₦airaland Forum

Survey Data Management
The credibility of a surveyor’s data is one of the most critical aspects of any survey. GIS facilitates a seamless flow of information among planners, CAD designers, engineering modelers, and project managers and extends project data and applications to operations and facility managers, field technicians, consultants, and the public. GIS support key data interchange formats. Surveyors using GIS to manage and store individual projects will build a survey information system with time. Instead of storing surveys in isolated, individual files, GIS allows surveyors to store all survey data in one database, providing easy access to past work that can efficiently be reused and overlaid with new data.

Land Analysis
GIS greatly enhance the optimum use of land, functional efficiency of a proposed design and its market¬ability, and overall cost-effectiveness of a project. GIS can be used for terrain, hydrological, land-use suitability, and visibility analyses. It can also be used to assess environmental impacts for determining the consequences of various regulatory requirements.

Land Development
Land development involves several areas to consider including site geometrics, roadways, drainage systems, utilities, property boundaries, and building sites. GIS gives surveyors the tools to capture, create new data and improve field data collection, inventories, and integration with GPS measurements. Access to fast, accurate field data is critical, as a cadastre may lose its value if registers and maps are not constantly updated. GIS solutions store data in a central location, giving surveyors the capability to quickly and easily make any necessary changes.

Construction
Construction projects involve complex plans; environmental permits; and critical data that details layout, specifications, and other key design information. For a project to be success¬ful, several aspects must be analyzed and considered including environmental impact, scheduling conflicts, takeoffs, budgeting, site safety, and logistics. GIS technology improves the mechanics and management for building new infrastructure by integrating design and site data, interfacing with machine control, and providing the framework for as-built data collection. All those involved in a project, such as engineers, owners, contractors, and the public, rely on the technology to open communication.
As-Built Surveying
A completed construction project rarely reflects its original plan exactly; instead, variations occur, requiring a revised design plan. GIS technology provides the tools to collect precise site data and document existing conditions. With as-buil surveying infrastructure data, operators use defined operational industry-standard data models. As-built surveying with GIS technology permits the surveyor to deliver data into operational GIS, eliminating costly data conversion and reducing errors.

Design/Predesign Analysis
Site investigation is critical to planning new projects. Surface and subsurface conditions influence survey methods, which affect project cost and scheduling. Surveyors rely on the GIS geodatabase to store, input, and query descriptive soil and geotechnical data and relate it to other predesign engineering information. Using search by elimination concepts, GIS helps develop a heuristic approach to model the process of decision making and generate the potential sites for temporary facilities. GIS helps solve construction layout problems and open a new way of thinking for managing spatial information. GIS takes data that originates from many different sources and file formats and integrates it into a single application platform to support unique civil engineering workflows. Data can be created easily, intuitively, and correctly in both 2D and 3D environments.
Civil engineers use GIS to keep track of multiple urban and regional indicators, forecast future community needs, and plan accordingly to guarantee quality of life for everyone in livable communities. Federal, regional, state, and local planning agencies can realize the power of GIS to identify problems, respond to them efficiently, and share the results with the public.

Field Measurement
Surveyors rely on a range of data collection devices in the field, from total station angle measurements to high-resolution 3D lidar point clouds. With a GIS software, surveyors not only bring data straight from the field into a geodatabase in a seamless workflow, but they also take GIS data back into the field via a Windows device, data collector, or laptop computer.

Data Collection
GIS software adds intelligence to spatial data, whether the data is generated in the field with GPS or remotely with lidar and photogrammetry. Surveyors enter raw data, measurements, and field sketches directly into the GIS, enabling them to efficiently manage their data in a central repository (personal geodatabase) with other spatial information, streamlining workflows and improving productivity.
Surveyors use GIS software and technology for collecting, importing, converting, and storing spatial measurement and computational fabrics for agencies and private businesses of any size.

Project Planning
Surveyors use GIS to manage the entire planning aspect of a surveying project. GIS provides the tools necessary to research, develop, implement, and monitor the progress of a project and manage site location, environmental impact mitigation, economic analysis, and other critical facets. Scenario-based analysis can then be conducted, giving communities, government agencies, engineers, and others involved a thorough understanding of the project’s impact.
Preliminary Planning
Equipped with GIS tools, surveyors quickly determine environmentally sensitive areas; canopy; local control; road networks; previous established boundaries; and zoning, permit status, and other critical information. These enhanced capabilities eliminate redundant efforts and promote coordination with other planning and government agencies. The information is stored and easily accessed for reuse with any project related to the location.

Developing Infrastructure
Surveying is a vital part of infrastructure development, from building roads and communication systems to establishing transportation networks and pipelines. GIS provides the framework for maintaining and deploying critical data and applications across every aspect of the infrastructure project including data collection, planning, construction, and operations management.

Surveyors depend on a variety of software and technology to gather existing information, collect new information, analyze data, produce plans, manage projects, and deliver accurate data. Geographic information system (GIS) technology brings this functionality and more to one place, providing a central location to conduct spatial analysis, overlay data, and integrate other solutions and systems. GIS is built on a database rather than individual project files, enabling surveyors to easily manage, reuse, share, and analyze data, saving them time.
Surveyors play a central role in a range of government agencies and private organizations, from planning and construction to engineering and land boundary determination. Most GIS software solutions are interoperable with the many data formats used in the field and office, allowing surveyors to provide data to various agencies in the required format while maintaining the data’s core integrity.
GIS helps surveyors manage critical data by bringing their technologies together including everything from automated data collection with traditional instruments to the most modern GPS. GIS is of great benefit to a surveyor in the following ways:
1. Developing Infrastructure
2. Project Planning
3. Data Collection
4. Field Measurement
5. Design/Predesign Analysis
6. Construction
7. Land Development
8. Land Analysis
9. Survey Data Management
10. Facility Management
All these ways would be talked about.