Are you up to date on the best practices in land surveying? This online engineering and land surveying course provides an overview of the past and present instruments, methods, and techniques used to perform topographic surveys of sites, facilities, or infrastructure. Prior to the advent of total stations, GPS, LIDAR, and data collector systems, transit and plane table topographic surveying methods and instruments were once standard. They are rarely used today, other than perhaps for small surveys when a total station or RTK system is not available. However, the basic field considerations regarding detail and accuracy have not changed, and field observing methods with total stations or RTK are not significantly different from the older survey techniques briefly described in the following sections.

Course Outline

1. GENERAL 2. TOTAL STATIONS 3. REAL TIME KINEMATIC (RTK) GPS 4. TERRESTRIAL LIDAR (LASER) SCANNING 5. TOPOGRAPHIC DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES 6. AUTOMATED FIELD DATA COLLECTION 7. METHODS OF DELINEATING AND DENSIFYING TOPOGRAPHIC FEATURES

Learning Objectives

At the successful conclusion of this course, you’ll be able to identify and discuss:

• Transit tape topographic surveys
• How to approach transit-stadia topographic surveys
• When to employ transit/theodolite. electronic distance measurement (EDM) instruments
• History of plane table surveying and how it is used today
• Development of total stations and how they are used
• How real-time kinematic GPS systems are used today