geomaticsworld 2015 · free digital subscription for professional surveyorssee page 3 ......

GeomaticsWorld SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2015

The future for surveyors is BIM

consulting

Measurementtechniques for

vessel sensor offsets

The Sagrada Familia:geometry and a

client in no hurry

Plaques, geodeticpendulums and

James Joyce

HxGN LIVE! 2015:shaping smart

change

Issue No 6 : Volume 23

Surveying for geographical and spatial information in the 21st century

FREE DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION FOR PROFESSIONAL SURVEYORS see page 3

Geomatics: it’s all about robust measurement

F

Copy dates for November/December issue: Editorial: 05 October Advertising: 19 October

IIII NNNN TTTT HHHH EEEE NNNN EEEE XXXX TTTT IIII SSSS SSSS UUUU EEEE oooo ffff GW.... .... ....Intergeo – all the latest gismos and launches

The Open Geospatial Consortium – what does it do for surveying?

p.05 Editorialp.06 Newsp.08 Calendarp.09 Chair’s Columnp.10 Undercurrentsp.15 Policy watch

p.27 Book Reviewp.32 Overcurrentsp.36 Legal Notesp.37 Downunder currentsp.38 Products & Servicesp.39 Classified

Geomatics World is published bi-monthly by PV Publications Ltd on behalf of the Royal Institutionof Chartered Surveyors Geomatics Professional Groupand is distributed to group members and othersubscribing professionals.

Editor: Stephen Booth

Technical Editor: Richard Groom

Advertising: Sharon Robson

Subscriptions: Jason Poole

Editorial BoardIan Coddington, Pat Collins, Professor Ian Dowman,Richard Groom, Alan Haugh, James Kavanagh,Professor Jon Mills, Dr Stuart Robson, Dr Martin Smith

Overseas SourcesRoy Dale – New ZealandNick Day – USA

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Printing: The Manson Group, St Albans, UK

September / October 2015 Geomatics World 03

Contentsp.12 For surveyors the future is BIM consulting

The collaborative approach encouraged by BIM is one from which surveyors can profitargues Stephen Ward, but the route will be through consulting.

p.16 Develop 3D: put it in the cloudAlthough this event was primarily about CAD for manufacturing, there were plentyof lessons for construction, reports Richard Groom.

p.18 HxGN LIVEIt’s all about smart change driven by smart apps, explains Adam P. Spring reportingfrom Hexagon’s HxGN LIVE! show in Las Vegas.

p.20 Sagrada Familia and a client in no hurryAn extraordinary building project in Barcelona, which began well over a centuryago, is planned for completion on the 100th anniversary of the architect’s death.

p.22 Robust measurement techniques for vessel sensor offsetsHydrography is grappling with many new sensors. But surveyors need to accurately knowwhere they’re positioned on a vessel. Stuart Leakey and Geoff Wharton explain.

p.26 Singapore’s SEACSIt was all about expanding geospatial futures at the 13th South East Asia Survey Congress,where delegates heard 15 keynotes and 94 presentations, reports Gordon Adreassend.

p.28 Major change ahead for AutoCADCloud computing heralds a change in licensing for software developers. But there arebenefits too for the project team, argues Richard Groom.

p.30 Leica debuts new range on Rugby’s home groundWith the aim of captivating its audience, Leica unveiled a host of new products, from asuper DISTO, 3D viewing on total stations to an Android app for data collection.

COVER STORYThe Sagrada Familia isone of the world’s mostextraordinary buildingswith incredibly intricateshapes and challenginggeometry. Fortunatelytoday it is aided byCAD, which was notavailable whenconstruction began in1882. Full story onpage 20.

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Editorial


sounded by RICS Geomatics Professional Groupchair Chris Preston, page 09; and Carl Calvertexamines some of the legal issues around cloudcomputing (page 36).

Turning to the wet world and hydrographicsurveys, with the rise in the type of geospatialsensors now installed aboard survey vessels it isessential to know their exact positions asaccurately as possible. Stuart Leakey and GeoffWharton explain how this has been done for aPort of London survey vessel, using total station,laser scanner and metrology devices like theLeica Tracker and T-Probe.

Two reports highlight the lightest technologylaunches from Hexagon and its Leica Geosystemssubsidiary. There are indeed some exciting newgismos, including a DISTO that’s almost a totalstation. As Richard Groom observes, ‘a ratheruseful piece of equipment’. In the next issue weshall be looking at the latest launches from archrivals Trimble and Topcon, as they hold theirroadshows and we report from the Intergeoexhibition in Stuttgart.

Struggling with geometryWe’ve also taken a look at a remarkableconstruction taking place in Barcelona thatbegan more than a century ago and involvessome of the most challenging geometryimaginable. The Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi’sSagrada Familia is one of Spain’s top touristattractions but whilst you may marvel at itssoaring, spiralling spires, surmounted by bowls offruit and nuts, you will probably need to be asurveyor or engineer to appreciate the incredibleconstruction difficulties this presents. Althoughincomplete, the building is already a UNESCOworld heritage site.

Turn also to the News columns (p.07) to learnabout an extraordinary Cyark project backed byTopcon to document what must be one of theoldest hydroelectric power plants in the world,and in Japan. Here too there are plans to get theplant identified as a world heritage site.

Lastly I am able to publish a response fromthe TSA (page 08) regarding Richard Groom’sreview of the TSA’s Briefing Note on Calibrationpublished in the last issue.

How are you reading this copy of GW? Areyou holding the printed copy in your handor are you peering at it on the screen of a

tablet or laptop? Perhaps you’ve viewed itonline, downloaded it and printed a PDF of thepage.

It’s not only the way we view printed materialthat’s changing. Not all children are learning towrite today in the way that generations beforedid. I read recently that the teaching of cursive(joined up) writing is on the wane as more andmore teaching involves tablets and other digitaldevices. I’ve also read that those wunderkinderof Silicon Valley are insisting that their kids get aproper education with books and joined-upwriting. Interesting.

So a word of caution to those who read onlyon screen. I am currently reading Naomi SBaron’s Words Onscreen. Her research finds thatdigital reading is reshaping our understanding ofwhat we’ve read. Tests have found that thosewho use e-readers retain less than printed bookreaders, while those who read and scan textonline have been found to adopt an “F” shapedpattern of reading, scanning from left to rightbut increasingly reading less of what’s to theright, as they rapidly descend the page. I hope Ican persuade you to pay more attention than thescan readers, for this is a worthwhile issue ofGW packed with something for just abouteveryone engaged in geomatics. Please read itwherever and whatever you like and justremember that the printed version comes in ahandy letterbox-friendly package that doesn’tneed an internet connection or batteries. Let’ssee what we have.

Pendulums just swing well for someNick Day, whose writing skills and lively curiositydrive him into visiting all sorts of unusuallocations and recording the results in both wordand image, has recently been to Trieste in Italynear the border with Slovenia where hediscovered a vast cavern in which were locatedgeodetic pendulums, whose sensors andrecording equipment can detect earthquakes onthe other side of the globe. Big geodesy indeed.Turn to page 32 to read Nick’s account.

Stephen Ward argues that the future forsurveyors in the growing world of BIM is to focuson the bigger picture and the opportunities itoffers through BIM consulting (page 12).Meanwhile a word of caution on BIM software is

The rise of digitalreading poseschallenges forpublishers. It seemsall too easy to godigital, but arereaders stillcomprehending asmuch?

Read it how you like but are youtaking it in?

The editor welcomes yourcomments and editorialcontributions by e-mail: [email protected] by post:Geomatics WorldPV Publications Ltd2B North RoadStevenageHerts SG1 4ATUnited Kingdom Stephen Booth, Editor

NEWS

06 Geomatics World September / October 2015

RICS – UN collaborationAn ongoing collaboration betweenRICS and UN Global Compact hasculminated in the Global Compacttoolkit. RICS has been workingwith the United Nations Global

Compact on identifying the mostcritical issues facing companieswith a stake in land, real estateand construction. The aim is tomake responsible business thestatus quo and encourage

companies to think holisticallyabout the environmental and socialimpact of their business activities,and strategic investment decisions.The executive summary of‘Advancing Responsible BusinessPractices in Land, Construction,Real Estate Use and Investment’and full report can be seen athttp://www.rics.org/uk/about-rics/responsible-business

Future cities pilot projectThe Open Geospatial Consortium(OGC) in collaboration withbuildingSMART International (bSI)is inviting sponsorship in a pilotproject to help cities around theworld benefit from modernstandards for geospatialtechnologies. The pilot, to be basedin Europe, will demonstrate theability of cities to use diverse,interoperating spatial technologiesto deliver improved quality of life,civic initiatives and resilience.

Human, natural, and physicalsystems interact in space and time,and the digital systems in cities willbecome increasingly diverse andnumerous, with many owners.Cities thus need an open, vendor-neutral standards platform forcommunicating spatial andtemporal data. Many of thelongstanding technical boundariesseparating indoor, outdoor,underground and atmosphericinformation have been overcome.The FutureCities Pilot will showhow cities can begin to reap thebenefits.

FIG NZ working weekNext year’s FIG Working Week willbe held in Christchurch, NewZealand from 2 to 6 May 2016.The event is hosted by FIG and theNew Zealand Institute ofSurveyors, NZIS. The conferenceexpects to attract between700–900 local and internationaldelegates with an overall theme of“Recovery from Disaster”,following the deadly magnitude7.1 earthquake that shookCanterbury. A “call for papers” isannounced both for peer reviewedand non-peer reviewed papers.Abstracts for peer reviewed papersby 1 October 2015 and abstractsfor non-peer-review papers by 15November. More athttp://www.fig.net/fig2016/submission.htm

Five UK satellites launchedby Indian rocketIn what is believed to be thelargest number of wholly British-built spacecraft to go up on asingle launch, an Indian rocket hasput five UK satellites in orbit, partof the DMC constellation. Built bySurrey Satellite Technology Ltd(SSTL), the DMC-3 type satellitescan see features on the grounddown to a metre across. Eachplatform weighs 447kg and seesthe Earth in a range of visible andinfrared wavelengths. The quintetincludes three satellites to imagethe Earth and support disastermonitoring and relief, and two totest technologies that could beused on future spacecraft.

An unusual business model isbeing used to commercialise thesatellites. In the past, imaging datahas been sold by the squarekilometre. Merely leasing spacecrafttime is something that is done inthe telecoms sector. “Most folkdon’t buy a wholetelecommunications satellite; theybuy transponder time by the hour,”explained SSTL chairman Sir MartinSweeting. Chinese company 21ATwill be leasing the capacity of threeof the satellites for the next sevenyears. “That’s what the BBC does,for example, for some of their livebroadcasts: they just use thetelecoms satellite for a couple ofhours and then walk away”,explains Sweeting. “And wethought: why don’t we apply thatto Earth observation? We willlaunch the satellites and run theservice, and then customers cancome in, lease the imaging capacityand do all the value-added theywant on top of that.”Source: BBC website

County boundariesFor 224 years OS has beenmapping the changing physicallandscape of Great Britain.However it is not only thelandscape which has changed,Great Britain’s county boundarieshave also moved over the last twocenturies. As part of a project withthe Department for Communitiesand Local Government (DCLG) OShas created two new datasets ofcounty boundary information: thecurrent ceremonial and historiccounty boundaries. The newdatasets have been released

Survey School graduates celebrated

The graduation ceremony marking the achievements of students onthe 2015 TSA Surveying Course positions the Survey School as themajor supplier of the next generation of qualified personnel. Speakingat the presentation, The Survey Association (TSA) president MarkCombes paid tribute to manufacturers, Leica Geosystems, Topcon andTrimble for donating equipment supporting the School’s ambitions tobe the ‘jewel in the crown’ of survey training providers. Since takingover the running of the School in May 2014 TSA has transformed thefacilities and updated the IT systems at the Worcester site.

Combes urged this year’s graduates to act as ambassadors for theschool and hoped they would be encouraged to go on to gainfurther professional qualifications in an industry which has a majorimpact across many sectors.

Best Assignment and Best Student awards were sponsored by theChartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors and LeicaGeosystems. CICES president Ian Bush and John Fraser, Leica’s MD,were on hand to make the awards. The Best Assignment award waswon by Keith Gunn of Global Surveys for a measured building surveythat tutors said was completed to “a very high professionalstandard”. A consistently high performance in exams and a diligentapproach to class work and assignments delivered an overall 90%mark for Steve Cottis of Atkins, named as Best Student.

Neil Gamble, survey manager, transportation at Atkins explainedwhy he believes the TSA Surveying Course is a good model fortoday’s employers and ambitious employees. “It really takes studentsback to basics on the principles of surveying, which in today’s push-button world is not so easily acquired. As a result their surveyingcapabilities and problem solving skills are strengthened. The courseis very important to us as it plays a great part in the development ofour surveyors individually and our team as a whole. I am absolutelydelighted with Steven’s outstanding and fully justified result”.

To date more than 300 students have graduated from the Schooland this year’s class of 13 could potentially double by July 2016 astwo TSA courses will be offered in parallel. More at www.tsa-uk.org.uk/opportunities/the-survey-school/Caption above, from left: Rory Stanbridge, TSA Secretary General, MarkCombes, TSA President, Steve Cottis, Atkins, John Fraser, MD LeicaGeosystems, Keith Gunn, Global Surveys and Ian Bush, President CICES

NEWS


through the OS OpenData portaland can be freely downloaded, aseither Shape or Tab files.

UK Land use map revealslarge-scale changesA free land cover map of the UKreveals national loss of habitatsand agricultural land. The CORINEland cover map 2012 showschange between 2006 and 2012and covers an area of over 2,250km2. Typical change includes: • over 100,000 hectares of

coniferous forest lost to clear-cutting

• over 7,000 hectares convertedfrom forest to artificial surfaces,and over 14,000 hectareschanged from agricultural toartificial surfaces

• over 3,000 hectares of arableland and 2,000 hectares ofpastures converted to mineralextraction sites

The ‘Coordination of Information onthe Environment’ (CORINE) mapwas prepared by researchers at theUniversity of Leicester together withconsultancy company Specto Naturaand is a central part of theEuropean Land Monitoring Serviceunder the Copernicus programme. Astandardised classification system isused of 44 land cover and land useclasses, which are structured in athree-tier system that shows howmuch of the UK is made up ofartificial surfaces, agricultural areas,forest and semi-natural areas,wetlands and water bodies.

GeoCom’s Resilient FuturesThe UK’s leading GIS event, AGIGeoCommunity is set to take placethis autumn. Scheduled for 23-25November at Chesford Grange inWarwickshire, GeoCom: ResilientFutures has already attractedseveral inspirational keynotespeakers.

Mark Bew, MBE chairs the HMGovernment Construction BIM TaskGroup. It will also be anopportunity to hear Nigel Clifford,the new CEO of Ordnance Survey.who joined OS earlier this year.

Sir Alan Wilson, FBA FAcSSFRS is Professor of Urban andRegional Systems in the Centre forAdvanced Spatial Analysis atUniversity College London. Afurther speaker is StuartBonthrone, MD of Esri UK whotook on the role earlier this year

having been sales & marketingdirector since 2012.

Papers announced to dateinclude subjects as diverse as marinemanagement, the National Trust, theCensus, 3D geospatial analysis,sensors in the management of sewernetworks, mapping underwater noisefrom anthropogenic activities andINSPIRE. In addition, a number ofdebate sessions will provide theopportunity to hear from industrythought-leaders on Privacy; The roleof ‘where’ in managing ‘things’; Isthere a need to legislate? SmartEnergy and How do you pay forfree?

• See more at:http://www.agi.org.uk/news/agi/751-confirmed-speakers-at-geocom-in-november#sthash.r2plQxLA.dpuf

BRIEFS

The 39th Meeting of theUNESCO World Heritage

digital maps with real-time vehicledata more closely.http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33756603

Topcon has announced aworldwide distributionpartnership with Germanybased UAS provider AscendingTechnologies. The agreementgives Topcon exclusivity for theglobal distribution of the newAscTec®Falcon 8 rotary-wingmodel, the GeoEXPERT and theInspectionPRO sensing andfeature packages.

