a gore area and the county auctioned it off, created many problems.


• A county in Virginia that was fighting to keep their GIS data over that of actual survey data in the case of a discrepancy, strictly because the assessed GIS acreage was more than the actual acreage owned, resulting in more income for the county


• And the most ridiculous of the lot - a county in Texas, that when they couldn't locate the current owner of the parcel, rather than researching it and resolving it, they filled it in with a fictitious name - "Arnold Ziffel".

When it comes to cadastral GIS, I've said it before, and I'll say it again - land surveyors still are and will always continue to be the domain experts when it comes to resolving property line location, relationship to adjoiners and senior ownership, chain of title, relationship to found evidence in the field, and toward discrepancies, gaps and overlaps. Let's also throw understanding of rights-of-way, easements, road dockets, riparian rights, PLSS and the like, and how these likewise affect and impact ownership and taxation.

If you have discrepancies, data gaps, quality issues, other issues, I cannot stress it enough to county tax departments - work with the surveyors. Some counties are very good about this- others are downright frightening if not dangerous.

Finally back home, after spending a week on the road for a few meetings around the country, including the NCEES Uniform Procedures and Legislative Guidelines committee meeting, to which I was recently appointed, to discuss the 5-year review of the NCEES Model Law and Rules and other associated charges, and a couple of days at the Pennsylvania Surveyors Conference.

Amazingly, during the course of one week, US Airways managed to lose one of my bags not once, but twice, on my way down to Florida and then on the way back. The bag did finally show up, but not after it took me a few trips to the store to restock on a few sundries, and not without finally arriving with a trashed wheel.


At any rate, it was a great trip, but I am happy to be home again.


The PSLS Conference was particularly enjoyable, I got to see a lot of old friends and colleagues from around the state, with a great turnout from our PSLS Pocono Chapter, as well as a few friends from the RPLS.COM message board, a few folks from PAMAGIC, and there were a bunch of great sessions to attend...

The sessions I attended:

• Introduction to FEMA National Flood Insurance, presented by Wendy Lathrop PLS, CFM - this was a great session, giving an overview of the DFIRM flood maps and data, versus Q3, discussion of the zones and base flood elevations and processes for submitting map amendments, for working with instances of fill and development within a flood zone, and other associated issues - will post more on FEMA, "Map Modernization" and the DFIRM process in the very near future, as it raises a huge, longstanding concern of mine regarding DFIRM data. Umm, on second thought, NO, I won't post more on my issues and concerns on DFIRMs and MapMod - at least until AFTER the upcoming RFP response...
  
  

  Surveyors use floodplain maps to identify flood-prone areas of sites and to determine the extent of those hazards. We will look at how first Housing and
  Urban Development (HUD) and later the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began mapping flood hazard areas, how the process has changed over the years, and the surveyor’s role in updating and correcting those maps. Regulations and use of the appropriate forms provide practical background when serving our clients and protecting ourselves from liability

• Records Research, presented by Lionel "Buck" Alexander PLS & Charles Colony PE PLS - this was a great session on cadastral research and locating legal records from a variety of sources, not just deed books, but registers of wills, orphans' court, road dockets, and many other sources.
  
  

  This workshop will cover how a deed research is started and completed. It will look at indexing systems, reading and interpreting deeds for chain of title, and the use of plats and plans in deed research, wills, estates, and tax sales as related to deed research will be discussed.

• Survey Measurement Analysis, presented by Chuck Ghilani, Ph.D. - this one featured analysis and propagation of error, and adjustment of error via least squares.
  
  

  This workshop will present and demonstrate the basic statistical analysis necessary to perform least squares adjustments. It will describe methods for
  analyzing and adjusting measurements to account for their errors. This workshop seeks to furnish theoretical understanding and demonstrate computer-aided application to common survey types including level networks, horizontal survey measurement networks, and GPS baseline networks.

