During the course of this year, it has been interesting to hear people debating the need to keep the geospatial professions relevant and to heighten their perceived value to a range of key players in the private and government sectors. It is increasingly clear that surveyors' specialised and hard-earned measurement skills are under threat as surveying  tools become simultaneously easier to use and increasingly accurate... (more)

Opening address at IMSCON 2012

Winning letter prize winner

Naively, maleficent, insulting, unfortunate, gross generalisation, deliberately and simplistic. What strange emotive  choice of words from Mr. Boonzaier, a surveyor, in respect of an article written to land surveyors practicing within a certain context, which setting is completely outside the scope and practise of a technical surveyor... (more)

Letter to the editor

The recent article by Karl van Rensburg on land surveyors involvement in pre- and post-survey activities (PositionIT September 2012) and the subsequent response by Chris Boonzaier (PositionIT October 2012) has prompted me to write this response. Firstly, I take exception to Mr Boonzaier's assertion that land surveyors should not "reclaim the work currently being performed by town planners"... (more)

Capturing high resolution imagery of Cape Town

Getmapping (through its African subsidiary Geosense) has recently completed the capture, processing and delivery of over 2500 km2 of high resolution (6,25 cm) imagery covering the entire City of Cape Town metropolitan area using the latest A3 camera technology from Visionmap... (more)

Mercator: His contribution to surveying and cartography

2012 is the quincentenary of the birth of Gerard Mercator. Although best known for the map projection named after him, he was also known for the Mercator atlas, indeed even the introduction of the word "atlas" and for his work in cartography but maybe not so much for his basic work as a land surveyor... (more)

Accurate position measurement for deep ice coring project

The US research community is conducting a deep ice coring project in West Antarctica for studies of climate, ice sheet history and cryobiology. This project is collecting a deep ice core from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) ice flow divide and integrating approximately 40 separate but synergistic projects to analyse the ice and interpret the records... (more)

Developing a very high resolution DEM of South Africa

DEMs are used in many applications, including hydrology, terrain analysis, soil science, disaster risk mitigation, image pre-processing and climate surface generation. The use of DEMs in geographical information systems (GIS) has increased in recent years, mainly due to the greater availability of free DEMs covering most of the globe... (more)

Dangers of commercialising public data

The commercialisation of local spatial knowledge is an emerging problem across communities all around the world. Users creating spatial and attributive data through the use of commercial tools such as Google Map Maker, are extending corporate databases, but aren't able to use the very same data when they need to... (more)

Characterising the Gauteng landscape

Spatial development planning of the dynamic Gauteng Province as recently highlighted in the Census 2011 results, has become a fast paced process drawing from a range of different professional planning disciplines. An urgent need has thus arisen for an integration of public infrastructure and service provision planning, with the private sector's vision for growth and development for the province... (more)

3D imaging radar to improve response operations to oil spills

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have developed a method to use a specialised NASA 3D imaging radar to characterise the oil in oil spills, such as the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The research can be used to improve response operations during future marine oil spills... (more)

Thermal imaging technology has a number of characteristics that make the technology a good choice to prevent vehicle-related accidents in mines. Vehicle-related mine accidents are a major cause to mine fatalities which means that effective collision avoidance systems are an essential part of any mine's safety systems... (more)

The use of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) navigation devices has become widespread these days. Most now have the ability to create and upload their own points of interest (commonly known as custom points of interest). These GNSS devices can cost in the region of R1000 to R3000 for normal in-car type devices while handheld devices can be in the range of R1500 to R6000... (more)