Duke University in North Carolinahas opened a new research andtraining facility for the use ofunmanned aircraft systems inmarine science and conservation. Itflew its first operational missionsearlier this month to supportUniversity of North Carolinaresearchers who were mappingnesting beaches and at-seaaggregations of endangered olive

Committee in Bonn Germany,ICOMOS and CyArk announcedan MOU to launch a programmefor the emergencydocumentation of high riskcultural heritage. The initiative,named Project Anqa, the Arabicword for the Phoenix, intendsto deploy teams of internationalprofessionals, paired with localprofessionals to document at-risk sites in 3D before they aredestroyed or altered.

A group of German carmakers,including Audi, BMW and Daimler,are buying Nokia’s Here digitalmapping business for 2.8bn(£2bn). The company is developingtechnology that it hopes will helpcreate self-driving cars using cloudtechnology to build digital maps.“High-precision digital maps are acrucial component of the mobilityof the future,” said Dieter Zetsche,chairman of the board of Daimler.The carmakers plan to use Here’stechnology to combine precise

Topcon facilitates preservation of heritage site

Data from participation by Topcon Positioning Group in the digital preservation of the historic Sogihydroelectric plant in Japan was unveiled at a special event in Bonn, Germany in conjunction with therecent UNESCO World Heritage Committee meetings. The committee examined proposals to inscribe 36properties on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Located in Isa, the Sogi power plant was constructed in 1909. At its height the hydroelectric plantgenerated 6,700 kW. The plant closed in 1965 with the construction of the larger Tsuruda dam downriver.Considered a significant contribution to Japan’s Meiji era industrial revolution, the plant was mapped aspart of the CyArk 500 Challenge – an international project to digitally preserve and create awareness ofsome of the world’s most significant cultural heritage sites.

The Sogi site was recorded in 3D by an international team using the latest Topcon geopositioningtechnologies including the GLS-2000 scanner, the IP-S2 mobile mapping system, as well as aerial mappingsolutions. Topcon teamed with CyArk and the National Congress to develop a three-dimensional map ofthe site for future preservation and visualization. Explore the project at cyark.org.

NEWS


EEVVEENNTTSS CCAALLEENNDDAARR 22001155• SEMINARS • CONFERENCES • EXHIBITIONS • COURSES • WORKSHOPS

BCS-SoC Mapping Together8-10 September, York, UKwww.cartography.org.uk

INTERGEO15-17 September, Stuttgart, Germanywww.intergeo.de

Topcon Technology Days22-24 September, Stoneleigh Park,Kenilworth, UK.http://www.cvent.com/d/prq4ng/6X

KOREC Technology Day22 September, HAC, Londonhttp://korecnews.com

KOREC Technology Day22 September, Novotel, Manchester Westhttp://korecnews.comCommercial

KOREC Technology Day22 September, Titanic, Belfasthttp://korecnews.com

KOREC Technology Day22 September, Carton House,Maynooth, Irelandhttp://korecnews.com

UAV Expo5-7 October, Las Vegaswww.expouav.com

Commercial UAV Show20-21 October, ExCel, Londonwww.terrapinn.com

2015 Cyark Summit20-21 October, Berlin Germanywww.cyark.org

Maximising Airborne ISR Strategy26 -27 October Holiday Inn, Londonhttp://www.smi-online.co.uk

The Capturing Reality Forum23-25 November Salzburg, Austria.www.CapturingRealityForum.com

GW welcomes advance details of events of interest to the Geomatics community.Details to: [email protected]

organization FIG has re-designedits website. FIG hope that you willlike the new design and that youcan easily find relevantinformation. The site will beupdated and improved constantly.Go to: www.fig.net

In a post on the GW’s Linkedin

page Samuel Leung hashighlighted an article in theEconomist that draws parallelsbetween a 14,000 year old mapdrawn on a cave wall showingthe best locations to hunt andhow digital mapping companiesare vying with each other forthe best solutions.

ridley sea turtles in Costa Rica.

Fugro has extended itsintegrated survey services incoastal management to enablemore informed decision-making.A new agreement with globalspecialist EOMAP enables thecreation of integratedbathymetric survey products thatcomprise elements from SatelliteDerived Bathymetry (SDB),

Airborne LiDAR Bathymetry(ALB) and traditional acousticsurvey technologies. EOMAP’stechnology platform can processsatellite images and deliverglobal bathymetric and benthichabitat data through itsproprietary, sensor-independentModular Inversion Processor(MIP).

The international surveying

TSA’s Response to Richard Groom’s comment in Geomatics WorldJuly / August 2015 Issue No.5: Volume 23

We welcome open communication and discussion on our publicationsbut TSA Council are disappointed that Geomatics World felt itnecessary to publish Richard Groom’s ill-advised and inappropriatecomments on TSA’s Briefing Note on Instrument Calibration.

It is unfortunate that Richard Groom chose to respond in this wayrather than debating within professional industry bounds such as theSurvey Liaison Group (which comprises RICS, CICES and TSA). The topicof calibration is, as Mr Groom points out, fundamental but to suggestthat our members should ‘go read a textbook’ to find out about it, ispatronising in the extreme.

TSA’s free of charge documents fall into three categories and aredownloaded by member companies at an ever increasing rate. It may bethat Richard Groom is unaware of the difference between our documents.

Briefing Notes are intended to provide information andexplanations to members on specific topics of relevance to theprofession. Briefing notes are not intended to recommend or advise onprofessional procedures.

Guidance Notes are generally aimed at survey companies andclients who require detailed information on a subject. Whereprocedures are recommended for specific professional tasks, these areintended to embody ‘best practice’, i.e. procedures which in theopinion of TSA meet a high standard of professional competence.

Client Guides are primarily aimed at other professionals such asengineers, architects, planners and clients in general. They are notintended to go ‘in depth’ into practical issues but to act as a basic guideon a particular topic and, in particular, on procedures and regulationswhich may govern how a particular aspect of the survey is carried out.

As President of TSA and also a member of RICS and CICES I standby our Technical Committee’s great professional work in producingthese documents which are used and specified by client organisationsand receive excellent feedback from member companies.

TSA’s Briefing Note on Instrument Calibration does not, as RichardGroom states, ‘degrade the profession’ but in fact references the RICSdocument on - EDM Calibration 2nd Edition, dating back to December2007’, as a source of further information.http://www.rics.org/uk/shop/EDM-Calibration-16993.aspx

We have taken on board Richard Groom’s suggestion of a joint panelcomprising all the organisations that represent the Geomatics professionin the UK, although this is to formalise the existing collaborativeapproach TSA has with RICS and CICES. The Briefing Note on InstrumentCalibration will not be changed or edited because of Richard Groom’scomments and will not be withdrawn from TSA’s website.

TSA have always sought to work positively with Geomatics Worldfor the good of our industry and will continue to do so. We hope thatthis statement now draws a line under this matter.

Mark Combes, President of TSA, BSc (Hons), DipSvy, MRICS, MCInstCES• GW stands by Richard Groom’s review and does notagree with all of the statements made in this letter.

Following an agreement between aerial mapping company Blueskyand hazard mapping specialists JBA Risk Management, visitors toBluesky’s online mapshop can now view and download a high-resolution flood map for the whole of the UK. Detailing peril fromsix different types of flooding, the Comprehensive Flood Map (CFM)is a leading tool for flood insurance underwriters and is used by over70 percent of the UK insurance industry. Bluesky will also be able tosupply the data for offline sales to their client base, including localauthority planners, property developers, emergency responders andenvironmental consultants.

New UK flood map


Geomatics PGB Chair

How to ensure that you always get your copy of Geomatics WorldIf you receive GW as part of your RICS membership, you must inform the Institution of any change of address. Aspublishers of GW we cannot change the RICS membership database for you. Call +44 (0)870 333 1600 or log onto the RICS website or write to: RICS Contact Centre, Surveyor Court, Westwood Way, Coventry, CV4 8JE, UK oremail [email protected] Subscribers to GW can call +44 (0)1438 352617 or email: [email protected]

As the autumn in the UK rapidlyapproaches, it is a good time to take alonger look at where BIM seems to be

developing. The Survey4BIM group has beenbeavering away in the summer to produce the“Digital plan of works” (DPOW), which I amsure you will be hearing more about soon.This has been a great effort on behalf ofnumerous contributors and shows the powerof collaboration across industry sectors andprovides a good demonstration of howcollaboration is key to BIM at several levels.

A recent RICS funded research project hasbeen looking at behavioural economics andincentive theory, associated with BIM. Thisprovides interesting insights(www.rics.org/collaborativebim). It also askssome challenging questions:

• what are the factors hindering theimplementation of BIM?

• what are the motives of individuals toexplore the potential of BIM enabledcollaborative working practices?

In SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises), work isbeing done to find out how the interface of trustand collaboration supports BIM implementation.It has been discovered that non-monetarymotivations are important such as pride in doinga good job and loyalty to a firm.

Key influences identified were information,risk and uncertainty. Building trust andcooperation through collaboration can reducea supplier’s incentive for concealinginformation as it ensures contracting partiestake a longer term view. Learning andexchange of information from partners inalliances make collaboration appealing, evenwhen elsewhere the partners may be incompetition. However, does in-builtconservatism stand in the way? “We’ve alwaysdone things this way”, it works, why change?

Perhaps one of the biggest hindrances to theuptake of BIM, especially for SMEs is theprohibitive costs of investing in technology and

As even largecorporate systemsstruggle to handleconstantly evolvingsoftware andprohibitive costsrestrict the uptakeof BIM by smallerfirms, could opensource provide ananswer? ChrisPreston, chair ofRICS GeomaticsProfessional Groupcomments.

Stereotypes and software costshinder BIM take-up

Chris Preston welcomesyour comments andthoughts so please emailto the following [email protected]

of staff training. The type of technology forBIM in larger corporates is only beingdeveloped by a few suppliers making costsexpensive. However, alternative open sourcemodel solutions are being developed, e.g. 3DREPO (http://3drepo.org/) and Cognicity(Canary Wharf Group – http://cognicity.london/).Moreover, large organisations also have issueswith corporate IT systems being able to cope withsoftware that is constantly evolving. Few of themdeal with this in a satisfactory manner at themoment and open source software is a real issue.

There is also a need to change thestereotypical relationships between disciplines.We need to change our thinking to embrace adifferent mindset. Future generations will notaccept these conventions and survey andconstruction will not be a career of choice fortalented people.

Guidance amid angstThere has been some discussion recentlyregarding guidance notes that are published bythe main survey industry bodies and a recentarticle by Richard Groom has further causedsome angst. Through the Survey Liaison Group(TSA, RICS, ICES, AGI), we are trying now toensure that all guidance notes, from whicheverof the organisations represented, are badgedfrom us all. However, that does requiresufficient time for a thorough review processand it is clear that at times, that does not allowthe TSA to respond to the perceived needs oftheir members. This means that some are oftenput together quicker than the RICS, ICES, AGIcan easily respond to.

As a result of this it has been suggestedthat to overcome the lack of time that allprospective contributors may have, theguidance notes will now be written by acombined group overseen by a single person,in the hope that such differences of opinioncan be avoided.

As ever your thoughts are always welcomedto the usual e-mail address.

UNDERCURRENTS


guidance systems fell virtually at random. At ground level you can inspect a U-boat,

tanks, military vehicles including the remains ofone destroyed in Iraq by one of those nasty IED’s.Head up a floor and the cockpit of a Lancasterbomber awaits with examples of various bombs(hopefully minus explosives), a miniaturesubmarine, rifles, swords, and much else. Thereis also a very good World War I exhibition whichapart from trench warfare covers some of the bigevents like the Gallipoli campaign, the first airraids and the way the war changed things athome bringing women into the factories in largenumbers for the first time.

We visited several special exhibitions including“Fashion on the Ration”, a commemoration of(mainly) how women struggled to continuelooking smart during the second world war. Froma ‘onesie’ to wear in the air raid shelter, to dressesmade from parachutes (German presumably?) andjewellery created from aeroplane parts, the fairersex did its bit to keep up morale. A darker side isa Holocaust exhibition, which for my generationwe know only too well of the horrors that tookplace. In my personal view the exhibition isdifficult to fully take in, not least because it’s sobig. A grim large scale model of Auschwitzoccupies a whole room.

The museum is an absolutely brilliant andinformative day out, indeed you will need morethan a day to study it all. When we went itseemed extremely popular with tourists from allover the world, judging from the babble offoreign tongues. Put it on your bucket list.

Bligh’s plaque and the LCCAs I walked to the Imperial War Museum I noticedthis interesting plaque on a fine Georgian house,placed there by the old London County Council.William Bligh was commander of the Bounty anda protégé of Captain James Cook (who fortunatelytaught him navigational skills). He had set sail forthe South Seas on a mission to obtain breadfruitto see whether it would be suitable to feed slavesbut the crew mutinied, possibly due to Bligh’senthusiasm for dealing brutally with minortransgressions by crew members or may be forother reasons as we shall see.

The mutineers led by Fletcher Christian setBligh and 18 loyal crew members off the Bountyin a small boat. In an amazing show ofnavigation and endurance they sailed over 6,700kms to Timor, the nearest European settlementfrom which Bligh returned to England andcontinued his career with the Royal Navy.

Undercurrents recently visited the magnificentImperial War Museum in south London. Itseems rather odd that we have a museum in

London, ostensibly part of Europe, when only ageneration or two ago we were killing each other.Now we’re all good neighbours, well mainly! Themuseum is tucked away in a rather nondescriptarea between Lambeth North tube station and theElephant & Castle where it resides within a ratherfine par. It announces its purpose with twoenormous guns (above) removed from a WorldWar I battleship. They are scarily huge. ‘Gawd ‘elp’anyone on the receiving end of what they couldhave delivered.

The museum, to quote its blurb, covers “. . .allaspects of twentieth and twenty-first centuryconflict involving Britain, the Commonwealthand other former empire countries.”

The building was constructed in the 1850s asa hospital. The museum’s collection was firsthoused in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hillbefore it caught fire in the 1930s (according tothe indispensable Wikipedia). In 1924 themuseum moved to space in the Imperial Institutein South Kensington, and finally in 1936 themuseum acquired its current home, which was

previously the Bethlem RoyalHospital in Southwark.

The museum houses somefantastic exhibits. You walk into theenormous entrance hall and lookup to a see a Spitfire and a HarrierJet almost rubbing wings with aWorld War II German doodlebug(the V1 and what today we wouldcall a cruise missile). To one sidestands a German V2 rocket, farmore terrifying than the V1, whichcould be seen and heard. The V2came silently and invisibly out ofnowhere and due to the poor

A visit to southLondon finds bigguns, fashion andsome grimreminders.Meanwhile there’sa response to thelast issue’seditorial, withwhich our columnistconcurs.

Going to war and findingCaptain Bligh by Malcolm Draper, Rentalength

Below: a short walk fromLambeth North undergroundstation reveals this blueplaque marking Bligh’sLondon home.

for generations to come. If we are not careful wemay see an unseemly turf war which will doneither a great deal of good.

I was involved in survey and mapping formore years than I would like to remember beforerecently retiring. During that time I have seenmany changes to the tools we use in creatingand presenting survey information. But they arejust the tools of our trade. The same peopleinvolved in producing surveys for, say,government agencies were, and still are also thepeople providing data for new highways andflood defences. These professionals (surveyors,photogrammetrists, geomaticists, etc) use thesame tools to provide a survey solution for aparticular specification. As surveyors, we havealways been required to be flexible to theindividual needs of a specific client. As well, theuse of CAD, GIS, BIM, and any other futureabbreviation is only a common presentation toolfor the whole survey spectre and not confined toone narrow part.

My biggest concern now is the confusedmessage the profession may be giving to newgraduates and others wishing to enter into theprofession. How they are educated and trainedwill not change because their chosen workinglife may encompass more engineering typeprojects rather than, say building information orboundaries. But they are now required to make achoice early in their careers of how and wherethey should seek chartered status or alignthemselves to the RICS, the CICES, or both.