• Easements and Rights of Way, presented by Gary Kent - this session gave a great overview of some of the legal aspects of easements and rights-of-way, in how easements and rights-of-way can be formed either through written or unwritten means (such as by necessity), along with case law and other great info.
  
  

  This workshop has the overall objective of helping surveyors more fully understand the types, elements and nature of easements, both written and
  unwritten. Specific performance objectives include improving participants'
  knowledge base such that after attending this workshop, they are able to: define what is an easement, outline the various types of easements, explain the difference between appurtenant easements and easements in gross, explain the difference between an easement and a license, identify the ways in which easements can be created and terminated, identify the types of unwritten easements and explain the nature of each type of unwritten easement.

• Dendrology & Forest Ecology, presented by Tim Pierson Ph.D. & Ken Comstock PLS
  This session provided a great overview of forestry - types of trees, mensuration and valuation of trees, forest growth and sustainability and history of Pennsylvania's forests and forest stewardship.
  
  

  Tree identification and understanding of the uses and values of our timber heritage. Also, the study of forest growth and the relationship of trees to our environment, and to our work as surveyors.

After hearing some recent trials and tribulations of a surveyor arguing a legal lot line adjustment with the county GIS department (same story repeated again and again all across the nation), it again underscores the issue of what is or isn't cadastral GIS.

In Pennsylvania, our State Law says,

“Practice of Land Surveying” means the practice of that branch of the profession of engineering which involves the location, relocation, establishment, reestablishment or retracement of any property line or boundary of any parcel of land or any road right-ofway, easement or alignment; the use of principles of land surveying, determination of the position of any monument or reference point which marks a property line boundary, or corner setting, resetting or replacing any such monument or individual point including the writing of deed descriptions; procuring or offering to procure land surveying work for himself or others; managing or conducting as managers, proprietors or agent any place of business from which land surveying work is solicited, performed, or practiced; the performance of the foregoing acts and services being prohibited to persons who are not granted certificates of registration under this act as a professional land surveyor unless exempt under other provisions of this act.

I haven't posted in a while, have been busy with a number of things, such as new projects kicking off, proposals to write, along with a number of meetings.

This weekend, I got home from a couple of meetings, the NCEES Northeast Zone meeting and Colonial States Boards of Surveying Registration. One of the interesting things I learned a bit more about there was the South Carolina system of tiered land surveying licensure. One that struck me as odd is the GIS Surveyor licensure that was passed several years ago.

In South Carolina, they have implemented a series of surveying licenses, which are subsetted to certain disciplines - photogrammetry and geodetic surveyor were two of the ones I had heard discussed more about. With these, it's historically been my understanding and feeling that geodesists and photogrammetrists pretty much stuck to their respective fields, with little overlap or interest in boundary work or other aspects of surveying. GIS Surveyor seems like an odd one, though.

This is how South Carolina has implemented it:

• South Carolina Code of Laws
• South Carolina Code of Regulations

I had a most enjoyable evening last night - several of us met up at TGI Fridays last night, Walter Robillard, Chuck Ghilani and his wife, several folks from PSLS Pocono Chapter - Harry and Bill Schoenagel and Steve Lesher.

After some great conversation over dinner, we went down to Penn State Wilkes-Barre and Mr. Robillard gave a spirited presentation covering quite a few interesting cases, involving evidence, case law, PLSS versus metes-and-bounds, and touched on many issues that drive the need for surveyors, attorneys and other professionals dealing with boundaries need to be aware of and deal with. It really drove home the message of doing due dilligence and for forging partnerships with our fellow professionals in the legal profession. With a good 30 to 40 people in attendance, including the Penn State student surveying constituent, it was a great turnout.

