Tension between surveying and GIS: A growing challenge

Challenges that Coordinates should focus on

A big challenge is integrating the surveying profession with the GIS profession. There’s a growing tension between them. One of the bridges that I want to accomplish this year is integrating the technology so the surveyors can have tools within the GIS toolbox that allows it to create and manage

surveys that can be directly used by the GIS people. The GIS datasets, in turn, can be refi ned based on survey information, especially transaction based survey. These two goals are separate and sometimes they run into a big confl ict about who should do what. I think I would be technically directing them and say these technologies can be synergist. There is a need to search out surveyors that want to grow their activities in the GIS areas and search out GIS people who want to have a strong survey inclination.

Geomatics growth in India

It’s been about 10 to 12 years since I fi rst came here and at that time it seemed like the Dark Ages. There was nobody who knew what I was talking about. There’s satellite mapping, and then automated mapping, other parts of the GIS that was stressful. And then about 10 years ago, we had our fi rst conference and there were a few dozen people who came and they were all right on the edge of their particular agencies of professions. Today, my gosh! this conference could have been held in Western Europe, or in United States. We felt very comfortable with the level of quality of the papers that were presented, the models were very sophisticated. And I think it will just spin out of control in this way when more and more people get in. Also the international market for GIS people started off where India seemed to be the data conversion house. Later it gave more application programming. Now it’s becoming consultants. These are step-by-step revolutions to where India will see GIS and with that revolution, I fi nd it challenging and surprising that there are not more university people here to grab the technology to teach with. There’s huge job opportunities for people in GIS.

Next milestone in GIS?

Microsoft and Google have shown how there’s a thirst for Geo spatial visualization. They want to do much more than that. But people need to fathom the images they look at and understand how to interpret the entire gamut of geo spatial information. That’s just quite an expanse.We need GIS professionals not only to run projects and run advanced systems but also ensure other people have access to their knowledge of technologies and web services.