Those of you that may know me also knowthat I am not originally from these parts.However, I have been here [the UK] long enoughto now understand how the offside rule in soccerworks and have almost sussed out thecomplexities of the LBW law. I have, as yet, beenunable to comprehend what in the British psychecreates an overwhelming need to invent a club,society, or institution for what appears to anoutsider a small variation to what is alreadycovered by an existing organisation. This Britishidiosyncrasy is not necessarily irreversible.

I remember when, in the early 2000’s, theRemote Sensing Society and thePhotogrammetric Society was challenged withthe issue of amalgamating their learnedsocieties. Some members of both societies sawlittle merit in their integration and, indeed, werehostile to the proposal. At the time there wasstrong leadership from the management of bothsocieties, which combined with a realisation bythe majority of members that the overlapbetween the two societies provided anopportunity to modernise for future challenges.The value of this integration can now be seen byall as it has created a larger umbrella society .

Perhaps we can learn from this, get ourthinking caps on, and find a way forward whichbenefits the members of both institutions andprovides a comprehensive home for all futuresurveyors rather than try to place them in anarrower context. It may also save me payingtwo subscriptions!

UNDERCURRENTS


Christian meanwhile, as the story goes, foundeda colony on Pitcairn Island.

To this day, the reasons behind the mutiny area subject of debate. Many believe that Bligh wasa cruel tyrant whose abuse of the crew led themto feel that the crew had no choice but to takeover the ship. Others argue that the crew,inexperienced and unused to the rigours of thesea and, after having been exposed to freedomand sexual licence on Tahiti, refused to return tothe “Jack Tar’s” life of an ordinary seaman. Theywere led by Fletcher Christian in order to be freefrom Bligh’s acid tongue. This view holds that thecrew took the ship so they could return tocomfort and ease on Tahiti. Source: Wikipedia

MiscellanyThe BBC’s website recently provided a classicexample of British sangfroid. A man had drivenhis car into a river. He called for assistance. Hethen sat in his car surrounded entirely by waterquietly smoking his pipe as if nothing couldpossibly be wrong with the world. A greatexample of that world war two saying, “Keepcalm and carry on”.

Here’s one or two more of those idiot thingspeople give as answers on quiz shows.

• From GWR FM, Bristol: What happened inDallas on November 22 1963? Contestant: “Idon’t know, I wasn’t watching it then”.

• From Beacon Radio Wolverhampton: For 10,what is the nationality of the Pope? Contestant:“I think I know that one. Is he Jewish?”

• Geography never seems to be a very strongpoint amongst many young Brits. From the ChrisSearle Show, BBC Radio Bristol. In which Europeancountry is Mount Etna? Contestant: “Japan”.Giving the contestant another chance in case he’dmissed the word ‘European’, he asked again andgot the answer “Er. . . Mexico?”

Undercurrents heartily concurs with the followingfrom my old mate Mike McKay who came to theUK many years ago from Canada. His commentsabout how we Brits always want to create a clubfor whatever variant of a specialism we’reinterested in, reminds me about a now defunctand rare make of British car. Unbelievably, twoclubs existed for the enthusiasts, one for each ofthe two factories where the cars were made!

Letter from Mike McKayI read with interest Stephen Booth’s somewhatinnocuous comments in his editorial on hisconcerns as to whether a BIM article in theCICES Journal could be considered the remit ofthe RICS rather than the CICES. Yet, ironically,there was an excellent article in the same edition[of GW] on monitoring for Crossrail which could,also in a narrow context, be considered in therealm of the CICES. I believe that this goes to theroot of a problem which may plague surveyors

Got a tale to tell?Please send letters forpublication by e-mailto the Editor: [email protected] contactUndercurrents, instrictest confidence ifyou wish (we promiseto change names,places, etc toprotect the guilty!),via e-mail:[email protected]

. . . professionals . . .use the same toolsto provide a surveysolution for aparticularspecification. Assurveyors, we havealways beenrequired to beflexible to theindividual needs ofa specific client.

U

BIM


collaborative ones. The government expects thatits detailed programme of measures will reducecosts by up to 20% by the end of thisparliament. BIM is one of the strategies that mayhelp to achieve this.

The government saw other industries such asmanufacturing save costs by working within adigital 3D environment. The design data couldthen be fed to machine tools, creating a directlink between design and manufacture thuseliminating intermediaries. The vision was tohave building projects modelled in 3D so thatdesign proposals could be easily evaluated andimplemented by the whole construction team.

In order to define the term 3D BIM andremove ambiguity the BIM industry workinggroup recommended that a ‘maturity model’should be used consisting of four levels from 0to 3. Although the government’s strategyreport did not specify which maturity level wasto be met by 2016 it is widely accepted that,as a minimum, level 2 is the goal. A BIM taskgroup was set up to provide advice,supporting standards and guidance notes fororganisations implementing BIM.

Level 0BIM Level 0 uses traditional paper drawings toconvey information and the surveyor’s provisionof a site plan marks the end of his involvement.These surveys require basic equipment andminimal training, either in-house or from localfurther education colleges, making them idealfor self-employed or small survey companies.

Most further education colleges offer Bteccivil and construction courses which containsome individual modules on site surveying andthe use of CAD. This makes non-surveyors, forexample, civil engineers or building surveyors,equally capable of producing simple 2D sitesurveys. This being so, the surveying professioncould be devalued, unless surveyors can addadditional value during the later stages of thebuilding process. It is a pity that small surveycompanies have not supported colleges whowish to develop surveying apprenticeships etc.The danger for the profession according toRichard Groom (GW Nov/Dec 2014) is thatspecialist surveying knowledge may be lost,causing expensive mistakes on site.

Level 1BIM level 1A specifies a 3D model forvisualisation purposes and can be satisfied by, forexample Google Earth 3D images. The modelwould have little or no data attached to it.

At Level 1B the scanned 3D ‘point cloud’model has to be converted into a vectormodel using standardised structures and

Building Information Modelling (BIM) hastaken the construction industry by storm.If you want to hold a seminar or write an

article, put “BIM” in the title and it willguarantee a large audience. It’s a bandwagonand survey companies appear to be trying tojump on it by hiring laser scanners andpromoting themselves as BIM surveyors.Unfortunately scanning a building or a plot ofland is NOT BIM!

BIM is a process graded into different levelsof communication involving the wholeconstruction team and is not just restricted tobuildings. BIM can be applied to roads, bridges,tunnels etc. In this article the levels of BIM areexamined in the context of a highwayconstruction project. It will then go on todiscuss the place of and potential opportunitiesfor land surveyors in the BIM process.

From adversarial. . .The public sector is responsible for 40% ofconstruction work with central governmentbeing the biggest customer, yet thegovernment’s perception of the constructionindustry is generally poor. Since the 1920sthere have been numerous reviews. Forexample, architect and MP Alfred Bossomdescribed it in 1934 as fragmented, inefficient,wasteful and adversarial, frequently involvingdelays, going over budget and havingdissatisfied users. This has been a continuoustheme, which many still believe applies today.There are too many parties, i.e. clients,designers, contractors and sub-contractors,involved in the construction process, all with avested interest to make or save money.

. . . to collaborativePart of the solution concluded by the Latham(1994) and Egan (1998) reports was to removethe adversarial nature of the industry bypromoting ‘teamwork’, ‘co-operation’ and‘partnering’. There are those who believe, 20years on from Latham, that this is a dream that

will never be realised.Construction is just toocomplex for the design teamto avoid changes and it isconsidered normal to rectifymistakes or respond to clientschanging their minds.

In 2011 the Cabinet Officepublished its latest strategyreport into the constructionindustry which again called for‘designers and constructors’ towork together replacingadversarial cultures with

BIM is the strategybeing pursuedacross infrastructuredevelopment. Buthow can surveyorsbenefit? StephenWard, of the Facultyof Science,Technology &Mathematics, Colegy Cymoedd, SouthWales urges them tofind their role in thebigger picture.

BIM: the future is ‘BIM Consulting’

Below: Figure 2 - GPSMachine guidance. Source:Topcon.

There are thosewho believe, 20years on fromLatham, that thisis a dream thatwill never berealised.

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BIM


the 3D site modelready for other users.

Level 2It is assumed that atBIM level 2 there wouldbe a single 3D designmodel for the newroad. This can be theresult of one waycollaboration (BIM 2A)whereby the BIMmodel file would beexported to variousdisciplines such as;structural engineers, drainage consultants andcontractors. Feedback would be receivedseparately using traditional formats and theoriginal model updated accordingly.

Alternatively, two-way collaboration (BIM 2B)could be established. In this case, common fileformats would be used between differentdisciplines. However, the flow of data wouldneed to be managed by employing a ‘BIMmanager’ and, depending on the size of theproject, a team of modelling experts to integrateand update the original design. Once the designis complete it would be possible to obtainmaterial schedules, programming time scales (4Dinformation) and project costs (5D information).

The essential difference between BIM level 1and 2 is the amount of collaboration betweenthe design team, consultants and contractor.

Level 3At BIM level 3 the design model would befully integrated and available to all parties vialocal servers or the internet, employingconcurrent engineering processes - an ideaillustrated in Figure 1. In a constructioncontext the concept and detail designs wouldbe undertaken simultaneously. The actualbuilding work would start before the wholeproject had been fully detailed.

Construction phaseTraditionally land surveyors may have beeninvolved in establishing setting-out controlnetworks. Today site engineers would

formats. The purpose of the vector 3D modelat this stage of the design is that otherspecialists, for example geologists andecologists, are able to add their data.

It is possible to create a 3D model relativelycheaply using Trimble Sketchup software (lessthan £500) and conventional total stations. Amore expensive way to provide a ‘vectorised’ 3Dmodel is to use a UAV or terrestrial scanner, whichcost a minimum of £30,000, although smallsurvey companies would probably hire rather thanpurchase. The advantage of scanning is that itspeeds up and simplifies the data collection.

In reality a scanned image will not be ableto show everything due to features hidden, forexample, in wooded areas. Consequently‘boots on the ground’ are still needed to fill inthe gaps. Whilst the field work may bereduced, the time for producing a vectormodel for other users will increase.

There are a number of 3D modellingsoftware packages that can use point clouddata. Autodesk Revit is a popular choice forarchitects and mainly used for building design,but Autodesk also produces ‘Infraworks 360’specifically for road, bridge and drainage design.However more advanced software comes with aprice tag, a need for further training andinevitably, more powerful hardware, which willbe a burden for small survey companies.

The only way to become competent atusing 3D software is to use it on a daily basissupplemented with support from ‘YouTube’and other forums. Since land surveyors are notdesigners their role would be simply to tracethe point cloud data. Tracing a point cloud istime-consuming, although software toautomate the process is continually evolving.

There is also a severe lack of pre-definedcomponents that could be downloaded into themodel. The NBS National BIM Library providesfree components such as kerbs, fencing, etc.that can be downloaded into the 3D modelconforming to a standard BIM specification.Unfortunately, components that site surveysneed do not exist; thus companies have tocreate components themselves, for example,pylons, street furniture etc. resulting in moretime and cost to the client in order to complete

Above: Figure 1-Concurrent engineering.

Source: Salomone.

. . .it’s abandwagon andsurvey companiesappear to betrying to jump onit. . .

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BIM


perhaps with their own BIM manager tomaintain the 3D model at BIM level 3.

ConclusionMost small survey companies provide architectswith 2D site surveys and 3D DTM information,which can be categorised at BIM level 0.Architects then use this data to produce 3D BIMlevel 1 designs. They can also provide acomplete 3D site survey in Revit for example,(BIM level 1) but a lot of on-going training isneeded to be competent at using the 3Dmodelling software. Clearly experienced CADtechnicians are going to play an important role.

Although new technology, offering highprecision, will speed up data collection there willbe times when specialist surveying knowledgewill be required. The decline in provision forsurveying and mapping courses by colleges anduniversities makes it uncertain where thisspecialist surveying knowledge will come from.

Survey companies that wish to expand aboveBIM level 1 will need wider constructionknowledge because at BIM levels 2 and 3 otherdisciplines start to add to and extract informationfrom the 3D model. This flow of data will needto be managed. It is possible that specialist BIMconsultants would be employed to oversee thedata flow. In addition they would be responsiblefor quality assurance by collecting as-builtinformation during construction and amendingthe 3D model accordingly. BIM consultants wouldneed to be multi-disciplinary and may include;specialists in GIS, civil engineers, quantitysurveyors etc. – surveying and mapping skills ontheir own will not be enough.

The philosophy of BIM has been set inmotion by the government, whether it deliversits aims by 2016 remains to be seen. Smallsurvey companies will probably shrink if they donothing. Companies that invest in scanningequipment will face competition from otherdisciplines who can obtain their own survey but,more importantly, add value to the data, e.g.building materials, biodiversity data etc.Therefore survey companies that wish to expandinto BIM projects need to widen theirknowledge base or form partnerships with otherprofessionals as multi-disciplined practices.

undertake thesetting out of theroad using totalstations or GNSS.As with totalstations,technology nowexists to transferthe 3D design co-ordinates directlyto earthmovinggraders andasphalt pavers. Nodoubt in the futurethese machineswill becomedriverless robots,

i.e. the road builders equivalent of 3D printing.It is not possible at the moment for

machines to build everything; human activitieswill inevitably lead to mistakes or unexpectedground conditions may be encountered.Therefore some form of as-built monitoringand verification of accuracy will be needed.

Remote sensing using a UAV platform cannotcurrently deliver RICS ‘Accuracy Band C’ data,so conventional survey equipment is required.There would however be a potential conflict ofinterest if contractors use their own engineersto provide as-built surveys, although thephilosophy of BIM dictates this is the preferredway of working. The conflict of interest couldbe resolved if the BIM manager’s team of CADtechnicians were also skilled in verifying surveyas-built data prior to updating the 3D projectdesign model. This regular monitoring would beessential throughout the project.

Post constructionWhen the project is complete the client wouldreceive an as-built 3D model of the roadtogether with all the associated technical data,such as structural analysis, material schedulesetc. This would be used for facilitiesmanagement (Trimble’s 6D BIM model).Although surveyors would not be involved inthe day-to-day maintenance, a re-survey wouldbe needed if, for example, full resurfacing isrequired. It would be the client’s responsibility

Above: Figure 3 - GPSAsphalt Paving. Source:Topcon(www.topconpositioning.co.uk)

. . . Survey companiesthat wish to expandabove BIM level 1will need widerconstructionknowledge . . .

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Policy Watch


RICS GEOMATICS has inputheavily into the forthcoming 2nded Rights of Lights guidancenote; members should watch outfor its release later this year.Rights of light is specialised areaof practice but is heavily relianton the production of accurate 3Dgeo-models and calculations.

IntergeoBy the time you read thisIntergeo will be imminent inStuttgart. This is the event of theyear for global geomatics andgeospatial technologies and isthe model for GeoBusiness. RICSwill again be at Intergeo andworking to build on our fledglingdirect entry agreement with theGerman professional surveyingbody DVW (more below).

UN-GGIMThe Fifth Session of the UN’s

Committee of Experts on GlobalGeospatial InformationManagement (UN-GGIM) was heldfrom 3-7 August 2015 at UNheadquarters in New York. UN-GGIM brings together seniorexecutives from national geospatialand statistical authorities withgeospatial experts from across theglobe. 290+ participants from 86countries, 9 internationalorganisations, 10 UN bodies, and30 private sector/non-governmententities took part. The discussionsand outcomes recognise anddetermine the critical role ofgeospatial informationmanagement and the need forstrengthened collaboration andjoint initiatives. A major emphasiswas placed on the role of nationalmapping agencies within the landadministration space and howgood geospatial information is coreto land tenure, security and landrights. The UK was represented byOrdnance Survey GB with formerDG Dr Vanessa Lawrence receivinga well-deserved certificate ofrecognition from the UN for all ofher hard work in establishing theUN GGIM initiative.

