SaLIS Vol. 66, No. 4

December 2006

 

The Contribution of the Surveying Profession to Disaster Risk Management1

A publication of FIG Working Group 8.4 International Federation of Surveyors (FIG), 2006

Foreword

In the past decades, the damage due to natural and man-made disasters increased worldwide in amount and magnitude. According to the Munich Re Group, the year 2005 set a new record with overall losses exceeding US$ 210 billion and more than one hundred thousand people killed as a result of natural catastrophes. Hurricane Katrina which caused the New Orleans flood in the United States was the most expensive natural catastrophe loss in history. Rapid population growth, global climate changes and the over-exploitation of natural resources are mainly responsible for these disasters.

    To break and, if possible, reverse this negative trend, International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) implemented a working group in 2003 to identify the current and future needs for research and action in the field of disaster risk management.

    After three years of research in the form of expert meetings, as well as papers and posters presented at five FIG conferences, the International Federation of Surveyors published this report, which presents those application-oriented concepts, methods, and instruments deemed to enable effective disaster risk management. The report shows clearly that disaster risk reduction could (and should!) be an essential field of application for the surveyor/geomatics/engineer/geodesist/land manager professional. The wide scope of surveyors’ abilities—such as, land management, geodetic engineering, geo-informatics, satellite technology, and remote sensing—can make an important contribution to improving, simplifying, and shortening the disaster management process. In addition to these engineering skills and knowledge, good governance and capacity development are central components of implementing sustainable and effective disaster risk management. FIG intends to contribute effectively to the success of mitigating natural and man-made disasters.

I wish to thank the members of the FIG Working Group 8.4, the sister organizations of FIG, and other organizations who have contributed to this publication for their constructive and helpful work. My special thanks go to Svein Tveitdal, Director of UNEP/DEC/DEPI, for supporting the FIG work and for acting jointly with FIG to make sustainable development for future generations a reality.

 

Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Magel

President of FIG

September 2006

 

An Examination of GIS Success within Local Government Departments in the U.K. and in Trinidad and Tobago

Serwan M. J. Baban and Bheshem Ramlal

The levels of GIS use in local government departments in the U.K and in Government Departments in Trinidad and Tobago are examined. A representative sample of 22 local government departments in England and Wales and 10 government departments in Trinidad was used. The “success” in the level of GIS use as well as implementation approaches was evaluated based on two sets of five indicators derived from the literature. The indicators were used as benchmarks against which the performance of the departments was assessed and ranked. The results indicate that GIS use and implementation levels vary. These variations showed a significant relationship to the approach adopted by each of the authorities in introducing and implementing GIS. The outcomes also indicate that GIS implementation and usage in Trinidad and Tobago are similar to those in the U.K. but with a time lag of about five years.

 

The National Integrated Land System

Bruce Hedquist

There are billions of federal computer records that relate to the millions of  acres of “public lands” in the United States. These records are administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In the late 1990s, a publicly funded effort was undertaken to develop a truly modern GIS, in order to help manage the extensive land holdings and data records in the U.S. It is called the National Integrated Land System, or NILS for short. This system is now accessible to the public for on-line searching, viewing, and eventual downloading of selected records. It also can be used to generate custom maps of selected lands. The following article describes NILS in mostly general terms. More detailed papers and articles can be found on the BLM website at www.blm.gov/nils/

 

Book Reviews

Socially Responsible Engineering: Justice in Risk Management by Daniel A. Vallero and P. Aarne Vesilind. John Wiley & Sons, September 2006.  $65.00. Paperback, 384p.

ISBN: 0-471-78707-8.

 

Socially Responsible Engineering: Justice in Risk Management was described as the “only guide to understanding ethical challenges in engineering projects from both a technical and social perspective.” No doubt the vast majority of books oriented toward design professionals are “how-to” guides for designing bridges, roads, drainage, and abutments. Rarely, if ever, do they examine the impacts of design on the social fabric. Neither do typical academic programs train professionals to think first about quality of life before thinking about design fundamentals, regulations, and project costs. Socially Responsible Engineering grapples with the interactions between social justice and technical design.

As a design professional with over three decades of experience, I both applaud this work for its clear social consciousness, and simultaneously question its actual applicability for working professionals. As a rule, technical designers are brought on board after the fact. The placement of a project—think of siting a chemical plant in a poor residential community—almost always originates with a corporate or public entity that researches available properties, analyzes tax consequences, and negotiates with regulators for financial incentives. Too often, design professionals are called in near the conclusion of major siting decisions.

Usually, surveyors and engineers function as project technicians; we are assigned pre-determined specifications and are told the target sizes, quantities, and dimensions of the industrial project to be built. We may influence environmental impacts through the quality and ingenuity of our design, but even this is almost always diluted by numerous regulations encountered in the permitting process.