• Clark on Surveying and Boundaries
• Evidence and Procedures for Boundary Location
• Brown's Boundary Control and Legal Principles

I just came across a spanish-language blog, called TopoNorte - the author features a wide variety of great geospatial and surveying content. Some items I thought were particularly great:
Cadastral mapping of Spain, using Google Maps: http://www.goolzoom.com/


And here, a publication on geodesy and UTM grids by Professor Ignacio Alonso Fernández-Coppel at the University of Valladolid:

http://www.elagrimensor.com.ar/elearning/lecturas/Las%20coordenadas%20geograficas.pdf

The MAPPS lawsuit, to clarify provisions of the Brooks act, as they pertain to geospatial, mapping and surveying activities has been postponed from this Friday to 2/9, per Adena Shutzberg at Directions Magazine - it will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

I am looking forward to spending some time over the next few days at the Pennsylvania Surveyors' Conference. It's always a great time to catch up with old friends, as well as get some updates on various things going on in the world of surveying and mapping. This year I am going to focus on the GPS track, something I have not been doing my due dilligence on of late.

On another note, it's beginning to amaze me how many geospatial-related conferences are cropping up of late. I just got a notice of the Rocket City conference in Huntsville, and there have been several others in the last few months and more upcoming. I can certainly understand thematic conferences, regional ones, vendor-
oriented ones... but are we getting to the point where there are just too many?

A battle is imminent, with several professional societies challenging the Federal Government on whether the Brooks Act should apply to geospatial contracting efforts.

A trial is scheduled for February 2nd, Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPS), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) and Council on Federal Procurement of Architectural and Engineering Services (COFPAES) v. United States of America - to provide definition and clarity and to look toward Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS) in mapping procurements.

Directions Magazine provides their perspective on the issue, and drew my attention. MAPPS provides a page discussing the background and legal history.

The outcome should prove interesting - many issues have been simmering with regard to state and federal definitions of surveying and mapping, particularly as technologies have continued to evolve. I have my own unique perspective, as a geospatial practitioner, as a licensed professional, and as a member of a state licensing board - and these perspectives are in some ways in great harmony, largely in support of Qualifications-based Selection, however also in some ways in dissonance with QBS, as mere fact of licensure may not qualify one to perform the work. As a regulatory body, the State Registration Boards' duty is to ensure protection of the public - and in many ways, lack of adherence to the Brooks Act has skirted this. However, many state laws are similarly overbroad, and/or antiquated.

GIS Development magazine discusses an item on Portal Iraq - establishment of a digital registration system for land ownership in Iraq. As numerous records had been destroyed during the war, it had been crucial to re-establish commercial agricultural operations- The Iraq Ministry of Agriculture had established a framework, however they did not have adequate resources for making the system functional. According to the article, the USAID Agriculture Reconstruction and Development for Iraq gave the Ministry of Agriculture hardware, software and "digital mapping equipment, satellite imagery".

It sounds like the system goes beyond mere recordkeeping. Is it possible that this may be an opportunity for establishment of a digital, coordinated cadastre for Iraq? Between the 6 NGS CORS stations that have recently been set up in Iraq by the 175th Engineer Bn. along with the 2-300 station HARN network recently reported in American Surveyor magazine, they are well set for moving into a modern era.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports a sticky lawsuit over an eminent domain case, where the South Allegheny School District had taken a man's land by eminent domain, and paid the wrong family- based on errors in the tax assessment system.

Evidently, there were misnumbered lots on a plat, compounded by a propagation of error when the county re-drew the map. As a result, the tax map system had the wrong owners shown, who were apparently compensated $80,000 by the district.

The county is planning to go to a GIS-based system, but the question and doubt remains as to how many faulty property lines and how much erroneous ownership data is propagated from map to map, and carried over into GIS-based tax assessment systems.

Typically, from what I have seen, tax mapping GIS systems are often digitized/rubbersheeted from old hand-drawn maps, or 1"=400' scale or worse. Additionally, much of the work, whether manual or GIS-based, is performed without the benefit of thorough analysis, input or research of deeds, ownership and boundary data.

It's disturbing on many levels- first the School District should have done its due dilligence to verify the parcel and its ownership. Also, Cadastral GIS systems tend to be a pet peeve of mine- It's another example of where domain expertise and GIS expertise need to come together, lest they simply become a system to generate pretty maps that only get people in trouble.