Papers and downloads can beaccessed from the url below; Iwould recommend the GlobalGeodetic Framework output, landadministration documentationand legal and policy frameworks.http://ggim.un.org/ggim_committee.html

Survey4BIMAutumn is gearing up to be veryactive on the Survey4BIM front(http://www.bimtaskgroup.org/survey4bim/) with a number of

outputs and events on the go.The Survey4BIM output focuseson the geo elements within theBIM process (design to build) andis due to be published in theCICES journal with a launchevent planned for 12th Nov 2015at UEL east London. Anotheroutput on five Big issues withinBIM (Interoperability & exchangeof geospatial data, Level of detail/ definition, Accuracy, Metadataand Generalisation) is also duefor completion and release thisautumn. The Digital ConstructionShow in London (October), SparEurope in Salzburg (November)and GeoBIM Amsterdam(December) will all showcase BIMin its “geo-wonderfulness”.

Evening lecturesThe 2015-16 sessions will getunderway in October with thepossibility of a lecture at the newHQ of the Royal School ofMilitary Survey at Wyton,Cambridgeshire; more on this indue course. The November lecturewill be held on 12th Nov, withthis year’s Christmas Lecture andMichael Barrett Award to be heldon Tuesday 08th Dec. This year’saward recipient is Paul Munro-Faure, FAO Land Tenure Director.2016 will see the annual UKGeoForum lecture being held onThurs 21st Jan.

Allez Geo uber alles!RICS views intra-institutionalcollaboration and thedevelopment of professional tieswith great importance; andgeomatics has always been atruly global industry. Links withour professional surveyingcolleagues in Germany andFrance have been taken to a newlevel of cooperation with thesigning of direct entryagreements and MOUs with theFrench professional surveyingbody Ordre Géomètre Expert(OGE - http://www2.geometre-expert.fr/oge/accueil-stu_5078)and with the German Society forGeodesy, Geoinformation andLand Management (DVWhttp://www.dvw.de/dvw-seite/herzlich-willkommen-auf-homepage-des-dvw).

Both OGE and DVW are highlyrespected at home and abroad,and fulfil the ‘cadastral licensing’

function within their respectivenational borders. Both are alsovery involved with and are keypartners for RICS within theEuropean surveying organisationCLGE (www.clge.eu) and FIG(www.fig.net).

Apprenticeships in UKThe UK Government is particularlykeen on construction relatedapprenticeships and has recentlyreleased details of several newschemes aimed at the rail androad infrastructure sectors. Figuresof 30k new apprenticeships havebeen bandied about by ministers.RICS is working with ourcolleagues in the CharteredSurveyor Training Trust CSTThttp://www.cstt.org.uk/about-cstt/what-is-the-cstt to makesure survey is seen as integral tothis initiative. Geo andengineering survey usually suffersfrom a lack of capacity (and lackof numbers in this regard) withso few wanting to train that ascheme is difficult to pushforward (over 100 potentialapprenticeships need to behighlighted); our colleagues inquantity surveying have thenumbers to make this work.

Indaba 2015Almost 800 representatives fromthe South African geospatialindustry gathered at EmperorsPalace in Ekurhuleni to hear thelatest geomatics news and research,and to view cutting-edge surveying,mapping and GIS technologies atGeomatics Indaba 2015.

The event, which took placefrom 11 to 13 August 2015,featured top international keynotespeakers including Kees de Zeeuw(Cadastre, the Dutch Land Registryand Mapping Agency), Dr CarlReed, former chief technologyofficer at the Open GeospatialConsortium; and Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, president of theInstitute of Navigation. RobMahoney FRICS represented RICSand gave a very well receivedsession and panel on the recentlyreleased RICS futures initiative(www.rics.org/futures). Rob alsomet with representatives of theSouth African Geomatics Industryto help firm up on direct entrydetails and procedures.

Have a great autumn.

A very busy autumnschedule ahead for allinvolved in RICS geomatics,with some significantactivity having taken placein the dog days of summer,reports James Kavanagh,Director of the Land Group.

Some of the Indaba keynote speakers, Rob Mahoney FRICS 2nd from left

Busy agenda kicks off autumn

R

. . . the challengeis to minimise thetime taken forproducts toprogress frominnovation to themarket.

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3D Documentation


software to students. The third speaker, DanStaples from Siemens PLM, asserts that this isthe software industry’s contribution to helpingclose the gap between the number of graduateengineers and the number that is needed tosustain manufacturing industry. So we concludethat weaning students on their software is of nolong-term commercial benefit to the softwaresuppliers. He urged the industry to actively goout and inspire young people to becomemanufacturing engineers. It seems thatmanufacturing suffers the same problem asengineering and construction.

3D printing3D printing is the technology that makes itpossible to manufacture prototypes on demand.There were numerous printers on display rangingupwards from Autodesk’s printer at £6,000,which can produce beautiful but very smallmodels. Scott Schiller from HP printing outlinedthe technology behind their printer, which willbe available from the second half of 2016 andwill involve colour and other attributes, such astranslucency conductivity and flexibility. Theprinter will be developed on an open platform,so he is concerned about file formats and islooking for partners for collaboration.

Faro had a stand which offered my firstopportunity to see the company’s new handheldscanner. It is certainly impressive and can operateup to a maximum range of 5m. Each scanningsession produces a point cloud which can thenbe integrated with those produced by the longerrange Faro scanners. The method of operation issimilar to DotProduct’s but the Faro’s greaterrange and higher accuracy mean that it hasmuch greater potential as a survey tool.Definitely worth a closer look at GEO Business.

Joining the dotsIt is interesting to compare the digital routefor manufacturing with that of engineeringand construction. I suspect that the latter isahead – particularly in the use of optimisationtechniques in design. It’s difficult to seesignificant value in 3D printing for visualisationbecause virtual visualisation is so much moreeffective for viewing designs covering largeareas. 3D printing for manufacturing isperhaps the equivalent of using machinecontrol to build a road and so there is certainlya parallel. There is also potential for 3Dmanufacturing design models to beincorporated into BIM models and indeedprefabrication of building units is seen as amajor benefit to be gained from BIM.

This was the fourth annual Develop3D event.It’s all about CAD for manufacturing. Sowhy should I attend? There was a line-up

of notable speakers and besides, digitalmanufacturing was the inspiration forengineering and construction’s rush to BIM. So,there could be some pointers for the future: ifmanufacturing has a cold today, constructionmay catch it tomorrow!

The most influential speaker was Carl Bass,CEO of Autodesk who, like the followingthree speakers had flown over from the US.He says that CAD was originally intended todocument designs and convey those designsto others. He reckons that 3D CAD is “quitegood”, but still conveys documentation,whereas he would like it to explore design,which involves interdisciplinary collaborationand that depends, he says, on the cloud.

Bass presented this as if it was somethingnew, which made one wonder whether themanufacturing CAD people really are membersof a more advanced race. He reckons that westill treat computing as if it is expensive, whenin fact it is very cheap. He chose a rather oddcomparison between the cost of his rail ticket toCoventry with the number of CPU hours (orsomething) that he could buy on the cloud.Rather than concluding that UK rail fares areoutrageous, he suggested that computingpower is ridiculously cheap and getting cheaper.

Minimising time to marketBass argues that a new mindset is needed forthe new era and that the challenge is tominimise the time taken for products to progressfrom innovation to the market. His vision is for aworkflow that takes a product from design tomanufacture without the need for anydocuments. Jon Hirschtick from software supplierOnshape, echoed many of Bass’s views. He seesthe cloud as a way to remove the problemscaused by downloading multiple copies ofsoftware to computers, resulting in the risk ofincompatibility through the use of differentversions. He showed that it is possible for morethan one designer to work on the same modelat the same time, so models will be in the cloudtoo. Both Autodesk’s Fusion 360 and Onshapecan be run from the cloud for annual fees of afew hundred dollars for the basic versions up toa thousand or so for the all encompassing ones.Optimisation of design is seen as the next majorsoftware development. The future for Bass is asystem that takes design criteria at one end andproduces an optimised design at the other.

Both Autodesk and Onshape offer free

Develop3D Live atWarwick Universityin Coventry foundour technical editorRichard Groomup for an earlystart to “beat thecrush” expected bythe organisers. Theyneed not haveworried; there wasno crush. Maybethey all wentinstead toWarwick!

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HxGN LIVE 2015


presentation documented a time whenindustries were forming around personalcomputers. Jobs and other key figures like EdCatmull, president and CEO of Disney Pixar,were at the heart of what Menuez sees as atransformative process. Where the linesbetween market growth, technology andinnovation start to blur. This can be seen intoday’s technological climate when every timeSilicon Valley is referred the phrase ‘gold rush’ isused. Menuez’s portion of the keynote wastimely - especially when new relationships withAutodesk and Esri were announced by Hexagon.

Content managementContent management and useableinformation were prominent themes at theevent. The “iTunes model”, used to describeHexagon’s approach to data monetisation, hasbeen fully implemented. Announcements likethe Hexagon Imagery Programme (HxIP) – acloud-based service built around LeicaGeosystems’ aerial sensors – and crowd-sourced maps are shaping information use.Hexagon is moving in a direction that appearsto separate it and clearly distinguishes it fromcompetitors.

Mobile mappingMobile mapping solutions also feed intocontent-driven workflows. Simultaneouslocalisation and mapping (SLAM) is a hot topicwithin Leica Geosystems and is at the core of thesoftware behind their newly launched Pegasusmobile mapping backpack. This wearablesolution contains multiple sensors - GNSS,cameras and LiDAR. Its wearer thus becomes awalking high definition information receiver.

ScanStation P40 – new system architectureThe laser scanning market has now reachedanother stage of maturity. The advent ofsmaller and cheaper sensors like the StonexX300LS (badged by Hexagon’s other surveyinstrument developer, Geomax) has grownassociated markets. The Leica ScanStation P40is also set to change such markets again. Thistime via a fibre laser.

Despite looking similar, the P40 features anentirely new system architecture to that of itspredecessors. This architecture generatesimpressively clean point cloud data - even onsurfaces with low reflectance values. The fibrelaser inside the P40 gives what Gregory Walsh,now senior product manager of innovation atLeica Geosystems, describes as its “punch”. Hispresentation on the P40 also featured sample

HxGN LIVE 2015 was hosted at the MGMGrand for the fourth year running. It willbe its last outing in Las Vegas for a while

with a move next year to Anaheim, California.The economic upturn in the NAFTA region

has led to a lot of new faces at HxGN LIVE thisyear. Attendee numbers were at 3500 plus,and new partnerships with both Autodesk andEsri were announced. Overall, the eventseemed geared toward shaping what Hexagoncalls “smart change”. Users of Hexagonproducts are clearly at the centre of manyproduction cycles and smart content is seen togenerate smart information.

Opening keynote Opening proceedings, president and CEO ofHexagon AB, Ola Rollén, discussed humaningenuity and progress in the first part of theopening keynote. He put things into contextby examining great thinkers of the past, suchas Leonardo da Vinci. As in previous HxGNLIVE events the digital world versus the realworld is a topic that continues to beexamined. Rollén used it to bridge gapsbetween past and present: “The digital world,the way we know it today, is no different thanour imagination. It is just that we have gottenfancier tools than Leonardo Da Vinci.”

Photographer and author Doug Menuezthen took to the stage for the second part ofthe keynote. The author of Fearless Geniuswalked his audience through a collection ofphotographs. These documented thecomputing boom in Silicon Valley from 1985-2000. Steve Jobs and his various states ofbeing in Apple were at the heart of hispresentation.

Menuez emphasised that innovation can beboth a lonely and a rewarding path. His

Smart changedriven by smartapps, new systemarchitecture andnew partnershipsare at the heart ofwhat distinguishesit from itscompetitors reportsAdam P Springon Hexagon’sannual show.

HxGN LIVE! 2015: shaping smart change

Left: HxGN LiveTV, podcastingand othercontentgeneration wasa key part ofthe conference.

H

HxGN LIVE 2015


their user community. The company wantsthem to be at the centre of all the servicesand solutions which they provide. Hence, astrong message of “we want to hear your userstories and experiences.”

Downtown Container ParkOver the four years that HxGN Live has beenheld in Las Vegas, each year has brought withit a new experience as the local economyrecovered and is now booming, reflecting thegrowth of Hexagon as a company. There isalways a different experience to be had in ‘SinCity’ on a conference-by-conference basis.HxGN LIVE 2015 was no different - especiallywith the local economy is booming.

Downtown Container Park (DCP), forexample, is an open-air sustainable shoppingarea and community revitalisation project. Itforms part of Fremont Street, which isconsidered the historic heart of downtown LasVegas. The 41 modular cubes that make up theDCP allow for it to be disassembled and movedelsewhere. Each cube is also multifunctional andcan be reused as a standalone structure ifneeded. Another notable feature is “TheMantis”: a giant fire-breathing art pieceoriginally constructed for Burning Man.

SummaryHxGN LIVE 2015 presented a company that iscertain about itself and the direction it is goingin. Competitive separation, which is oftendiscussed in technology-driven best sellers likeCrossing the Chasm, was also apparent. Forexample, Leica Geosystems was very much itsown entity in the precise measurement drivenmarkets it operates in. Hardware like theScanStation P40 is generating high resolutionand high quality information, which is becomingeasier to work with in project managementsoftwares like JetStream and Leica Captivate aswell as providing an holistic approach to 3Drendering and site management.

data of the vessel SS Great Britain, designed byIsambard Kingdom Brunel and the first ironsteamer to cross the Atlantic, now residing inBristol.

HDS sessionsThe high definition survey (HDS) sessions werean interesting mix of building informationmodelling (BIM), forensics, oil and gas,architectural, engineering and construction(AEC) based applications. Unmanned aerialvehicles (UAVs) have also started to make theirway into point-cloud driven workflows.Structure from motion (SfM) based data isbeing fused with scan data too.

Both Historic England (HE) and HistoricScotland (HS) presented their work at HxGNLIVE this year. The impressive visualisationsshown by Chris McGregor, deputy director ofthe conservation group at HS, married well withthe considered approaches outlined by PaulBryan, geospatial imaging manager for HE. Pauldemonstrated that the UK is a melting pot forlaser scanning. Point clouds of Stonehenge alsoproved to be eye candy to his audience.

Smart M.Apps The ongoing development of Hexagon’sGeospatial Division has been one of the mostinteresting things to come out of theacquisition of Intergraph. The division’sannouncement of Smart M.apps is somethingthat’s worth keeping an eye on in the future.Smart M.apps is geared toward creatingdynamic and experience-driven maps, whichfeed into trends like big data and distributedcomputing. Mapping is application driven saysMladen Stojic, president of HexagonGeospatial, as well as being shaped by usersand uses.

Machine controlMachine control has continued to play anincreased role in infrastructure and assetmanagement. Already popular in the EMEAregion, it has also started to regain traction ina revitalised NAFTA region. Johan Arnberg,president of machine control for Hexagon,was keen to emphasise that the solutions hisdivision offers are making construction basedenvironments more efficient. For example, theiCON product range - iCONstruct, iCONtrol oriCONnect – which provide complete off- andon-site machine guidance, positioning andvisualisation for users. Recently announced,the iGG4 grader uses a dual GNSS system forimproved ditch and foundation management.

Social mediaSocial media played a substantial role at HxGNLIVE this year. Blogging, podcasting and HxGNTV for YouTube were used in order to improvebusiness-to-customer communications. Muchlike Ola Rollén’s part of the keynote, thisaspect of the conference indicated thatHexagon was doing more than just listening to

Above: “The Mantis” is a giant fire-breathing art installation originallymade for the Burning Man festival. It now greets visitors to the DowntownContainer Park.

. . . the UK is amelting pot forlaser scanning.

‘‘’’

Adam P. Spring is aconsultant and visitinglecturer in AppliedTechnologies and RealityCapture in the Departmentof Archaeology, University ofPlymouth. He has featured innumerous academic andresearch publications. Inaddition to reselling 3DMAnalyst, he has been aconsultant for Autodesk andLeica Geosystems. For moreinformation, visithttp://remotelyinterested.com/. You can follow Adamon Twitter at@ThatInterested

Geometry & construction


around his native city. But Gaudi was not thefirst to work on the project.

Initial designs were prepared by thediocesan architect Francesc de Paula Villar. Heenvisaged a conventional neo-Gothic cathedralwith a dome climbing to 80 metres and a100-metre tower above the entrance. Villarresigned a year later and the management ofthe project was given to Antoni Gaudi.Gradually, as he gained the confidence of thepromoters, he changed the design to theradical structure we see today. He spent 43years working on the project, exclusively forthe last 12 of his life.

