At 260 pages in length there is no question that a tremendous effort has gone into the development of this Topographic Survey Specification for Urban Projects (2009). It is truly an impressive document that deserves your review to see what can be done if people are interested in the “S word” – standards. Our 3D industry will never achieve the levels of productivity that are possible without adoption and support for standards.
From the Executive Summary:
This document contains a detailed topographic survey specification and supporting quality assurance (QA) procedures for 1:250 urban works as implemented by the Quality Bus Network (QBN) Project Office and Dublin City Council. It has been developed over a period of years by a working group including members representing the interests of the city council, private land survey firms, local government, civil engineering consultants, professional survey organisations, and survey software developers. In addition to the specification itself, the document provides a checklist of QA activities to be carried out to ensure that any given survey fully meets the specification in terms of accuracy and content.
The specification has been applied and refined over a number of large projects such that it has been shown to fully meet the demanding requirements of dense urban topographic surveys while being readily achievable by the survey contractor in a cost effective manner. Specifically the specification has been shown to deliver consistent results in terms of high quality cartographic and 3d model output to AutoCAD / MX / Microstation and SCC with well defined relative and absolute accuracies.
Click here for the full document.
Thanks to Shane MacLaughlin, Managing Director at Atlas Computers the Chair of the working group in Ireland that made this happen. This came to me through the OpenLSEF organization that is working on a common language for extracting information from point clouds. This is a perfect example of the benefits of being a member of this organization. Please consider joining this important group.
