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ABSTRACT:
A recent letter in P.O.B. magazine suggested that there needs to be a greater separation between Engineering and Surveying/Geomatics in the U.S. Simultaneously, surveying/geomatics education programs are moving more towards engineering in terms of accreditation. Surveying has been tied closely to civil engineering in the U.S., and most registration boards deal with both surveyors and engineers. Where should the profession and the education sector head in this situation? While basic surveying is often focused on data collection, the more advanced areas are focused on information engineering. As the data collection process becomes simpler, we have concentrated on abstraction and symbols. We deal with co-ordinates in GPS and COGO packages, rather than measurements between marks. We deal with GIS databases rather than real-world objects. We deal with abstract land records, rather than actual parcels. We are registered on the basis of the appearance of competence, rather than actual competence. We are not sure if we should move with the model of engineering advanced by ABET, or the diametrically opposite model advanced by NCEES. We risk losing touch with the reality that it is our professional obligation to determine our ultimate raison d'être. Surveying/geomatics has always struggled to decide if it is an information industry, a service industry, or both. In the U.S., it has also struggled to decide if it is a profession and, if so, how should it behave as a profession. It has existed in the thrall of engineering, convinced of its own mediocrity, believing what it was told about itself, never growing to true self-awareness. At the same time, change is sweeping through the industry at an accelerating rate, already far faster than the profession can handle. Something new is needed, before the profession and industry is largely moved off-shore, or shrinks into irrelevance or small enclaves. Models of organizational structures are largely irrelevant. What is needed is a new state of mind. In this paper, some outlines of a state of mind for 21st century geomatics are provided, with some connections back to the role of the education sector in helping to foster this.
Introduction
A major limitation to discussing the entire spatial information discipline is a lack of commonly accepted descriptive terms. In this paper, I dodge this...