Surveying, Mapping and GIS

The Times of India brings a story, speaking to the necessity of preserving maps and records dealing with boundaries - apparently the official maps depicting the boundary of the Indian state of Nagaland have gone completely missing.

Nagaland is a hill state in the foothills of the Himalayas, located in the far northeast of India, adjoining the Indian states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, and bordering Myanmar (formerly Burma) to the east.

From the article,

The government has lost all "original documents" — comprising details of boundaries — of Nagaland, in a glaring instance of callous handling of vital public documents.

The Union home ministry and the Assam government, which originally kept the records of Nagaland, do not even have the valid "map" of the state which ironically is in the throes of violence sparked by the demand to carve out Greater Nagaland by extending the existing boundaries of the state.

The matter came as a shock to home ministry officials when it was brought to light for the first time by Nagaland during its submission before the Local Commission on the Assam-Nagaland Border here last week.

In response to the commission's direction to submit before it the original documents of the state to settle boundary disputes, Nagaland said it was not in a position to give the written statement unless "its original documents which were purportedly lost by Assam" were returned.

At present, it looks like some of the details of the boundary will have to be recreated from surveys and whatever remaining documentation can be salvaged. The region has not been without its share of historic boundary disputes.

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.

As such, what exactly does a tax map represent? It seems that many GIS departments hop back and forth between boxes, either arguing that it is not surveying, and only deals with a schematic showing taxation, but at the same time, argue issues of deeds and possession, enter their parcel boundaries using COGO, and so on.

Either it is, or it isn't. If it is indeed a representation of the cadastre - and after all, taxation is uniquely tied back to the parcels and their possession - then it needs to be properly treated as such.

If, on the other hand, it's not a representation of the cadastre, then perhaps it's in fact something which perhaps has no real meaning, merit or legal standing whatsoever.

If the former is the case, then it likely needs to be getting developed and maintained under the purview of a licensed professional land surveyor, per state law - if the latter is the case, then I believe the whole process needs to be re-evaluated.

I'll put this out there for debate, with the caveat that I did intend to stir the pot - I'm interested in getting others' earnest perspectives.

I was amazed to see the articles in the news about the border fence debacle, where construction evidently went full-tilt along the US-Mexico border to construct a fence to prevent illegal immigration, following 120-year-old barbed wire strands, and without any apparent proper surveying research, and construction stakeout.

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

Historically, geodesy and photogrammetry have gone hand-in-hand with surveying, each a very specialized subdomain. Historically, however, neither of these have required licensure in most areas, and given the limited numbers of practitioners in these fields, and the limited number of litigations or other legal conundrums generally associated with geodesy or photogrammetry, I am not entirely certain that licensure even is warranted.

However, GIS is such a broad field. GIS supports so many disciplines, such as archaeology, urban and regional planning, resource conservation, geology, socioeconomics, and so on. In terms of overlap with surveying, it would be a Venn diagram showing a modest overlap - particularly where it comes to cadastral data, geodesy, photogrammetry, and locational data acquisition and locational data quality. But there is plenty to GIS which has nothing whatsoever to do with surveying.

The question of licensure brings up a number of other questions. Has the practice of GIS been trouble-free? Not at all. Has GIS been misused, have lawsuits arisen due to improper use of GIS? Yes. And unfortunately many of these have been as a result of improper use of cadastral data, where for instance tax-map grade GIS data was used to pursue building setback violations, or other ordinance-based conundrums, rather than relying on an actual field survey to verify lines of possession and improvements in the field. In some instances, unlicensed GIS practitioners have done such things as utilized handheld GPS units to locate property corners and similar features in the field. When it comes to these sorts of things, does GIS trespass on practice of land surveying? In most states, yes. And as such, they can be pursued under existing land surveying licensure laws.

In some instances, GIS data must be strictly controlled, due to legal implications, due to pending litigation or cost recovery in the instance of environmental cleanup data, due to loss of sensitive and endangered species in the case of conservation, or risk of looting in the case of archaeological data, and so on. In some of these instances, perhaps professional licensure may indeed be appropriate for GIS practitioners - the "protect the public" part of the equation being bolstered with risk to practitioners who do not exercise proper care, such as fines or loss of licensure. But does that have anything to do with surveying? No. Another approach is through self-policing within the GIS community, as some current proposals have it, but even good intentions pave the road to hell.

It will be interesting to see what the times bear.

For additional background, I have found a number of discussions on this - yet they all just seem to scratch the surface...

Information posted to the South Carolina State Mapping Advisory Committee

Further correspondence posted by Patrick J. Bresnahan, Richland County SC

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.