GIS: the greater extent - Surveyors and GISers: We are all the same, just different.

摘要

In my last column, I suggested that requiring the licensure of GIS professionals as land surveyors was a poor solution to ensuring competency. Before that, I said that trying to license photogrammetrists as surveyors dilutes the surveying profession while doing nothing to increase the quality of photogrammetric products. This time, I am going to go one big step further and suggest that licensure of professional land surveyors has also become a poor solution, and this magazine is my first piece of evidence. Just look at the articles now being published in Professional Surveyor Magazine that cover aerial photography, GIS, RTK GPS, robotic total stations, terrestrial photogrammetry, precision farming, lidar, and precision construction. Many of the technical topics appearing here are also found in GIS-oriented publications. The surveying and GIS professions share much of the same technological and scientific foundation, but they remain quite distinct in other ways that define them as separate professions.