The authors of Socially Responsible Engineering ask that professionals “manage environmental risks properly” and do so “in a fair manner.” The implication of this call for heightened consciousness is that designers have a duty toward society first, and to their clients second.

As an occasional instructor in professional ethics, I question whether design professionals are called to such a higher duty. Attorneys represent clients accused of heinous crimes, under the societal belief that everyone is entitled to equal representation.

Are not engineers bound to offer competent design—as required by technical considerations and law—regardless of their personal opinion of the possible impacts of a project to its social environment? And if they should be held to a higher moral duty, whose morals should apply—the property owner’s or the engineer’s? These questions strike me as being analogous to today’s controversy over whether pharmacists may refuse to fill prescriptions, and whether doctors should be allowed to provide only partial information to accommodate their spiritual or moral beliefs.

That said, I can think of one instance when the technical designer should speak up: when design regulations are not adequate to protect public health and safety. For instance, if an engineer knows that county specifications for a culvert are no longer adequate to control flooding due to newly released 100-year extreme precipitation data, the client, the Town, and the State’s environmental department should be notified by the engineer, and the specifications should be changed.

Culvert failures due to inadequate design happened in Massachusetts and New Hampshire in 2006—in one instance causing a loss of life—and may continue to happen with greater frequency as a result of climate change; yet, culvert design specifications have not been amended to date in either state.

While posing practical questions through its many case studies, the book seems at times to be intended as an academic text. Its topics range from sustainability, to the effects of acid rain and radiation poisoning, to “war engineering,” and international terrorism. It also draws attention to engineers and scientists, such as Rachel Carson, who made personal decisions that had positive social impacts, and to “amoral” engineers such as Wernher von Braun, the former Nazi who became an acclaimed U.S. rocket scientist.

Finally, the book provides tools for evaluating projects from an ethical perspective and assessing risk to communities. For instance, the authors introduce what they call “green programs” that analyze a project’s success in such categories as waste prevention, low hazard chemical synthesis, renewable material use, and improved energy efficiencies.

The book concludes by demanding “affirmative justice in engineering.” The authors ask that designers become “agents of positive change,” and that design professionals be conscious of the impacts of their designs on society. Regardless of whether one agrees with their premise, the authors raise questions that have not been asked previously in the surveying and engineering field, and as such, the makes a contribution to current debate on socially responsible engineering.

Patrick Garner

patrickgarner@mac.com

 

Book Review

Remote Sensing for GIS Managers by Stan Aronoff, ESRI Press, 2005.  $65.00. Hardcover, 487p, bibliographic references, index. ISBN: 1-58948-081-3.

 

Remote Sensing for GIS Managers is a great introduction and reference not only for GIS managers, but for all geospatial professionals interested in using or obtaining remotely sensed data. The book makes liberal use of color and black-and-white imagery, technical illustrations, photographs, and tables to help to explain all aspects of remote sensing.  The chapters are well balanced, and the text is easy to comprehend and understand. It is conceived as a reference on specific topics and as such, will hold the readers’ attention from cover to cover.

Chapter Two does an excellent job of explaining the historical development of remote sensing and the interrelationships of remote sensing with other technologies such as GIS and GPS.

Overall the book does an excellent job of explaining basic elements of aerial photography and remote sensing, such as spatial resolution, the difference between photographic and digital imaging, impacts of positional accuracy, and the ortho rectification process. More complex elements, such as hyperspectral scanning systems, lidar and sonar, and digital image analysis, are addressed in considerable detail.

The best part of the book is Chapter Twelve which includes case studies of remote sensing applications in agriculture, forestry, geology, oceanography, and archaeology, just to name a few.  The case studies provide sources for imagery and other products and costs associated with the projects, along with future applications of the technology.

The appendices contain technical explanation of the rectification process, satellite senor characteristics, and additional remote sensing resources such as web sites, tutorials, professional associations, data resources, and other texts for further equerry.

Given the increasing availability of remotely sensed data, the emergence of web-based mapping applications, and the expanding practical use of the technology, this book is a must-have for any professional involved in GIS, surveying, or mapping.This is a great book.

Matt Price

GIS Manager

County of Santa Cruz

ISD400@co.santa-cruz.ca.us

 

Review of Recent Literature

(September 2006 - February 2007)

Compiled by Mike & Mary Craymer

Editors’ Note: This is a collection of selected articles on geodesy, surveying and land information systems published in English in other subject-related journals. This information has been compiled from Tables of Contents in Geodesy, a free Internet-based contents service for journals in geodesy. Because of space constraints, coverage may not be complete for all journals. For more complete coverage and information about TCG, article reprints and journal publishers, visit the TCG web site at www.craymer.com/tcg/