Nature’s influenceGaudi’s designs were inspired by nature wherecurves flow naturally, there is a feeling ofmovement, and form defies Cartesiangeometry. The archetypal main pillars of thenave are a radical departure from traditionalforms. They begin as square in plan, transformto octagons, 16 and 32-sided polygons as theyflow upwards becoming circles as they neartheir apex, all the while twisting. The finalappearance of the pillars resemble trees withbranches running along the ceiling. Below,creatures hold two of the pillars up, one by aturtle and the other by a tortoise – representingrespectively the earth and the sea.

This is a nightmare, or so it seems, todefine as geometry for the builders. But Gaudideveloped his ideas over many years andalthough challenging to build all of thesefeatures are geometrically defined. In theSagrada Familia he created what has becomea new architecture, which endures todaythrough the works of others.

Walker inspirationSo how have the builders fared working frommodels, drawings and sketches made almost acentury ago? Gaudi left highly detailed modelsand drawings of key features with carefullydrawn ellipsoidal geometry. His paraboloidsand hyperboloids help to define the greatinclined columns, vaulting and other structuralelements. To achieve greater stability and aslender harmonious effect, Gaudí designed allthe branching columns as a double-twistformed by two helicoidal columns. The base ofeach column has a cross-section as a polygonor star which then twists to the right and lefttransforming into a circle as it rises. Gaudi wasonce asked why he designed the columns onan incline. “For the same reason that theweary walker, when he stops props himself up

Nothing quite prepares you for the firstview of the Sagrada Familia. It is everybit as startling as the Grand Canyon.

You emerge from the efficient BarcelonaMetro system, turn around and there it is; thisextraordinary concoction in stone andconcrete, unlike any similar building you’veever seen. It is truly jaw-dropping. I saw atourist emerge look up and stay frozen on thespot for several minutes taking it all in. I didmuch the same.

Pinnacles and towers soar to the skyto be surmounted by baskets ofcoloured fruit, nuts and vegetables.Although redolent in Christiansymbolism, delicately carved scenessurround entrances, some with thefinest of detail drawn from nature. Atriumph of the stonemason’s art.Beyond the overall concept, there isbarely a straight or symmetrical figure inthe whole construct, or so it seems. Itsarchitecture is described as combiningGothic and curvilinear Art Nouveauforms. Not surprising, it is a UNESCOworld heritage site.

Painstaking workHow do the builders, for this is workstill in hand, manage to make progresson a site visited by millions of tourists(over 3 million in 2012)? When I wasthere in May they were painstakinglypositioning a slab high above the nave,the operation controlled by a hydrauliclevelling device between the towercrane and the slings attached to eachcorner of the slab. Inside the greatnave the sound of drilling andhammering reverberates amid theethereal sound of medieval music. Thisis seriously challenging work for thebuilders who, incidentally, have beenat it on and off since 1882.

The design ofthis uniquecathedral-likestructure – TempleLa Sagrada Familiato give its full title– was conceivedby the Catalanarchitect AntoniGaudi, whoseworks can also befound in manyother buildings

A few days break inthe wonderful city ofBarcelona saw theEditor visiting thesights. One left himalmost frozen to thespot.

Geometry and a client in no hurry

Above: a slab is carefully loweredusing a telescopic rig to controlpositioning whilst an apostle looks on.

Below: Ground plan of the vaultsto the apse at a height of 30m.

The architect pre-empted our applied science of geomatics:“I am a geometrician, meaning I synthesise.”

“Geometry, for the execution of surfaces, simplifies ratherthan complicates construction” – A. Gaudí

Geometry & construction


with the walking stick at an angle, since in theupright position he would find no rest”.

Proportions and ratiosGaudí’s architecture relied on a system ofproportions to be applied to all thedimensions of all parts of the Sagrada Familia.He repeatedly used simple ratios based ontwelfths of the largest dimension, as in 1 to½, 1 to , 1 to ¾… etc. to provide proportionsfor the width, length and height of every partof the temple. For example; dividing the totallength of the temple (90 metres) by 12 givesus a module of 7.5 metres, which is used inthe design of the floor plan and the heights ofthe cathedral.

The construction site according towww.sagradafamilia.org, is one of the largesttesting grounds for construction methods inthe world. Many structural elements are inreinforced concrete, the more delicate onesformed under workshop conditions. Todaystone cutting is done by computer control andCAD guides the builders. But there is muchwork still to do if the current completion dateof 2026 (the centenary of Gaudi’s death) is tobe achieved, not the least of which is theerection of the great tower which will rise 170metres above the 17 other towers, eachcommemorating key biblical charactersdecorate the fantastical façades. Sculptures ofbiblical figures are by J. Busquets, EtsuroSotoo and the controversial Josep Subirachswhose angular style contrasts strongly withGaudi’s architecture.

Why has it taken so long to build?Medieval cathedrals were always work inprogress. York Minster’s principal layout anddesign spanned well over 200 years andcontinues to evolve today. Questioned on howlong construction might take, Gaudi isreported to have said, “My client is not in ahurry”. Alas the works of man intervened. Heperished long before the cathedral was evenhalf built, the victim of a tram accident. Histomb is in the crypt of his life’s work.

End pieceThis brief article can only hint at Gaudi’sgenius. You must visit the great temple itselfto understand one of humanity’s crowningachievements. If you visit no other greatheritage site in the world the Sagrada Familiahas to be the truly standout of those built byman.

Acknowledgements and sourcesThe Basilica of the Sagrada Familia (in English)by Jordi Fauli, director architect andcoordinator of the project. ISBN 978-84-8003-665-8. This book is outstanding with excellenttranslated English that describes Gaudi’s formsalongside photographs and drawings.The author also acknowledges the officialwebsite of the Sagrada Familia,www.sagradafamilia.org.

Above: Gaudi’s carefully calculated table of proportions and sizes for individualelements of the structure. Within each group the different measurements aretwelfths of the largest one. Below: a riot of fruity decoration and complex detail.

Hydrography


arrays of gyroscopes and accelerometers,mechanically aligned orthogonally on theprincipal axes.

Surveying SV YantletThe PLA commissioned Capture As-Built Ltd toconduct a laser scan of the SV Yantlet, a 16mCatamaran with a permanently installed Reson8125 MBES. In order to validate the datausing a traditional total station, the PLA,exploiting its partnership with UCL to deliver aCategory ‘A’ accredited MSc in HydrographicSurveying, sponsored a dissertation entitled,“Investigating the use of Terrestrial LaserScanner for Hydrography; Vessels SensorAssembly”[1].

Ensuring the Yantlet was in her standardoperational condition before being removed fromthe water, multiple measurements were madefrom fixed points around the hull to thewaterline. This was done in calm water and theinclination, list and heel, was measured at thesame time. This enabled the water plane to beascertained within the point cloud at a later date.

Once clear of the water the boat waspositioned in open space within the boatyard soas to allow access around the vessel and to limitthe need for oblique vertical observations. Thecontrol survey network was simulated usingStarNet to estimate the number of rounds ofangles required to achieve the desired accuracyand then the observations were made using aLeica TS15 total station. In order to position theIMU within the vessel a double resection wasrequired to locate the IMU within the starboardhull of the Yantlet. The total station survey useda combination of reflectorless shots to definethe hull, and self-adhesive retro reflective targetswhen re-secting or when high accuracyrepeatable observations were required, such asaround the sensor assemblies. The StarNet leastsquares adjustment showed error ellipses of upto 17mm in the vertical.

The scanning was conducted in aconventional manner utilising a Leica C10

The Port of London Authority (PLA) isresponsible for managing the tidal RiverThames. Its Hydrographic Service has three

dedicated survey vessels each permanently fittedwith multibeam systems and with the ability tointegrate a much wider variety of surveyequipment as required. With the move to high-resolution multibeam systems it became clearthat the organisation was in possession of aresource with value far beyond traditionalbathymetry. Indeed, a large proportion of thePLA Hydrographic Service work now sees itsvessels utilised to conduct surveys formonitoring and pre-works investigations as wellas engineering-level surveys for assetmanagement (Figure1), and as-built surveys.With this demand comes the requirement tomobilise a variety of survey equipment, fromvessel mounted lasers and photographic systemsto towed arrays of sub-bottom equipment suchas boomers, pingers and magnetometer arrays;all of which rely on accurate definition of sensorpositions and layback.

The demandWith improvements to GNSS positioning andsonar resolution it was becoming apparent thatthe accuracy of sensor offset data had becomea significant factor in the system error budget,made more critical due to the increasing use ofGNSS heighting to reduce bathymetric data tochart datum, and the temporary mobilisation ofsurvey equipment to the vessels.

It was decided to re-survey the vessels todetermine high accuracy sensor positions.Critically, the survey needed to define the

positions of the primarysensors: the multibeamecho sounder (MBES), theinertial measurement unit(IMU) and the positions ofthe aiding GNSSantennae. The alignmentof the IMU was alsocritical as it comprises

The world ofhydrography is beingopened up for newapplications using avariety of boat-mounted sensors.Measurement of therelative positions ofthe sensors on boardis vital for making themost of these newtechnologies. StuartLeakey from the Portof London Authorityand Geoff Whartonfrom Capture As-BuiltLtd describe newtechniques for theaccuratemeasurement ofrelative sensorpositions.

Vessel Sensor Offsets:developing robust measurement techniques

Above: Figure 1 - Example of Asset Management -Richmond Lock and Weir showing scour protectionand undermining. Acknowledgement: Jed Green,“Richmond Lock and Weir”, Hydrographic Surveyor,Port of London Authority Hydrographic Service, 2013. Above: Figure 2 - SV Yantlet – total station error ellipses and table, courtesy of UCL.

V

Hydrography


with an 800mm extension.It should be noted that as the control was

already installed, it was possible to conductthese measurements whist the vessel was stillafloat. With the vessel located in shelteredwaters within Tilbury docks, reflector-lessmeasurements of the water surface were takenwith the MS50 relative to the onboard controlto establish the waterline level under static trimwhilst the survey with the tracker continued.

DeliverablesThe acquired data was processed using LeicaCyclone software and compiled in AutoCAD.The vessel coordinate system was alignedrelative to the IMU mounting bolt centres andthe point data was exported using the dataextraction function within AutoCAD to createthe spreadsheet of offsets. A drawing wascreated showing the location of all relevant

laser scanner with multiple circular planartargets within each scan. Scans were co-registered and processed using Leica Cyclone.When conducting the scanning, planar targetswere fitted to the total station controlnetwork so that a comparison could be madebetween the two surveys. The method ofestablishing control within the boatyard whensurveying the SV Yantlet meant that when thevessel was moved, the control no longer hadany relationship with the boat.

The SV VerifierBuilding on the success of the initial surveythe PLA commissioned Capture As-Built Ltd touse refined techniques to scan the SV Verifier,a 21m mono-hull with a permanently installedReson 7101 MBES.

The major change was to install recoverablecontrol aboard the Verifier. Threaded insertswith M8 internal thread were permanentlyinstalled on board. Eight inserts were positionedsuch that at least three were visible from anyrequired survey station location. The insertsaccommodate spigot adaptors for round prismsand holders for spherical reflectors.

A Leica Nova MS50 Multi-station was usedto observe the on-board control for allsubsequent survey activities. It was also usedto scan the external parts of the vessel atrelatively low resolution and the MBES andmounting gondola at higher resolution toenable extraction of dimensional data. Totalstation observations were made with theMS50 to Leica round prisms installed intemporary spigot adaptors on the GNSSantenna mounting points.

The IMU itself was removed from the vesseland scanned off site using a Romer Armsupplied by Hexagon Metrology, producing avery accurate high-resolution scan that couldbe independently positioned within the pointcloud and defined the orientation of the IMUto sufficient accuracy to enable extrapolationof its alignment.

The IMU could not be accurately surveyedwith the MS50 because it was located 700mm below floor level and with restrictedaccess. But both the IMU and its mountingplate are precision engineered to millimetriclevel. It was possible to position the IMU scanwithin the point cloud by surveying the mountpoints on the permanently installed mountingplate using a Leica Absolute Tracker AT960and T-Probe. The tracker was set up on deckrelative to four control points with a line-of-sight through the wheelhouse to a pointbelow deck. Temporary targets were locatedusing heavy duty double-sided tape such thatthey would be visible from a location belowdeck with clear sight of the floor access hatchfor the IMU. The laser tracker was then set upbelow deck and positioned by observing thesame four targets. The IMU was removed toreveal the mounting bolt holes and the boltcentres were surveyed using the Leica T-Probe

Right: Figure 3 - The IMU pointcloud.

The Leica tracker has two technologies. Firstly, the base system is apolar coordinate measuring machine, with two angles and a distancebut with ultra high accuracy encoders and an absolute interferometer,which measures rapid change in distance with an interferometer andabsolute distance with an absolute distance meter.

Secondly, the tracker uses videogrammetry through a built-in videocamera with a very fast and accurate variable zoom. This is used to takeimages at 100 Hz of ten LEDs on the T-Probe, which are synchronised toflash and for the camera to record the position of each LED.

Effectively we measure the position of an in-built tooling ball reflectoron the T-Probe with the Laser Tracker and then the orientation of the T-Probe by measuring the rotational angles of the LEDs giving us the abilityto measure XYZ and the rotations around each directional axis.

The benefit of a variable zoom camera is that the image size of theT-Probe remains the same whether it is up close to the tracker or at itsmaximum distance away, which is currently 30m.

Steve Shickell, Hexagon Metrology

Leica Tracker and T-Probe

V

. . . the point clouditself has alsoproved a powerfuldeliverable. It hasbeen used forfitting ofequipment withinthe vessel, andinstallation of theequipment forpositioning forsensor offsets andfor managementand maintenanceof the vessel. . .

‘‘

’’

Hydrography


inherent generalisations required with a lessdense dataset such as that offered byconventional total station measurements.

The scanning method utilising the LeicaScanStation C10 has some advantages overthe MS50 method, primarily the data capturerate is faster but at a lower quoted accuracy.However, with the MS50, the installation ofthe control and the scanning are carried outconcurrently with one instrument and theseparate scans are co-registered on board theinstrument, which streamlines the processingworkflow. The MS50 data is of higheraccuracy and has a lower noise level.

On vessels small enough that they may beconsidered rigid, the installation of permanentcontrol aboard the vessel allows for repeat surveywork on deck, and within the vessel without therequirement to remove it from the water. Thisremains true as long as the measuring instrumentand observables move as one body. Consequentlyalthough the initial survey may be costly, as theboat must be removed from the water,subsequent surveys aboard may be achievedwhilst afloat, and the cost of the initial surveymay be reduced if the work is conductedalongside scheduled maintenance.

Although the established control on theVerifier has already proved to be a valuableasset, the distribution of the control, asdisplayed within Figure 4, is poor in that it isvery flat being primarily on the plane of thedeck. The construction of the vessel dictatedwhere the control could be positioned as onemay not just drill a hole anywhere on a vessel.Using alternatives to drilled inserts may allowfor a better control distribution to beestablished at a later date.

Both the surveys of the Yantlet and theVerifier proved to be a success, and allowed usto state the relative positions of the installedsensors to millimetric level, rather than theprevious centimetric level. Along the way wehave shown the weakness of total stationmeasurements and the value of point clouddata and on board control.

Further workThe PLA has commissioned an 18.5m custom-

built survey boat, which is beingdesigned and built by CTruk in Essex.She has been designed tospecification around the premise thatshe is a survey instrument that floatsand is able to sustain an economical20 knots.

Building on the lessons of theVerifier, she will have controlinstalled strategically around herdeck, coach roof, and internallywithin every compartment such thatthe distribution of the control variesthrough the principal dimensions.She will have two in-built IMUmounting points and is designed forpermanent installation of the

survey points and the waterline plane.The primary deliverable was simply a set of

orthographic drawings and a table of offsetswhich defined the positions of all the installedsensors relative to the IMU reference point.However, the point cloud itself has also proveda powerful deliverable. It has been used forfitting of equipment within the vessel, andinstallation of the equipment for positioningfor sensor offsets and for management andmaintenance of the vessel itself. For example,if a piece of fendering is lost it can bemeasured and cut to fit utilising the pointcloud data or model and be waiting quaysidefor the vessel, thus reducing vessel down-time.

