Course Description

Course Description: 

Parties (groups) consisting of seven (or eight) members will be established by camp staff prior to commencement of the camp. The instruments used will include electronic total stations, electronic digital theodolites, digital levels and automatic levels. Computers equipped with a spreadsheet program will be available for traverse calculations (note – no internet access is available at the camp). The students will be experiencing a field training of surveying methods and equipment, data collection and processing procedures, and surveying applications in planning, design and layout, and the construction of our physical environment and infrastructure.

 The project to be associated with this survey camp and tasks to be accomplished by the students are the following:

Project: Engineering Survey for the Building Development

·        Reconnaissance – taking a general view of the survey area. This part of the work is very important as it indicates the need to obtain an overall picture of what is required before any type of survey work is undertaken.

·        Datum For Direction – In order to establish the horizontal direction, a fixed reference line of known bearing is required. Thus, the bearing of the next line can be determined by measuring the angle of the line makes with the fixed reference line. The direction of the fixed reference line may be one of the following:

        a)       The direction of True North (from existing map/plan)
b)       The direction of magnetic north (using prismatic compass)
c)        The direction of any arbitrary line (Assumed bearing)

·        Datum For Elevation -  a known point called benchmark (BM) is required for levelling works. This is a reference elevation at to which the elevations of other points may be referred.

·        Horizontal and vertical controls – The first principle is to lay an overall system of stations, the position of which are fixed to a fairly high degree of accuracy.

       A closed traverse, starting from a line and back to the same line, is a typical example of such a traverse. For this the students will use a Total Station equipment to measure angles and distances.
A temporary benchmark (TBM) will be established next to the survey area and an arbitrary height will be assigned to the point. Later the height of this point will be connected to any nearest benchmark in the vicinity of the survey area by levelling.

·         Detailings - topographic survey of the designated area. For this purpose the students will use the control stations established earlier from which spot levels and all required details will be picked up.

                                                      A surveyor using Total Station and Data Collector (Photo)