Thumbing a Nose at Mother Nature: Survey at the Desktop GOT IT?

Mother Nature really pulled a joke on us this year. Up to 7 feet of snow blanketed parts of western New York, then flooding; Detroit already has seen its seasonal snowfall; Buffalo 8 feet of snow in one day; 80 percent of California is in either extreme or exceptional drought; lava flowing like molasses in Hawaii and in the Midwest where the temperature can swing in extremes of 100 degrees we do not welcome the frigid temperatures we have seen before Thanksgiving.

As a land surveyor in the Midwest we learn to acclimate to extreme weather, however according to Survival Magazine it is easier to acclimate to heat than it is to cold. Query any job description for a land surveyor and they all state “must be able to work in extreme weather conditions”.  After all, love of nature is one of the reason we land surveyors have chosen the profession we are in, to be outdoors.  The weather can affect a project in many ways: scheduling, budget, and equipment. Instruments have certain temperature tolerance ratings, and if operated outside that range, the accuracy of the measurement can be affected or the equipment can refuse to perform at all. Now add weather conditions to the additional duties of the principles and practices of land surveying; accurate arithmetic computations legible record results; making engineering sketches, maps and drawings; and reading and interpreting the engineering plans and specifications all while fighting the elements it becomes a mix for project breakdown.

It’s no wonder that recently included in the land surveyors job description is a prerequisite for “knowledge of principles, practices and materials that could include computer programs used in survey work”.  In my early days as a professional land surveyor it was challenging enough to apply the knowledge of land surveying to land surveying activities and techniques in adverse weather. Like the instruments we used where extreme cold weather or heat can affect the outcome so can the user.

The Famer’s Almanac gives us many euphemisms about the effects of weather…
“How slow is molasses in January?” Field productivity in extreme cold with layers of clothing all slow us down. Gloves can be a nuisance when attempting to push those little buttons on an instrument or take legible notes.

“How mad is a wet hen?” When rain or snow affects visibility it also become a safety issue especially on slick pavement. What affects the surveyor also impairs the traveling public and any surveyor will tell you a slick highway is not a place to be.  I guess it is one premise that led me to forming Terrametrix mobile mapping, you are inside a vehicle collecting the data plus the added benefit of a heater or air conditioner.

Out of the Red Zone is the driving safety for the land surveyor using mobile mapping. Traveling with traffic at highway speed obtaining hundreds of thousands of 3d measureable points per second is a much safer way to acquire as-built data. No longer does the surveyor need to fight traffic measuring bridges clearances or attempting to shoot cross sections on a busy stretch of roadway. An important part of any mission plan is to look at the weather forecast for any adverse conditions. The weather can determine if a project needs to be moved ahead of a weather event such as a snow storm or pushed back to miss a period of rain.  Once the mobile mapping data is collected faster between weather events the surveyor can then extract the data by walking a topo at the desktop out of harms way. It still takes the spatial recognition of the land surveyor and the mobile mapping data allows the surveyor to extract digital terrain models using cross sections at whatever interval the surveyor wishes or a grid at any interval as well. It makes it easy to create 25’ shots along a roadway and then have the ability to create a small interval grid at any interval in a flat area that needs a higher definition grid to show the contour line correctly. Again the keen eye of a surveyor knows where the digital terrain model needs information in order to correctly show the contours.   The only down side I see is we no longer have an excuse for snow days! We can stay in the warm and dry office and still walk the topo, now that’s efficiency.

Oh and by the way the Farmer’s Almanac predicts that this winter is expected to be another cold one in the eastern half to two-thirds of the nation with above-normal temperatures, on average, in the West.

SAFETY drives us, ACCURACY defines us, EFFICIENCY saves you

What is the Shelf Life of Data?

Fall is one of my favorite times of the year. The kids go back to school and the bounty of foods from our nations farms come in from the fields. It also means report card performance and attention to freshness. When it comes to mining data of a dynamic world what is the shelf life?

The latest report card (2013) for America’s Infrastructure from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has given our infrastructure an overall D+; (poor at risk conditions below standard with a strong risk of failure).  ASCE estimates a total needed investment of $3.6 trillion by 2020 to restore the nation’s infrastructure. Add the additional cost that poor road surfaces estimated cost on average to the US driver is $324 per year in vehicle repairs, or a total of $67 billion. Also, it has been estimated that small improvements in road surface conditions can decrease fuel consumption between 1.8 and 4.7% according to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO based on existing conditions). Because our nation’s roads are dynamic which means having current as-built data is crucial.