Additionally, we were able to define thecentre of rotation of the vessel. This point needsto be defined relative to the IMU in order forthe software behind the IMU to effectivelyuncouple the motions thus avoiding artefactssuch as roll induced heave. As stated by Euler:“The oscillatory movement of a floating body(rolling or pitching) can be described as arotation about the Centre of Flotation.”[2]

Thus by defining the water plane within thepoint cloud, the water plane area is defined bythe intersection of the two components and thecentroid may be found by either using thefacilities within the software if displaying withina CAD package, by numerical integration or, ifthe shape of the water plane is maybesympathetically simplified, by taking moments.

ConclusionsWhen examining the error ellipses of the totalstation measurements, it is apparent that thetotal station method is weak when conductingoblique vertical observations, which arenecessary when re-secting to establish aposition within the confined spaces within thevessel, or when surveying within the confinesof a busy boatyard. The registration techniqueof the laser-scan survey process removes thisissue; and increasing the density of theregistration targets adds redundancy andbrings down residuals. The increased densityof measurements on a particular feature whichis facilitated by point cloud data aids accuracyby reducing the interpolated distances and

Below: Figure 4 - SVVerifier Point Cloud

Hydrography


About the authorsStuart Leakey studiedship science (NavalArchitecture) atSouthampton Universitybut then went on tobuild railways, workingfor Carillion managingthe InfrastructureConsolidation Centre

before spending two years as a forensic QS.During that time he did the UCL MSc inHydrographic Surveying and then joined thePLA as a Hydrographic Surveyor in 2012.

Geoff Wharton has abackground inmechanical engineeringand has progressed froma draughtsman throughto CAD and then 3D CADdesigner working on shipdesign and within theprocess plant and marine

industry in USA and Europe for more than 26years. Subsequent years as design/constructioninterface coordinator introduced Geoff to thepractical aspects of surveying and today heruns Capture As-Built Ltd which focuses ondimensional control within the marine industrywith significant involvement in theperformance sailing sector.

R2Sonic 2024 MBES (with the 700kHzupgrade package). The control will beestablished prior to her maiden voyage andthe sensor position survey will form part ofthe commissioning process prior to herdelivery at the end of this year.

The PLA is sponsoring another UCL MScdissertation utilising the point cloud data ofthe Verifier. This will be jointly sponsored withApplanix and explore whether significantimprovements can be made in removing vesselmotion (heave) artefacts by accurately definingthe centre of rotation (flotation) as enabledwhen using point cloud data with theobserved water plane defined therein.

AcknowledgementAT960 and T-Probe were supplied by HexagonMetrology and the works were carried outonsite by Beatrice Alix of Hexagon Metrology.

References[1] Lidong Ding, “Investigating the use ofTerrestrial Laser Scanner for Hydrography;Vessels Sensor Assembly”, University CollegeLondon, MSc Hydrographic SurveyingDissertation, 2013.[2] L. Euler, “Scientia Navalis seu Tractatus deConstruendis ac Dirigendis Navibus”, 2 vols.,Academiae Scientarum, St.Petersbourg(Russia), 1749.

Conference report


particularly enjoyed were:

* Dr Paramesh Banerjee, director at the EarthObservatory of Singapore, NanyangTechnological University is a geophysicist whospoke on the use of the GPS geodeticnetwork, and LiDAR initiatives to studytectonic faults.

* Mr Kwoh Leong Keong, with 15 yearsexperience as the director of the Centre forRemote Imaging, Sensing and Processing,National University of Singapore, detailedcurrent applications in research into producing3D city models, and studying environmentalapplications.

* Dr Keith C Bell, of the World Bank, gave aninteresting insight into the process of fundingfor development assistance in what he calls atwo-speed world – the haves, and the have-nots. He quoted OSGB former head, VanessaLawrence as saying “Everything happenssomewhere.” So deep!

*Mr Anselm Haanen, deputy surveyor generalof Land Information New Zealand, spoke ofthe recent revision of cadastral surveying rules,and the development of a 3D cadastre toencompass strata ownership. And nowanother 3D problem: position and heightchange due to crustal shift.

There were 94 technical papers listed in theprogramme, and I managed to attend about20 or so, by a quick shuffle at times from oneroom to another, due to the need to have five

The 13th Congress theme was ‘Expandingthe Geospatial Future’ and was a goer fromstart to finish: three days of speeches,

presented papers and technical exhibitions, anda final half day for technical tours.

The tone was set from the opening sessionwhere Ms Indranee Rajah, Singapore ministerof law and education spoke of the spread ofgeospatial development in Singapore, thenopened the technical exhibition. The morningsession moved on to a plenary of threespeakers, and after lunch, five parallel sessionsof papers on selected topics.

This same format was used for days 2 and3. Morning plenaries of six speakers –followed by five sessions running concurrentlyeach afternoon. In this way, 15 keynotepresentations were made by speakers who arerecognised as experts in their field, and afurther 94 learned papers were delivered bydelegates coming from at least 20 countries.

The countries now participating in this SEAsian event have certainly diversified over theyears, though some have participated consistentlysince 1979. Countries such as Australia, NewZealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia,Indonesia and Brunei, and two years ago thePhilippines, have hosted the SEASC on one ortwo occasions. This 13th congress was the thirdto be held in Singapore. However delegates nowalso come from Europe, North America andincreasing numbers from the Peoples Republic ofChina, South Korea and Japan.

The venue and eventsThe venue of the Sands Expo and ConventionCentre is very new, and must be the primeconvention location in Singapore today. Themain ballroom was used for the opening eventand the plenary sessions, also the congressdinner. The ballroom has one continuous wallthat must be about 150 metres in length. The

wall is fitted with four extremelylarge video screens, which ensurethat wherever you sit, you cansee the display on a screen.

Plenary presentations.The 15 presentations, each of 30minutes, went like clockwork,and were extremely good. Thespeakers were all experiencedprofessionals, and they gavesome of the most interestingtalks I have heard, on a widerange of topics relating to thegeospatial theme. Four I

A highly successfulthree days ofkeynotes, papers,technical tours andsocialising markedthe 13th SEASCcongress inSingapore, reportsGordonAndreassend.

South East Asia surveyors expand geospatial futureSouth East Asia surveyors expand geospatial future

Below: Ms Indranee Rajah,Singapore’s minister of lawand education,spoke of thespread of geospatialdevelopment in the country.

BACKGROUNDThe first South East Asia Survey Congress was heldin Singapore in 1979, then a joint-venture betweenthe Australian Institution of Surveyors and theSurvey Institutes in Singapore and Malaysia.Organised by the Australian Institution’s KevinBlume, he gained the support of the Singaporeanand Malaysian institutes as well as almost everyother survey institute in SE Asia.

All delegates agreed that the inaugural congresswas a great success and that future ones should beheld at regular intervals in any of the SE Asia countrieswhich had professional surveying institutes. Twoorganisations in Hong Kong took up the challenge atthe closing of the 1979 SEASC to stage the next eventin 1983. The Hong Kong Branch of the RICS, and theHK Land Surveyors Institute jointly organised a mostsuccessful 2nd SEASC – and the die was well and trulycast. During the next 32 years ten SEASC events havebeen staged in several countries, until July 2015, whenthe 13th SEASC commenced, once again in Singapore.

Conference report


in May 2016. The theme, Recovery fromDisaster – a process that is very surveydependant – is most appropriate, given theChristchurch situation.(See www.fig.net/fig 2016)

Technical tours That concluded the congress, except for thethree technical tours held on the morning ofday 4. I visited the Marina Barrage, a majorengineering project built on reclamation, whichcontrols the outflow of what is now calledMarina Reservoir. The enclosed area was onceseabed, but now contains a large reservoir ofstormwater drainage that is treated to augmentSingapore’s precious fresh water supply.

sessions running in parallel so delegates haveto be fairly selective in choosing what toattend, but this seems to be the norm today,with a large number of papers available andonly a limited time for the congress. However,the standard and quality of the papers Iattended was quite high.

You can see these papers and the keynotespeeches by viewing the congress website –www.seasc2015.org.sg

Technical exhibitionWith Leica as the major sponsor, and Trimbleand Oracle participating amongst a large raftof industry providers and surveying companies,the Exhibition was very popular. Attendancewas assisted by generous 45-minute tea-breaks, and one-and-a-half hours for lunch.

Congress dinner and closing ceremony The dinner was held on the evening of day 2,and allowed delegates to relax and minglewith old and new friends. The closingceremony on the afternoon of day 3 wasbrief, and to the point. The task of runningthe 14th SEASC in 2017 was handed over tothe Brunei representative, and a videoshowing various Brunei attractions was shown.

The four large screens were also opened toa New Zealand delegate to promote the FIGWorking Week to be held in Christchurch, NZ,

Right: it seems tobe written in the

stars for thesedelegates, or at

least in the ceiling.

About the authorGordon Andreassend, originallyfrom New Zealand, is a retiredsurveyor based in Hong Kong.He is a Fellow of both the NewZealand Institution of Surveyorsand Hong Kong Institution ofSurveyors as well as a memberof the RICS.

Book Review

By Paul A Longley, Michael FGoodchild, David J Maguire andDavid W Rhind.

Published by Wiley, 477pp,£143.99 (Amazon) paperback,£40 (Kindle), £33.33 (online fromhttp://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-EHEP003247.html#purchase) ISBN: 978-1-118-67695-0

This comprehensive book coversall things GI. It is not so much areference work as a course, whichsurveyors would have no difficultyin following, either starting from

very limited knowledge or as atop-up for those who have beentaught GIS but have become rusty.It could be used as the basis forsome serious CPD.

The text is laid out logically,starting with discussion of thenature of spatial data,georeferencing and data qualitythrough to techniques of datacollection, databases and theGeoWeb. There are chapters oncartographic representation,visualisation, spatial analysis,inference and modelling. The finalthree chapters cover managementof GI systems, taking the subjectto its highest level by going intodetail about business cases, riskmanagement and projectmanagement. These topics are ofcourse applicable to many aspectsof what surveyors do andapproaching them from a differentdirection is, as always, useful inhelping to consolidate knowledge.

The final chapter is entitled

‘Epilog: GISS in the service ofHumanity’. In this chapter theauthors set out how GISS(Geographical InformationScience and Systems) cancontribute towards equitability inan interdependent world.

An attractive feature of thebook’s layout is the emphasis ofkey points using bold text afterthey are mentioned within thetext. It is also largely jargon-free– so there is no need to keepreminding yourself what‘ontology’ means! An interestingfeature is the inclusion of manybiographical paragraphs aboutleading figures in the GI world. Itis debatable whether these arenecessary, but they do at leastgive the student some insightsinto the sort of jobs that couldawait them after completingChapter 19. Ethics are discussedin several places within the textand there is an interestingsection covering the potential for

GI to be spun to delivermisleading ‘messages’.

Surveyors will not be greatlyinterested in the chaptersreferring to surveying techniques,because we already know aboutthem. But it is worth mentioningthat the section on coordinatesystems does not mentiondatums and the section ontriangular irregular networksdoes not mention break lines.Worryingly, ‘Geomatics’ is notmentioned at all and there is noadvice (such as ‘consult asurveyor’) for GI people whomight be tempted to makeassumptions about what liesoutside their area of knowledge.There are also some strangereferences in the further readingboxes. Surely Dava Sobel’sexcellent book Longitude issomething the serious GI studentshould read on the beach!

Reviewer: Richard Groom

Geographic Information Science and Systems (Fourth Edition)

a comprehensive work and ideal for some serious CPD!

3D Documentation


expenses. Thirdly, as we enter the new BIMworld, the change in licensing makes sensebecause all collaborators will be using the sameversion of AutoCAD to edit drawings and sothe risk of degrading the DWG file byprocessing using an earlier version is eliminated.

Autodesk at the coreAutoCAD remains the core product. A numberof the changes in the 2016 version appearcosmetic. In earlier versions when you zoomedinto a drawing curved features would appearjagged until you applied the REGEN function.That is no longer the case. Curves remaincurved. The dimensioning function is slicker. Forexample, if you select a curve it will assume thatyou want to display the turning angle. MOVEand COPY have been improved. Revision cloudshave also been improved as has the productionof PDFs. For the latter, file sizes have beenreduced whilst fidelity has been improved and itis possible to embed hyperlinks and bookmarkswithin PDFs and to carry out text searches.Autodesk seems to have adopted the term‘reality computing’ – meaning point clouds –and AutoCAD 2016 has an improved method ofextracting cross-sections from slices of data.

Infraworks – the futureThe middle of the day was devoted to threebreak-out session streams geared towardsusers’ applications of Autodesk products –manufacturing, buildings and infrastructure. Ijoined the infrastructure stream, focusing onInfraworks and Autodesk Civil 3D.

I first saw Infraworks at Survey Ireland andthere was no doubt this is an impressiveproduct. A live demonstration showed thesoftware being used for the conceptual designof a road with river bridge and roundabout.The base data can be supplied by the user, butInfraworks can also search for open data inthe form of mapping, city models and DTMs.It is certainly slick and it is possible to take thedesign to quite a detailed level, including for

example, road drainage and details ofthe road cross-section.

The software demonstrated workswith AASHTO standards but Cadline iscurrently working on developing it touse UK standards. Volumes can becalculated to compare scenarios andvisualisations assist in the software’s aimof helping the engineer to investigateoptions and present them to clients.Horizontal and vertical alignments canbe optimised and we were even shownan app for traffic flow analysis

In June, Autodesk reseller, Cadline, hosted aday out at Mercedes Benz World nearLondon to let its customers know what’s new

in Autodesk products. Having been anAutoCAD user since 1989, it would never haveoccurred to me to buy from a reseller, ratherthan simply download from the Autodeskwebsite, but this event has made me thinktwice. Clearly Cadline wants to sell addedvalue, in the form of its own products as wellas those of Autodesk, along with training andsupport services, but it is churlish to ignore theconsiderable experience that these servicecompanies have built up over the years.

Pay as you GoThe main innovation with the new softwarerelease is a move from perpetual to termlicences. From January 31st 2016 there will nolonger be an option to purchase perpetuallicences but it will be possible to maintainexisting perpetual licences until around 31January 2017 – although the date has not beenfixed. The effects will be firstly, that it is nolonger necessary to pay a large capital sum up-front, and indeed so far as the accountants andtaxman are concerned, Autodesk products willno longer be classified as assets. Secondly, entrycost will be substantially lower, making it moreattractive to purchase licences to try out thesoftware and easier to attribute the costs toparticular projects: they will become operating

The arrival of cloudbased computing isenabling softwarevendors to switchfrom perpetuallicences to a pay-as-you-go approach.There are benefitsfor project teamstoo, as RichardGroom discoveredas he heard aboutthe latest offeringsat a Cadline hostedinformation day.

Autodesk heralds big licence change for 2016

Above: latest Civil3Dallows draped images,data shortcuts andmuch more.

Right: Autodesk arepushing the boundariesof Infraworks.

3D Documentation


modelling and the presenter suggested thatAutodesk Recap was the place to clean up DTMs.

Linear infrastructure designIn the early 1990s I was introduced to a pieceof software for road design that built updesign cross-sections in much the same waythat Civil 3D does road design. Each featurein the cross-section is defined using a closedpolygon. From this, the software can producesolid 3D features so, for example, an asphaltcourse becomes a SOLID entity, from whichvolume calculation is straight-forward.

Where does Infraworks stop and Civil 3Dstart? The answer is that Autodesk are pushingthe boundaries of Infraworks. The danger is ofcourse that designers will take their eye off theunderlying data. It may be fine to use a crudeDTM for conceptual design but use it fordetailed design and the engineer couldbecome seriously unstuck. This is an areawhere surveyors are experts and should be partof the engineering design team.

On many levels this was an interesting andinformative day. Perhaps most striking was thecontrast between previous events run byAutodesk, in which one felt that jargonprevailed, and this event run by a servicecompany for its customers. Cadline have auseful website, which is open to all –www.cadlinecommunity.com.

visualisation. Having settled on the concept, thedesign data from Infraworks can be exported asan ‘IVM’ file, and then imported into AutodeskCivil 3D.

