Surveying

Solar Flares and Surveying Accuracy
The Ordnance Survey Blog explains why “space weather” — such as the coronal mass ejection the Sun let loose this week — is bad news for mapmaking: solar flares disrupt navigation satellite accuracy. During a space weather event, sat nav…
Two New York Times Articles About LIDAR Mapping
The New York Times had two — count ‘em — two articles on using LIDAR as a mapping tool earlier this month. This article is about using airplane-based LIDAR to map the topography of New York City: “The data will…
NOAA Survey Vessel Hits Blue Whale
Odd and a bit horrific: a NOAA survey vessel mapping the ocean floor off the coast of California struck and killed a 21-metre female blue whale on October 19. (The endangered blue whale is the largest animal species ever known…
China Maps Antarctica
A Chinese expedition is set to produce the first land cover map of Antarctica by the end of this year, Xinhua reports. “The map, with the application of high resolution remote sensing technology, will for the first time in the…
So What If Four Corners Is a Little Off?
It’s not that the Four Corners marker is “about 2.5 miles west of where it should be,” as the Deseret News puts it, it’s that it’s about two and a half miles west of where it should have been. Important…
‘Cartography from a Kayak’
University of Tennessee researchers are collaborating with the National Park Service to map the streams of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area and the Obed Wild and Scenic River, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports. Their goal is…
Forthcoming History of the Ordnance Survey
Rachel Hewitt has written a history of the Ordnance Survey; even though Map of a Nation won’t be published until next year, it’s already won a £10,000 prize from the Royal Society of Literature. I’ll be looking for this book…
Mapping the Gamburtsevs
An international scientific expedition has wrapped up its mission to map the Gamburtsev Mountains. What’s the twist? The Gamburtsevs are in Antarctica — under up to four kilometres of ice. The mapping was done seismically, as you can well imagine….
India’s Mapping Panic Continues
Last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai have apparently triggered India’s long-simmering moral panic about maps, satellite imagery and security in general, and Google Earth in particular. A petition has been filed before the Bombay High Court demanding a ban on…
Mapping Rural China
Never mind Navteq or Tele Atlas agents scouring the suburbs for new streets — how about Xinjiang’s army mapping service trying to keep up with rapid rural development in China? Via All Points Blog….
The Ordnance Survey in 1953
An excerpt from a newsreel about the latest technology used by Ordnance Survey mapmakers — in 1953. “It used to take two men a whole year to do the mapmaking mathematics that these adding machines and electronic computers can…
Working Cartographers
From the Times’s career section, an article featuring two people working in the cartography field: Jon Ford, a survey geologist with the British Geological Survey, and Edward Mainwaring, a cartographer with the Ordnance Survey….
Cadastral GIS Horror Stories
On the Surveying, Mapping and GIS blog, Dave Smith recounts some GIS horror stories involving cadastral data errors — and the ludicrous things that are done to resolve them. “If you have discrepancies, data gaps, quality issues, other issues, I…
Ed the Map Maker
This is an article celebrating 40 years of service by Ed Maslonka, the cartographer of Grand Island, Nebraska, but it also offers a taste of what goes on, mapping-wise, in municipal planning departments….
Boston-Area Map Exhibitions
At the Boston Public Library’s Copley Square through June, Boston and Beyond, a collection of bird’s-eye-view maps of Boston and New England from the second half of the 19th century. At Harvard University’s Pusey Library until April 1, Henry F….
The Discovery of France
Last week, the National Post website ran a three-part excerpt of Graham Robb’s new book, The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War. Of interest to us is the second part, an amusing…
A News Roundup and a Programming Note
A few links to news stories to tide you over during the holidays: The Montreal Gazette on OpenStreetMap The Chicago Tribune on map collecting The Times rambles about the technology behind in-car navigation devices I’ll be off for about a…
The National Map Corps
The United States Geological Survey’s National Map makes use of a corps of volunteers, who are assigned a given area (a USGS quad) and report the names and coordinates of various map features, such as schools, town halls and other…
Vermont’s Ancient Roads
Roger Hart did a better job of covering the issue of Vermont’s ancient and abandoned roads on GeoCarta — which is to say that he covered them and I didn’t: see here and here. In a nutshell, there are apparently…
Miami Herald NAVTEQ Profile
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a newspaper article profiling one or the other mapping data company — i.e., NAVTEQ and/or Tele Atlas — with a focus on its local surveying efforts, but here’s a new one from the…
Housing Development Built in Wrong Place, Map Blamed
What difference does three metres make? Plenty, according to a story from the Edinburgh Evening News: a mistake in the location of old flats on an Ordnance Survey map is being blamed for a new housing development being built in…
Portland LIDAR Survey
A $1-million project to map the terrain of Portland, Oregon will take place over the next few weeks, the Oregonian reports. The aerial LIDAR survey is intended to create a hyper-accurate terrain map that will be particularly useful in…
Moses Greenleaf Biography
Retired University of Maine professor Walter Macdougall has written a biography of early Maine surveyor and mapmaker Moses Greenleaf, the Bangor Daily News reports. Macdougall’s book, Settling the Maine Wilderness: Moses Greenleaf, His Maps, and His Household of Faith, 1777-1834,…
The Bowman Expeditions
Kansas University geography professors Jerome Dobson and Peter Herlihy are trying to put geography back on the map (so to speak) after a long, post-WWII decline by proposing series of expeditions — the Bowman Expeditions — that would collect…
Getting Out from Behind the Wheel
If you’ve been following this blog’s entries about how digital mapping data providers compile their data (see the Surveying category archives), you’ll know that since time immemorial — or at least the 1940s — mapmakers have compiled their road data…
AZ Republic: ‘Mapmaker’s Work Outdated by Time It’s Printed’
Another story about growth outpacing mapmaking, as the Arizona Republic looks at the Phoenix Metropolitan Street Atlas, published by local map store Wide World of Maps, and its cartographer, Bob Cournoyer, who has to deal with an average of 4,000…
Thomas Guides, Navteq on KPCC
On Friday the 7th, there was an item on mapping on Patt Morrison’s afternoon show on 89.3 KPCC, a public radio station based in Pasadena, California. On deck were representatives from Thomas Brothers Maps and Navteq; much of the focus…
NY Times: Navteq in New York
The New York Times adds to the pile of coverage about digital mapping data providers with this piece about Navteq’s field surveyors, tagging along as they survey a part of Queens. Since Navteq and TeleAtlas don’t sell directly to consumers,…
Caught Mapping (1940)
Caught Mapping is a nine-minute film, made in 1940, about how the road maps of the time were made — and, more importantly, revised, with a fair bit on field surveyors. I was surprised that the film reported that…
China Surveying Hoh Xil Region
China’s official Xinhua news agency reports that the Chinese government has begun mapping a large uninhabited region of western China, variously called Hoh Xil or Kekexili, in the northwestern part of the Tibetan plateau, as part of a project to…
Trigonometrical Survey of England and Wales
BibliOdyssey points to, and posts excerpts from, On the Trig, a virtual exhibition from the British Library on the history of the Trigonometrical Survey of England and Wales — latterly known as the Ordnance Survey….