Many factors affect our road conditions.  Pavement fatigue include load, materials, and surface abrasion due to weather. On-going construction projects like milling, leveling and resurfacing add to the dynamics. We cannot possibly accurately represent current conditions using canned data. As a land surveyor for almost 40 years I have learned how imperative it is for design engineers to have accurate current information for bridge clearances, signage, analytics and roadway elevations especially within an aging infrastructure. The land surveying profession promotes accurate documentation of your property for something as easy as properly adding a fence, regardless of the last survey. So why would we design and build major transportation infrastructure with old, possible changed information?

Obsoleteness of data is an unknown until proven otherwise. Using data beyond its useful shelf life will not give you any valuable insights and poses cost and compliance risks. This discussion is not so much about affordability of capturing and storing information, but it is about making the right decisions to use existing data or obtain new current data to minimize risks, maximize value. This discussion is more about what is the shelf life of highway data. The elusive answer is… depends. Some data may remain relatively current for decades while other data may be compromised in weeks. The concern is which areas?

The overall cost today with Terrestrial Mobile LiDAR Scanning (TMLS) is minimal compared to designing from out dated data. As a surveyor I have always been intrigued by AEC projects that have a budget of tens of millions of dollars but the initial survey budget gets beaten down to the lowest bidder. So in effect the start of a design project can be compromised by inaccurate data that is not discovered till the construction phase, then the fix can be many times more dollars to fix than the cost of the survey.  Let’s look at a hypothetical 10 mile long, four lane divided highway pavement restoration project. The pavement has been patched, overlaid in some areas etc. What is the cost to obtain a current TIN of the pavement surface, $2,500 per mile, $5,000 per mile or even $10,000 per mile? Let’s go to the extreme and use the $10,000 per mile fee… that would be $100,000 fee to create an accurate, current TIN. Using a construction cost of $1,000,000 per mile means the updated current survey would cost 1% of the construction cost.

Question? What type of overages are seen on a typical project of this type? 1%, 5%, it’s something to think about and start a discussion about where the money is spent.

Terrestrial Mobile LiDAR Gold Medal Business Practices

By Michael R. Frecks, PLS

 

Nothing relaxes me more than kicking back after work watching sports competition. So the 17 days of the XXII Olympic Winter Games was almost as good as a vacation. Now that the flame has been extinguished in Sochi I wonder what subliminal message about my business of 3D data documentation these 88 nations and 2,871 athletes provided me.

When a hundredth of a second can mean the difference between gold and silver in competitive sports… what does a hundredth of a foot mean to a competitive civil transportation marketplace? Math’s a perfect science not a judgment call. The only judgment is how it’s used or as I have often seen… “manipulated”.  If you want survey grade data then collect at survey grade accuracy. Manipulation of any data introduces errors. Dummy down… don’t expect to smarten up!

When a trusted brand in sportswear becomes an excuse for poor performance… what does that say about the confidence you have in the brands that make up your toolbox? Trusting means we have established a relationship from past performance resulting in a confidence of a product brand. The service brand requires more confidence often established through experience. Therefore, it is equally important to have trust in both the tool and the user.

When illness can sideline a professional seasoned sportscaster from covering a quadrennial event… what does that say about the diversity of your employees? The perception of small business is that they have limited resources when in reality the resources they have are finely tuned in position for timely responses. Industry positioned “big guys” understand the power of leveraging small business. The perception of big business is that they have more resources but in reality those resources are and should be the teaming effort of smaller companies. Good organizational structure depends on a solid base of diversification and cross training.

When technology just malfunctions as it often can enough to change the number of continents represented in the Olympic rings… how are you positioned to handle stubborn technology snowflakes in your organization?  Preparedness is proactive for any situation and is necessary to respond and recover efficiently to resume business operations. The best plan you can have is redundancy. Did I mention the best plan you can have is redundancy?  The potential points of failure whether, personnel, equipment or technology should be solidly based on cross training and back-up processes.

When crushing the competition becomes desperation in judging… what effect does your attitude about your competition have on undermining the technology? Surprisingly enough psychologists say defensive actions usually come from desperation and it usually comes from a false sense of perceived domination of power… the big guys. Until the turn of the century the railroad industry was protective of their tracks to crush the competition in the name of continental domination. They accomplished this through specialized standards and rail shapes.  A train would have to actually change wheels in order to utilize a competitor’s track. Not until 1886 did standardize gauge for US major railroads became universal. Benefits for all the rail companies as well as the public were shared because of competitive mentoring.

Healthy competition not only pushes athletes to excel it also breeds innovation through market demand. Henry Ford stated it best when he said transitioning from the horse drawn carriage to the automobile… “If I had listened to the public and the competition they would have wanted faster horses!”

Competition should be part of the business plan.  We are a society of choices. From our breakfast cereal to the technology we choose. When there is only one player in the game the choices become extinct. Innovation is narrow minded and complacently sets in. It is human nature to gravitate to the easy or in my case for 17 days in February the easy chair.