Surveying, Mapping and GIS

To follow on to my previous post, "Epic Battles: GIS versus Land Surveying?" I have compiled this list of Land Surveying Practice Acts. These are state laws, which govern the practice of land surveying within each jurisdiction, and which define what each jurisdiction views as work to be performed by licensed land surveyors.

• Alabama


• Alaska


• Arizona


• Arkansas


• California


• Colorado


• Connecticut


• Delaware


• Florida


• Georgia


• Hawaii


• Idaho


• Illinois


• Indiana


• Iowa


• Kansas


• Kentucky


• Louisiana


• Maine


• Maryland


• Massachusetts


• Michigan


• Minnesota


• Mississippi


• Missouri


• Montana


• Nebraska


• Nevada


• New Hampshire


• New Jersey


• New Mexico


• New York


• North Carolina


• North Dakota


• Ohio


• Oklahoma


• Oregon


• Pennsylvania


• Rhode Island


• South Carolina


• South Dakota


• Tennessee


• Texas


• Utah


• Vermont


• Virginia


• Washington


• West Virginia


• Wisconsin


• Wyoming

Discussion revolving around a planned, but retracted article on GIS for Professional Surveyor Magazine has led to a lot of interesting discussion, but to me generally reveals a continuing underlying tension and misperceptions between the GIS and Surveying communities.

Adena Schutzberg / All Points Bulletin: Update: State Licensing Board "Censors" GIS Article
James Fee / Spatially Adjusted: "GIS Practitioners as Doing Work Surveyors Should Be Doing"

While these articles post updates and amendments, based on comments by Tom Gibson, Professional Surveyor's editor, which clarifies that the author decided to retract his article, the underlying question of GIS versus surveying and legal jurisdictions still remains.

Some of the comments are telling - with perceptions and suggestions that State Licensing Boards are somehow cracking down in draconian fashion, demanding censorship and attacking GIS practitioners. Tied into this, we had the MAPPS lawsuit (another issue which I believe will resurface at some point), overlap of surveying with photogrammetry, and other issues. Meanwhile, in the surveying community, we still hear "GIS = Get It Surveyed".

I have my own, perhaps unique perspectives and insights, being a GIS practitioner since the late 1980s, as well as a licensed Land Surveyor, and finally, also serving as chair to a State Licensing Board.

Note: Having said this, please note that my comments to follow are my own personal views, and are not to be taken as official statements or in any way representative of our State Licensing Board's views.

• A county tax mapping office, where a GIS practitioner "helps" a realtor friend in a bind by preparing a property description based on lot lines in the GIS. Where did those lot lines come from? Combination of digitized paper maps, lines rubbersheeted to apparent fencelines on orthophotos, and so on. The harm? This description brings with it apparent legal connotation, as a representation of lines of ownership. The buyer may be getting a misrepresentation of what the lot's actual extent and location is.


• A municipality orders a homeowner to demolish and remove a brand new addition, based on their perception that it is in violation of setback lines - based on the GIS.

These things can be only be remedied through a proper survey. One definite question that should be asked, is whether litigation or legal action might ever be a possibility. If it's anything relating to or impacting property ownership and use, such as property boundaries, rights-of-way, easements, or things of that nature, one would definitely want reliable, accurate survey data that can hold up in a court of law. Most county GIS systems will not pass this test.

Perhaps there a jurisdictional issue at stake, such as wetlands delineation (where US EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, State Environmental Protection Agencies or others may or may not have jurisdiction, based on whether or not the land in question is a wetlands or not). Given an instance where a wetland may have been filled, drained, or otherwise encroached upon, and where the original physical evidence of plants, hydric soils, and wetlands flags may no longer exist, a surveyor's location of and ties to the wetland biologists' flags is far more likely to hold up to scrutiny, be accurately retraceable in the field, and be defensible in court than GIS data from recreational-grade GPS receivers or other approaches that are occasionally seen in use.

Or a toxic waste spill - whether it impacted adjoining properties or not - and so on. The same circumstance may come into play with other jurisdictional issues, such as taxation and municipal jurisdiction, and other areas.

Is it a specific legal requirement that these types of data be collected by surveyors in these cases? To turn that question around, in these cases it's instead a matter of basic good practice and adequate protection from dispute and liability as to how the locational data is captured.

Not every GIS practitioner has to deal with these things - but some do very much need to be cognizant of it. And certainly GIS practitioners do need to be aware of state Land Surveying Practice Acts in any regard. Ambiguities will not be resolved overnight - certainly questions of "what DOES that cadastral GIS system really represent" will continue to come up again and again. And certainly many stewards of cadastral GIS are aware of this, and put as many protections in place as they are able to - such as disclaimers and metadata, but for most citizens and casual users of the data, the phrase "consult the metadata" will only lead to glazed eyes. And while GIS systems are fully able to accomodate survey-grade data, and while some nations have made great strides toward a coordinated cadastre, here in the United States, the approach has been far more piecemeal, with varying degrees of robustness in how cadastral data can be improved. I have suggested record-level metadata for parcel data and similar approaches to allow refinement, where good, vetted, survey-grade locational data can be utilized and held toward iterative acquisition of a uniformly high-quality database. The locational accuracy of each parcel and subdivision can then be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Additionally, database linkages to plats and other survey data can be put in place.

Certainly not easy questions to answer overnight - but also hopefully I can share more insight and reality than perceptions that "Surveyors are trying to take over GIS".