Again: TeleAtlas in Berlin
Der Spiegel: TeleAtlas, Berlin. Previously: Navteq, San Diego; Navteq, New York; TeleAtlas, Santa Fe….
OpenStreetMap: Manchester’s Next
Having mapped approximately 90 per cent of the roads on the Isle of Wight last weekend (see previous entry), the OpenStreetMap project now turns to Manchester for its next workshop this coming weekend. Via Boing Boing. See previous entries:…
OpenStreetMap to Map Isle of Wight
Via Boing Boing, news that the OpenStreetMap project will attempt to map the entire Isle of Wight this coming weekend. OpenStreetMap’s goal is to produce freely available, copyright-free mapping data for Britain. Unlike the U.S., where government information is public…
The New Yorker on Road Maps and Directions
This week’s New Yorker has a long article by Nick Paumgarten on mapping, the principal focus of which is driving directions, but which has lots of little digressions into cognate areas like road maps (and their history) and digital mapping…
Again: Navteq in San Diego
Still another profile of a digital mapping data provider’s employees as they survey the streets of (insert your town name here): this time it’s Navteq in San Diego. Via Cartography, with whom I’m in agreement: where are all these stories…
Another Profile: Navteq in New York
Stories about the digital mapping data companies keep coming in; the latest is a CNNMoney.com profile of Navteq in which the streets being profiled are New York’s. It’s from last month, but GPS Review spotted it today. I’m noticing a…
TeleAtlas in Santa Fe
Another article on field data collection by the digital mapping data companies, this time from the Santa Fe New Mexican, looking at TeleAtlas’s work scouring the streets of Santa Fe. Via All Points Blog. See previous entries: More on Digital…
More on Digital Map Field Researchers
Another look at the digital mapping data providers (i.e., NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas), how they collect their data on the ground, and how it ends up in the hands of Google, Yahoo, et al., from an Associated Press wire story that…
CNet Profiles TeleAtlas
CNet’s Elinor Mills profiles TeleAtlas, one of several mapping data companies that provide the online map services with their data (along with NAVTEQ, for example, they provide data for both Google and Yahoo!). The article looks at data collection and…
SF Chronicle: Digital Map Field Researchers
Today’s San Francisco Chronicle has a story about digital map data companies and their field researchers. I’ve mentioned stories about collecting data for map companies before (see previous entries: Online Maps’ Foot Soldiers; Backcountry Mapping). What’s different is the technology…
Maps in Our Lives
Through January 6, a Library of Congress exhibition in the corridors of the Madison Building called Maps in Our Lives: “The exhibition explores four constituent professions represented by ACSM [the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping], the nation’s primary professional…
NOAA’s Historical Map and Chart Collection
NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey’s Historical Map and Chart Collection “contains over 20,000 maps and charts from the late 1700s to present day. The Collection includes some of the nation’s earliest nautical charts, hydrographic surveys, topographic surveys, geodetic surveys, city…
LA Times: Maps Outpaced by Suburban Growth
From today’s edition of the LA Times, a story about how maps can’t keep up with the pace of suburban growth in fast-growing areas like California, Nevada and Arizona. Some of those areas add thousands of new streets a year….
Russian Geodetic Datum Point Preserved
Russian cartography enthusiasts have managed to save what I think is a geodetic datum point, used in the mapping of Russia during the 19th century, the St. Petersburg Times reports. Such points were the basis around which topographical maps were…
A Few Pages About Theodolites
Theodolites are surveying equipment used in triangulation. They’ve turned up on a couple of web pages recently: Ethel the Frog wants to know how to use one, and Languagehat looks at the origins of the word (see also)….
19th-Century Surveying and Mapping Equipment
The Topographical Engineering Detachment — they’re sort of an SCA for 19th-century U.S. Army engineers — has this dead-interesting page of surveying and mapping equipment from the 1800s. Old photographs and descriptions. Via ba’s comment on MetaFilter….
Triangulation Pillars
Another article from Nicholas Crane based on his BBC series, “The Map Man” — this time in the Telegraph. This one’s about the Ordnance Survey’s triangulation pillars, the use of which in surveys eventually resulted in a series of one-inch-scale…
Backcountry Mapping
Last year there was a story about the people on the ground who do the surveying for the online mapping services (see previous entry). Now there’s a story about the people who do something similar in the middle of nowhere,…