Keep it in the VaultThe BIM process emphasises sharing of databetween stakeholders; but with that has tocome some robust data management andaudit trails. This is provided by Autodesk Vault.Collaborators who wish to use a commondataset can check it out, work on it and thencheck it back in to the Vault. Users can seethe history of the dataset in some detail and itis possible to add comments to the audit trail.Vault can also store non-drawing documents,such as emails and spreadsheets. I wonder ifAutodesk Vault could end up being useduniversally for data management. Autodeskhas a similar product called Autodesk 360,which is a ‘lite’ version of Vault, without thesecurity needed for widespread collaboration.

Civil 3D also includes ‘data shortcuts’. Astrange term for what is effectively an intelligentXREF. The concept is almost one of separatinglayers into individual drawings. The new versionalso includes more point cloud functionality. Wewere shown a function to clean up point cloudswhich involved the meaning of data rather thanfiltering. There is however, a high risk of misusewhich could result in horrendous ground

Where doesInfraworks stopand Civil 3Dstart?

‘‘’’


making sense of the changing world. Leicasees two markets for the Zeno – enterprisedata and simple projects. Besides being ademonstrably rugged device subjected torigorous testing, it also incorporates a multi-constellation GNSS receiver, which can processnetwork RTK signals to achieve ‘centimetreaccuracy’ – in practice about 5cm. This is inresponse to user demands for more accurateGI. The Zeno 20 can use either Android orWindows Mobile operating systems.Applications include, according to Leica,providing ground control for UAS aerialphotography, BIM data and forestrymanagement.

Super-DISTOA new DISTO, the S910, is almost atheodolite because, when mounted on atripod, it measures horizontal as well asvertical angles. Put a Zeno 20 on the sametripod and what do you have? The answer is,a rather useful piece of equipment. A piece ofequipment that needs some survey sense touse. How ironic that low precision equipmentshould demand more expertise than its high-spec cousins!

The software for asset data collection is anAndroid app called Leica Zeno Mobile, whichturns it into something that ‘even a kid coulduse’. A thought that prompted a videostarting with son on skateboard and dad onZeno and ended with son on Zeno – wecouldn’t see what son was doing – but dadwas falling off skateboard!

Crowning achievementThere can be little doubt that Leica’s crowningachievement in the last twelve months hasbeen the P40 laser scanner. I know a companythat bought one as soon as it was launched.Its defining feature is its precision – noisereduction over the full range of theinstrument. This must make cloud-to-cloudregistration a lot more reliable. It looks likeany other Leica scanner on the outside but itsinnards, according to Paul Burrows, are 85%new. It also obtains returns off black and shinysurfaces that were previously severe problems.

Opening proceedings Mike Skicko assuredthe audience that they would be‘capitvated’ and indeed we were. He

stressed Leica Geosystems’ commitment to pre-and post- sales support through online servicesand training as well as via the company’snetwork of regional representatives. He alsoreiterated the offer of meeting room space forcustomers at Milton Keynes.

The morning’s presentations were deliveredby James Whitworth, UK sales manager,Nathan Ward, asset collection segmentmanager and Paul Burrows, HDS/UAS andmobile mapping manager.

Whitworth described the developing role ofsurveying in terms of virtualising the realworld. BIM was once again top of the agenda.Leica sees its role as taking BIM out of theoffice and into the field – describing it as the‘BIM field trip’. To do this demands close linkswith BIM in the office and this is beingenabled via a new strategic partnershipbetween Leica and Autodesk.

High Accuracy HandheldThe Zeno 20 is Leica’s new handheld GI datacollector. It is designed to meet a number ofchallenges – increasing data volumes,capturing the important information and

TwickenhamStadium, the homeof rugby, was thevenue for the finaldate for this year’sLeica Roadshow. Asever, a keen crowdheard thecompany’s expertstalking about thelatest technology inthe morning andspent the afternoonon equipmentdemonstrationsoutside thestadium, reportsRichard Groom.

Leica Roadshow 2015– captivated by technology

and a skateboard

Below: Mike Skicko assured us we would be ‘captivated’ atTwickenham stadium.

Left: Alex McDonald, Leica’s technical specialist for GIS asset collection& management, explains the finer points of data collection.

L

Roadshow


should it lose lock. The new range ofinstruments can augment reality bysuperimposing the surveyed objects onto theinstrument camera image, which makes itmuch easier to spot mistakes – such asincorrect prism height.

Not only does the P40 have a range of 270mand incorporate a filter that removesfeatures beyond the ambiguity range, but itcan also be used for close-range scanning ofobjects like statues due to ‘mixed pixelfiltering’ for pixels along edges.

“Be Captivated”‘Captivate’ is the name that Leica has givento a new interface for all its equipmentincluding a new series of total stations –TS16, TS60 and MS60. The user is able topan, tilt and zoom into 3D views in the fieldvia a familiar touch screen. Inevitably, thecaptivate interface looks most impressive on alarge tablet and Leica’s CS35 ruggedWindows tablet can also act as a PC, whichcould eliminate the need to transfer databetween the field and the office, or indeed asecond computer in the office.

Automatic target recognition (ATR) hasnow been developed so that after setting up,the instrument can detect all objects returninga signal whether they are reflective tape, shinysurfaces or survey prisms. The user can thentell the total station to ignore the falsetargets. Similarly, if given a file of controlcoordinates, the instrument can identify andobserve prisms set on the control pointsautomatically. It also ‘learns’ the dynamics of amoving prism so that it knows where to look,

Above: Three of several new instruments introduced by Leica. From left to right,the Leica MS60 Smart Station with the new ‘Captivate’ interface. The Leica Zeno 20rugged data collector and the Leica S910 Disto which also measures angles.

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Overcurrents


to the Pole Star. The channel is now crossed bytwo bridges and a pedestrian walkway. TheRed Bridge, in mid-channel, was built of woodin 1756. It was rebuilt and enlarged ten yearslater, then again in 1832, but that time in iron.

After finishing my coffee, I strolled over toJoyce’s statue. After looking at it, and taking afew photos from several angles, I noted abronze plaque on the bridge parapet... and adiagram. Both were a little hard to make out,but the plaque reads:

Since 1785, during the reign of EmperorJoseph II, who succeeded Maria Theresa in1780, there has been an instrument in thePonterosso Channel (Idrometro) whichmeasures sea levels and tides. It is called ‘ZeroPonterosso (ZPR)’. It is engraved in the stoneand graduated in feet and Parisian inches (1foot = 32.484 cm = 12 inches = 12 × 2.707cm), and was probably used for occasionalobservations of the sea for vessels sailing inthe canal. The canal was then used formooring merchant ships. The altimetricalnetwork of Trieste is still based on that zero setby the Vienna Military Geographical Institute(Z.I.G.M.V.)

Despite a careful look, I found no stoneengraving. But note the graduations in feetand Parisian inches, and not being equal totoday’s 2.54 cm.

Grotta Gigante (45°42 35.62 N,13°45 52.33 E)Billed as the world’s largest tourist cave (StPeter’s Basilica in Rome would fit comfortablyinside) this would belie its value to science,particularly in the area of crustal monitoring.Ten million years old, with a constant yearround temp of 11° C, it’s just the place tostore your ’66 Dom Pérignon collection!

I’d never heard of this cave, but while inthe city in early July, locals suggested I visit theGrotta Gigante, a few miles outside town. Toget there, one could take the #42 bus all theway from Trieste city centre, but it’s far moreinteresting to take the delightful tram, anengineering marvel in its own right, up ontothe Karstian limestone plateau. After windingits way through a few city blocks, it turns intoa cog rail on a steep incline before zippingthrough countryside and villages, on a moregentle gradient to its terminus in Opicina. Abus then takes you to what seems like themiddle of nowhere, with green fields, roundhay bales, and dry stone walls, morereminiscent of Somerset. A few minutes’ walkfrom the stop and you’re at the visitor centre,

Iusually find a few things of anengineering/surveying bent while exploringEuropean cities, things I don’t exactly seek

out, but that seem to find me. I am writingthis column from Trieste, Italy, a lovely city Inearly bypassed on my way to Slovenia fromSicily. It’s a great base, noted by Lonely Planetas the most underrated city in the world tovisit; and I can attest to that!

James Joyce and the Canal Grande plaqueSeated one morning at the Caffè Stella Polare(Polar Star), one of several fine cafés built afterthe Austrian style in the mid-1800s (Trieste waspart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire untilannexed by Italy just after WWI), enjoying acappuccino, when I read that it had been JamesJoyce’s favourite hangout. It was there that hewrote The Dubliners and was inspired to startUlysses. From the café, Joyce could see theCanal Grande and the Red Bridge. And, now, Iwas looking across that bridge at a bronzestatue of the writer, erected in honour of his 14years spent in the city. Trieste, apart from beinga major commercial seaport years ago attractedmany well known writers, artists, andphilosophers, including: Sigmund Freud, OscarWilde, Joseph Conrad, Mahler, Haydn, and SirRichard Burton. Trieste was, and still is, thecrossroads of many cultures, and the coffeecapital of Central Europe.

The Canal Grande was built from 1754-1756, designed by Venetian Matteo Pirona. Itwas built so that boats could go directly to thecentre of the city. Merchants would sit besidethe canal sipping their coffees, just as they didat Lloyd’s coffee houses in London, waiting fortheir ships to come in. However, no longer doships set out from this canal into the AdriaticSea to travel the oceans, with sailors spendingmonths at sea, finding their way by reference

A trip to the historiccity of Trieste for ourcorrespondent NickDay found ancientplaques, a statue toJames Joyce (above),a grand canal and aneven grander giantgrotto withpendulums – thefocus for someinterestinggravitational research.

(Geodetic) Perambulations,Pendulums & Plaques

Left: it’s far moreinteresting to takethe tram, anengineering marvel.After winding itsway through cityblocks, it turns intoa cog rail for thesteep incline. Thelittle buggy on theback is attached justfor the steep cog-rail section to act asan emergencyfailsafe brake.

Overcurrents


building at the bottom of the cave.. Thedistance between upper and lower mountingsis 95 m, the total weight of each pendulum(including wires) being 18.7 kg. Each geodeticpendulum consists of a metal rod, 1.4 m long,suspended horizontally on a long wire fixed tothe ceiling of the cave, and on a shorter wirefixed to the bottom. The period of oscillationof each pendulum in the horizontal plane is 6min. Should the rock surrounding the caverndeform, oscillate, or tilt, the pendulum willswing horizontally. The movement is recordedby an electronic sensor, which measures theposition of a laser beam reflected by a mirrorfixed to the pendulum rod and rotating withit. A computer receives the data and sends itto the Dipartimento di Matematica eGeoscienze (DMG) at the Univ of Trieste,which owns the instruments, for furtheranalysis and interpretation. The particularpendulum set-up amplifies by 40,000 timesthe cave’s tilting moments. These can be dueto various causes, such as: earthquakes, earthtides, free oscillations of the earth,hydrological movements, and thermaldeformation.

Trieste has a long tradition in seismology, andby the end of the 19th century, already had afunctioning station for recording earthquakes.These ultra broad-band horizontal geodeticpendulums are long-base tiltmeters with Zöllnertype suspension, measuring variations of theplumb line in respect of the direction of twoearth-fixed reference points. They have beencontinuously recording tilt and shear for nearly60 years in the Grotta Gigante since theirinstallation by Prof. Antonio Marussi in 1966.Their system has been completely overhauledseveral times since then. This timeframe hasprovided a long-term tiltmeter record of crustaldeformation.

The original recording system, stillfunctioning, was photographic withmechanical timing and a paper-advancing

replete with all kinds of interestinginformation about this gigantic hole in theground. The thought of climbing down exactly500 steps to the bottom was daunting,because that meant 500 steps back up again,albeit by a different route – a total walk of850m. The steps alone, many clinging to theside of rock faces, with stalactites hangingoverhead like Swords of Damocles, areanother feat of engineering design andconstruction. Needless to say, the cave wasimpressive – rated a 5-star attraction.

The first scientific-based research, in theGrotta Gigante, dates back to 1840 and wasconducted by Friedrich Lindner for theMunicipality of Trieste. They were searchingfor the River Timavo’s underground water tosupply the town with potable water, whenthey came across the cave. In 1897, it wasfully mapped by Andrea Perko, and opened tothe public in 1908.

The entrance to the cave is at 274m asl,the bottom of the research area at 160m asl.Its central cavern is 107m high, 65m wide and130m long. The cave contains numerous largestalactites and stalagmites, many ofexceptional beauty. A feature of thestalagmites is their “dish-pile” appearance,formed by water dropping from up to 80mabove and depositing calcium carbonate overa wide area. The highest is over 12m. Itsavailable space and constant temperaturesthroughout the year led to the placement oftwo geodetic pendulums, the longest in theworld (apparently only two others exist in theworld, one being in Belgium).

The pendulums and recording systemLooking to be about one foot in diameter, andmade of translucent opal-coloured plastic, thetubes are suspended from the roof of thecave, and tethered at the base. They protectsteel wires which are attached to scientificmeasuring instruments housed inside a

The movement isrecorded by anelectronic sensor,which measuresthe position of alaser beamreflected by amirror fixed to thependulum rod androtating with it.

‘‘

’’

Left: the schema pendolo and below a scalemodel of the pendulum explains the principles.

Below: plastic tubessuspended from the roof ofthe cave contain the twin95m long pendulum wires.

Overcurrents


extremely stable throughout the year no matterthe outside ambient temperature. Due to itsuniqueness and suitability, the Grotta Giganteprovides the perfect environment for alsomonitoring fauna, flora, Radon concentrationvariations, stalagmite growth rate, gravimetricand geo-electrical measurements, and laserscanner surveys.

High res 3D topo survey + videoOGS has carried out traditional photo and videoshooting, and a high resolution 3D topographicsurvey using aerial LiDAR for the outside of thecave, and terrestrial laser scanning, Total stationand GPS for geo-referencing, and topographicreconstruction of the underground area. Mapdatum used was WGS 84. For the first time,processing and analysis of collected data alloweddetermination of the exact size of the GrottaGigante; an estimate of its internal volume; andthe real depth from ground level to all parts ofthe cave. A geomorphometric database wascreated for the entire site, which updated theplanimetry and details of the stalagmites,stalactites and calcite flows. Videos and 3Dmodels of the cave were carried out for scientificresearch, to promote tourism, and allow visitorsunable to have direct access to the cave achance to enjoy a virtual tour, by combining laserpoint clouds, videos, and photos.

The topographic surface was mapped tocentimetre precision, 15 million laser pointsbeing acquired with a density of 15 points/m2.The orthophoto plane of the survey area had aground pixel of 10 cm. For the interior cavesurvey, three terrestrial laser scanners wereused simultaneously to acquire 4.5 billionpoints from approx 70 stations, with sub-centimetre precision, and an average densityof 10,000 points/m2.

In 2013, a geophysical survey was carriedout in the cave to collect over 70measurements of the gravitational accelerationaround the cave. Once the raw data wascorrected by means of standard gravityreductions, a 1mGal amplitude and 200mwavelength was determined. Compatibilitybetween the observed data and the gravityeffect of a 3D density model was derived fromthe elaboration of an internal laser scansurvey: the point cloud was reduced innumber of data points, filtered from outliers,and divided between two surfaces (basementand vault). The prism model was then easilydeveloped, consisting of over 40,000 prismswith a final resolution of 1m. An air/limestonedensity contrast, based on rock samples, wasthen assigned to each prism. The model’sgravity effect was calculated for the samepoints as those where the gravitymeasurements were carried out; observed andmodelled data were in excellent agreement.The map of residuals reveals an interestinggravity minimum extending northwards, and itis thought this could be the effect of anunknown underground Karst structure.

system; it has never givenproblems, being very stable andnot vulnerable to such externalfactors as high humidity, powersupply, or lightning. In December2003 the new recording systemwas installed, based on a solid-state acquisition systemintercepting a laser light reflectedfrom a mirror mounted on thehorizontal pendulum beam. Thesampling rate is 30Hz, which turnsthe long-base instrument into atiltmeter, capable of recording abroad band of frequencies,ranging from secular deformationthrough earth tides to seismicwaves.