As I posted previously, Alabama House Bill 333 strives to allow unlicensed individuals to perform surveying in rural areas - however, quite often it's rural areas which have significant cadastral disputes, problems with records and field evidence, and so on - which all the more require professional expertise and judgement from a knowledgeable land surveyor.

To provide some additional background, the Press-Register in Alabama provides a few details on the dispute - evidently an unlicensed, retired individual with a background as a Process Engineer was seeking to offer surveying services, and was reprimanded by the Alabama licensure board. Claims have been raised that it's "impossible to get licensed" and "impossible to pay a reasonable amount" to have a surveyor retrace the boundary or help resolve disputes.

These are countered by this analysis by Greg Spies, in the following points sent out to ASPLS:

House Bill 333

1. This bill is a slap in the face of everyone who is licensed or in the process of obtaining their license;

2. Evidently this bill was introduced for the sole benefit of an individual who is not a member of the surveying profession in Alabama; this individual, a retired engineer, allegedly, has been reported to the BOL for surveying without a license;

3. HB 333 is a retaliatory bill and places the interests of one individual (who allegedly has been surveying without a license) over the interests of every surveyor in Alabama who followed the legal procedure as defined by the Code of Alabama (1975, as amended) when they obtained their license;

4. HB 333 will set the practice of surveying back 100 years or more; it eliminates professionalism in surveying;

5. HB 333 was drafted without any input or notice from the surveying profession;

6. No licensed surveyor in the State of Alabama supports this bill.

7. The concept of a less educated, less experienced person being allowed to "survey" as a "rural surveyor" is ludicrous, to wit:

a.) rural areas in Alabama comprise approximately 90% of the geographical area of the state;

b.) 90% + of our major interstate and state highways traverse rural areas;

c.) rural areas are mostly more difficult to survey than urbanized areas in that there are fewer recent recorded subdivisions in near vicinity;

d.) surveyors are required to retrace older township plats generated during the U.S. Public Land Survey- these plats are 150 - 200 years old; the physical evidence generated during the original surveys is either lost, obliterated or difficult to find (i.e., the monuments set the bearing trees called for, etc.);

e.) prior surveys (c. 1850-1950) in rural areas were generally poorly done by so-called "rural surveyors" (e.g., non-professional surveyors, engineers, land owners, farmers, etc.) who had little if no experience and education in the art & science of surveying which has caused innumerable problems that must be dealt with by the surveyor of today;

f.) if "rural surveyors" as defined by HB 333 are allowed to practice in Alabama an increase in boundary disputes and subsequent litigation will occur; most boundary disputes and litigation occurring today is because of under-educated and under-experienced "surveyors" having determined the location of a boundary by using poor methods and extremely poor professional judgment and protocol;

g.) Elevation certificates and land title surveys require a knowledgeable and experienced professional surveyor to gather the requisite data for FEMA and the Land Title professionals; These specialized types of surveys require a surveyor to be able to accurately determine difference in elevation relative to a particular datum and require a surveyor who is trained to evaluate the record evidence as it affects a property he is surveying; the "rural surveyor" would not have the skill, experience or knowledge to accomplish these complex types of surveys;

Some have said that it takes too long to find a surveyor in certain parts of Alabama; This is true and the profession needs to address this issue and provide assistance to those counties that have no resident licensed surveyors; We should identify these areas in the vicinity of our practice and periodically offer our services in those areas;

Some have said that the cost of surveying a cotton field or a pasture is too great compared to the value of the land;

It makes absolutely no sense, however, to lower the standards of the profession of surveying for the sake of expediency and expense. Surveyors generally are some of the lowest paid professionals who work within the State.

The surveying profession has steadily sought to raise the bar of the profession over the past 80 years; the legislature passed a bill that was signed into law by the governor in 1996 that requires a four year surveying degree and an additional four years of experience under a licensed surveyor for an individual to apply to take the test to obtain his license; This method of obtaining a license to survey in Alabama supercedes an apprenticeship method that required 8 years of experience under a licensed surveyor to take the test; the window to obtain a license by the former method closed Dec. 31st, 2007.

Interestingly HB 333 was filed just a few weeks after this window closed.

What we need is a bill to strengthen the penalties for someone who surveys without a license. We do not need this "dumb down bill" that would gut the existing laws on the books related to surveying;

Tell your legislators to stop HB 333 from seeing the light of day; this bill needs to be seen for what it is- a veiled attempt to assist a constituent who has broken the law.

The Alabama Legislature currently has a bill pending, HB 333, sponsored by Rep. Keahey, which essentially waters down Alabama's regulation for the practice of land surveying - an excerpt of the proposed bill is presented below:

Section 2. (a) The practice of rural land surveyor is limited to rural areas and municipalities with a population of less than 5,000.
(b) To qualify as a rural land surveyor one must meet one of the following requirements:
(1) Graduation from a four-year curriculum in civil engineering or forestry and successfully passing a written examination approved by the board relating to the laws, procedures, and practices of land surveying in Alabama.
(2) Graduation from an approved technical curriculum related to surveying or forestry; two years of supervised surveying experience; and successfully passing a written examination approved by the board relating to the laws, procedures, and practices of land surveying in Alabama.
(3) Eight or more years of field experience in land surveying and letters of recommendation from at least three individuals that will attest to satisfactory surveying work during these years.

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

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.

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.