Earth tides observatoryThe Grotta Gigante station wasoriginally built as an earth tidesobservatory, with a series ofstudies carried out to determineloading effects of the Adriatic Sea.The instruments also proved usefulin subsequent years in detectingearth signals for increasinglyshorter periods, down to thosetypical of surface waves. Due totheir long-period eigenfrequency(6–9 min), the Chilean earthquakeof 1960 activated free oscillationswhich were recorded by thependulums for 82 hours on both

components, as was the 2004Sumatra–Andaman Islands earthquakes. And,a comparative analysis with tide gaugeobservations of sea level along the NE Adriaticcoast confirmed tilting indicated by the long-base tiltmeter data. Tenze et al. (2011)investigated whether the inflow volume of theReka/Timavo river has an impact on crustaldeformation and the Karst system. This river,along its pathway from the mountains to theAdriatic Sea, flows underground at the base ofthe Karst, after disappearing in the ŠkocjanCaves in Slovenia. The tilt data from GrottaGigante were analyzed and compared with thehydrologic measurement from the TrebicianoAbyss, where the water level of theunderground river is measured. They showed aclear correlation between the hydrologicallyinduced tilt signal and the high levels in theAbyss –a maximum phase shift of a day.

DMG installed these longest pendulums inthe world, as well as a sensor that records theresurfacing of underground water and one thatevaluates the lowering rates due to dissolutionof old carbonate rocks. It also installed aseismographic station in collaboration with OGSof Trieste (Instituto Nazionale di Oceanografia edi Geofisica Sperimentale). Outside the cave onecan find the Osservatorio Climatologico delCarso and a real-time monitoring system of thetemperature at the bottom of the cave, which is

Above: The laser scanning schemewhich captured 15 million points.

About the authorNick Day, FRICS, FRGS, PLS,

is retired from the CaliforniaDepartment of

Transportation (Caltrans).He can be reached at

[email protected]

O

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Legal Notes


Technology (NIST) of the USA issued a draft reporton the challenges for forensic science of cloudcomputing. “The immediate goal of the documentis to begin a dialogue on forensic scienceconcerns in cloud computing ecosystems. . .”

The following three observations are takenfrom a study by Zimmerman and Glavach(IAnewsletter, Vol 14, No 1, Winter 2011) andquoted in the NIST report.

If a forensic expert has a difficult timeconvincing your legal counsel that the timestamps from client side log files match timestamps on provider side log files, the forensicswill be difficult to defend.

The legal venue can add to the complexityand is an important item to address early on.Locating the evidence can be a big hurdle.

The U.S. Commission on Intellectual Propertyestimates over $300bn in annual losses to U.S.companies due to theft. The pervasive use ofcloud computing environments by employees forpersonal use could heighten the risk of insidertheft given the low cost storage arrays availableand low cost high-speed bandwidth to move data.

According to an article on the legal issues inobtaining and analyzing forensic evidence fromthe private cloud, written by Shahaf Rozanski atCellebrite, there are various challenges. One ofthe major ones is requesting the data fromanother country outside of Europe (where theinvestigation is talking place): the data can takeup to a year to retrieve; most of the providersbeing in the USA. “In the UK, during the firsthalf of 2014, Facebook and Google’s responserate was 70 per cent, while Twitter’s responserate was only at 40 per cent.”

The identification, collection, and preservationof cloud-based media is difficult due to variousfactors, including: identification of the cloudprovider; the identity of the proper accounts(including aliases) held within the cloud; accessto the desired media; the co-operation of serviceproviders’ staff; E-discovery and the conflict ofprivacy rights; encrypted data and the availabilityof encryption keys.

Both definition and description of theparticular private cloud is the primary problemfollowed swiftly by identifying the information inthat cloud and keeping it secure. Then the taskfor the forensic scientist is the same as ever –diligent and careful collection of data for thelawyers to examine and decide how to plan thecase for either Claimant or Defendant.

Well, we all use, either directly or indirectlycloud computing indeed HM Revenue &Customs has outlined plans for its

delivery of digital services, including its focus oncloud computing and infrastructure automation, onits digital blog. As with most, if not alltechnologies, cloud computing can be used lawfullyor unlawfully, but before looking at the legality itmay be as well to describe a private cloud.

A private cloud is a particular model of cloudcomputing with a distinct and secureenvironment for a particular client. Private cloudsprovide a computing service within a virtualenvironment using a variety of physicalcomputing resources. The technical mechanismsused to provide the different services varyconsiderably. Private clouds get their resourcefrom a distinct pool of physical computers butthese may be hosted internally or externally andmay be accessed across private leased lines orsecure encrypted connections via public networks.

In all trials or legal actions discovery of evidenceis crucial and this evidence is no longer just paperdocuments but e-documents such as emails andgeographical information held in computer files.Getting that data often requires specialistknowledge. The following is an extract from anarticle by Mark Surguy, Rob Jones & TraceyStretton (New Law Journal 6 January 2014).

“A new philosophy emerging in the e-disclosureindustry is to view e-disclosure as a science –something that is repeatable, predictable, andefficient, with higher quality results and not anart or something that is recreated with everyproject. Underpinning this transformation is theemergence of new intelligent technology –predictive coding, smarter review tools, andfinancial tools for managing a portfolio of cases.This approach is likely to deliver real results whenit comes to controlling the costs of litigation.”

So, what is ‘e-disclosure’? In any court action theparties are under an obligation to discloseevidence. They are also under an obligation notto destroy it although there is no obligation toretain it. The Civil Procedure Rules Part 31defines what a document is.

“31.4 In this Part –‘document’ meansanything in which information of any descriptionis recorded;. . .”

The above implies that any media on whichinformation is recorded is liable to be disclosed.Therefore if information is held in a ‘Cloud’ thenthat too is discoverable.

The National Institute of Standards and

The rise of cloudcomputing adds afurther layer ofdigital complexityfor those faced withthe discoveryprocess as part of alegal action. CarlCalvert reviewsthe process andflags up somecaveats andwarnings.

. . . Facebook andGoogle’s responserate was 70 percent, whileTwitter’s responserate was only at40 per cent.

‘‘

’’

Private Cloud computing and e-discoveryBy Carl Calvert

Downunder currents


. . ?) This mob of faceless grim reapers are nowfeverishly putting into action their blueprint todestroy paradise in true “Yes, Minister!” style.

At the moment Norfolk Island has no dole, noreliance on mainland health benefits and cowswhich roam most contentedly wherever they feel.Now the locals are dreading the imposition of awelfare regime and the unique charm of theircattle being shoved behind a fence because somebureaucrat demands compliance with codes,appropriate only where vehicles are permitted totravel at unsafe speeds through areas where beastshave escaped their barbed-wire prison farms.

Our representatives clearly have not a singlenotion of the flawless beauty and wonderfulresidents that they are scaring and debasing. Myadvice to them is to pick on someone else beforeyou surrender this paradise to your programmeof perdition. Where is Fletcher Christian whenyou need him? [You can read more aboutNorfolk Island and the Australian government’sproposals at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-32028175]

Dawes in DemandIt would appear that I have struck a chord ofinterest in one of our forgotten First Fleetsurveyors William Dawes. My illustratedpresentation was made to Prospect HeritageTrust and Brush Farm Historical Society to greatinterest, while I am scheduled to give another toHills District Historical Society in August, thisevent receiving much publicity in the localnewspapers to my delight. At History House inSydney I listened to a terrific talk on one ourworld famous aviators Lawrence Hargrave on theexact night of the 100th anniversary of his deathin 1915 at an ASHET (Australian Society for theHistory of Engineering Technology) regular event.

Legends of SurveyingOne of my best allies in the surveying professionand a tireless contributor to the enhancement ofsame is Mick Lockley and when he held acommemoration to the 30 years of Lockley LandTitle Solutions I was one of Mick’s specialinvitees. Having a common love for surveyors onfilm he borrowed some of my vast collection todemonstrate to the rest of the 300+ crowd howour profession has been included in many of themost famous productions of all time. VIP guestswere Mark Taylor (former Australian cricketcaptain and Bachelor of Surveying from UNSW),Brett Papworth (RU Wallaby), Marty Roebuck (RUWallaby) and Graeme Hughes (Canterbury FirstGrade RL player). Hughesy and Pappy have theirown sports radio show on Sydney evening radioas well as spots on pay TV channels along withspecial guest appearances like that organized byMick’s business partner Damian Maguire.

By the time you read this I will already haveentered the realms of the old as I was 60 on21 August. I still have a lot to tell you about

with Topp Tours viewing shipwrecks and abrickpit at Homebush Bay Olympic Park as wellas the Powerhouse Museum and the SydneyCricket Ground – the hallowed turf of one of theworld’s most revered sports venues. Even mygranddaughter Sybella had her 3rd birthday torub in my agedness!

Norfolk Island under siegeAnother chance to go to my favourite SouthPacific island was not by-passed. Kerima-Gae took18 of us out to this idyllic haven with the variousactivities arranged representing more brilliantattractions than I had experienced on all of theother eight times I have been there. Most excellentwas our participation in Bounty Day, which is themost respected occasion in the islanders’ year onJune 8 as it commemorates the day that theirancestors from Pitcairn Island arrived after a longjourney to their new home, bequested to them inperpetuity by the beloved Queen Victoria in 1856.

However, skulduggery is afoot with theAustralian Federal Government passing an Act tofully take over the external territory as of 1 July2016. The previous government had promised tomake a loan to the island’s government to covertheir existing debts but when the new governmenttook over they reneged on this pledge and madethe financial bail-out conditional on Australiaexacting a coup d’état on this small democracy.

Can anyone recall when bureaucrats orconniving politicians have ever been responsible forimproving any place that they have overrun(Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein.

Astute readers of thiscolumn will recallthat our doughtycolumnist is a big fanof Norfolk Island, anAustralian territory inthe Pacific roughlymid-way to NewZealand. He’s takinga strong standagainst proposedchanges to theisland’sconstitutional status,and in a frank stylethat is uniquelyAussie!

Speaking up for a south sea paradise

• John Brock is a RegisteredSurveyor in Australia and is astalwart of FIG and its PermanentInstitution for the Art and Historyof Surveying.

Below: Federal Member for Penrith, TheHon. Fiona Scott MP who sought out mycompany at an Open Day at the Arms ofAustralia Inn.

Left: Acting Surveyor-General Jeff Brown, hiswife Leigh and me at our Mutineers andMariners dress-up night on our final eveningon Norfolk Island. We are donning our minutemen resistance movement kit to wage guerrillawarfare against the mainland oppressors!

PRODUCTS & SERVICES


Droneware unveiledProgressive Technology FederalSystems Inc. (PTFS), has launchedDroneware, a geospatial contentmanagement system (GeoCMS) forunmanned aerial systems.Droneware facilitates the storage,discovery and dissemination ofvirtually any type of sensor datacaptured by a UAS or UAV.“Unmanned Aerial Systems capturelarge volumes of data that must bequickly organized, interrogated anddisseminated immediately,” saidDan Quinn, PTFS vice president.“Droneware makes it easy tomanage enormous archives of UASdata so the right image, video orother sensor data can be foundand accessed instantly.”

GNSS receiver bringsenhanced flexibilitySpectra Precision has introducedthe SP60 GNSS receiver with apatented inside-the-rod mountedUHF antenna. Described as aversatile solution combining nextgeneration GNSS technology, ahigh level of configurationflexibility and an innovative design,the SP60 is part of SpectraPrecision’s latest portfolio of GNSS

receivers specifically designed formainstream survey andconstruction applications.

The receiver features Z-BladeGNSS-centric technology runningon a new-generation, 240-channel6G chipset and is capable of fullyutilizing all six available GNSSsystems (GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou,Galileo, QZSS and SBAS), but canalso be configured to use onlyselected constellations in an RTKsolution. The receiver can delivercentimetre-level accuracy withoutterrestrial/cellular networkavailability.

80Mpx camera with highperformance opticsPhase One Industrial hasintroduced the iXU-R cameraseries. Available in 80 & 60Mpxand 60Mpx achromatic versions,the cameras feature dedicatedinterchangeable 40mm, 50mm and70mm Phase One Rodenstocklenses equipped with central leafshutters that can be quicklychanged in the field. The camerasare small and lightweight with thehigh resolution of a medium formatsystem, plus high performanceoptics and flexibility to fit into

small places. For example, the iXU-R 180 is built around a large 80-Mpx sensor, with 10,328 pixelscross-track coverage yet it iscompact enough to be easilyintegrated into a small gimbal orpod space or an oblique/nadirarray. Or it can be used as astandalone photogrammetriccamera with optional ForwardMotion Compensation. The camerasoffer direct communication withGPS/IMU systems and the ability todirectly write data to image files.

UAV mounted LiDARRoutescene has collaborated withHanseatic Aviation Solutons todevelop a LiDAR system mountedon a UAV. The maiden flight of theintegrated Hanseatic S360 andRoutescence LidarPod took place inJuly in Bremen, Germany to collect3D point cloud data of the runwayat Bremerhaven Airport. The lidarpod is mounted in the nose cone ofthe fixed-wing aircraft, whichminimises the effects on theGNSS/INS caused by noise andvibration from the rear engine. TheS360 has a wingspan of 3.6m andcan carry a payload of 6kg. It canoperate in winds up to Force 7.

Rotary-wing UAS for Europe

Topcon Positioning Group hasannounced a rotary-wing unmannedaerial system (UAS) for the Europeanmarketplace. The Falcon 8 - poweredby Ascending Technologies - isdesigned for inspection andmonitoring, as well as survey andmapping. The UAS has an autopilotsafety feature that provides threelevels of redundancy for protectionagainst performance drop or loss ofcontrol. Three IMUs synchronise allsensing data and identify, signal andcompensate when needed.

CrossCheck speeds reportsThe latest version of the web-basedLeica CrossCheck service for GNSSreference station network integrityand deformation monitoring nowcomes with enhanced visualisationand reporting options.Customisable, automatically

generated reports are easilydistributed to multiple viewers.Dashboard and status views alloweasy and fast interpretation ofcomplex data of reference networkcoordinates and area deformation.

BRIEFS

Proteus, a provider of satellitederived mapping and geospatialservices has launched sensoragnostic professional satelliteimage procurement service.Dedicated expert accountmanagers provide customers withan end-to-end independent, fastand reliable procurement service.

Opti-cal Survey Equipment andGeoSLAM have formed apartnership to market the ZEB1laser scanner, the first handheldscanner which captures data inpreviously difficult surveyinglocations. Without the need oftripods or targets, the user cansimply walk through an environ -ment to be surveyed and rapidlyrecord more than 40,000 pointsper second. Raw scan data isthen uploaded into the GeoSLAMCloud for conversion into a fullyregistered point cloud. Morehttp://surveyequipment.com

An upgrade for Topcon’sScanMaster software sees version3.05 enhance performanceenabling larger point clouds fromthe company’s scanners. “The latestversion includes memory overflowimprovements when the operatorcreates large point clouds andviews wide images” said CharlesRihner, vice president of theTopcon GeoPositioning Group.

Learn about the P40 scannerLog on to https://soundcloud.com/hxgnradio/making-hds-work-for-you and listen to an interestinginterview by GW regular writerAdam P Spring as he interviewsGreg Walsh, Leica Geosystemssenior product manager forinnovation. He talks to Adam aboutthe Leica P40 laser scanner and thenew technology within it. Theinterview provides insight to theengineering and significantfeatures of the P40, including theintegrated HDR camera, how itworks and importantly the endproducts it delivers.

Aerial mapping company Bluesky has produced a prototype map forthe UK showing where it may be unsafe or even illegal to flyUnmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Bluesky has combined an expertisein flight planning and 3D aerial mapping with various geographicdatasets to come up with the concept of a UAV Flight RestrictionMap designed for commercial operators and includes ‘No Fly Zones’,areas where further advice should be sought as well as areas whereno restrictions on flying are currently in place.

UAV flight restriction map

GW Classified


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