POSI T I O N I NG A ND ME A S U R E ME NT, E L EVATED MARCH 2018

SURVEYING
SCANNING
MONITORING
REMOTE SENSING
UAS
®

PRESERVATION&PROGRESS

INSIDE
28 Real Surveying?
41 7 Standards for UAS Imagery
53 Teaching Land Stewardship
 CONTENTS MARCH 2018

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BEYOND
FEATUREs
3 BOUNDARIES
Melissa Harrington

7 LOCATED
AS SEEN AT IMLF

3D PRINTING IN YOUR POCKET

SMALL ROCKETS FOR SMALL SATS

IS THAT A TABLET IN YOUR POCKET?

EVENTS, AND MORE

Monitoring a Historic Bridge Replacement

15 CONTRIBUTORS 16 A survey manager describes how monitoring improved construction processes for the
replacement for an 85-year-old bridge connecting Illinois and Iowa.

UNMANNED
41 Seven Standards for
High-quality sUAS Imagery 22 more
Radiant.Earth
47 SCHOOL PROFILE
Siberian State University
37
Connecting the global develop-
ment community to Earth im-
agery and primary analytical
tools.

56 MAPS AS ART
Earth Wind Map
50
A New Line
About the cover: Midway through a large and complex trans-
At top, the historic portation project, a team of Belgium sur-
Savanna-Sabula veyors successfully adopted a new class of
2018
MARC H
SURVEYING
ELEV ATED
SCANNING
MEN T, MONITORING G
MEA SURE
ING AND REMOTE SENSIN

truss bridge is
POSI TION

instrument.
UAS
®

being replaced.
Below, a 1552
wall is pre- Surveying
ROGRESS
PRESERVATION&P
served during
Boot Camp
28 Real Surveying?
a transporta-
tion project us-
ing a new type Surveyors from around the world exam-
of surveying ine the dynamics among surveying’s many 53 Teaching Land
INSIDE Layout Automation
instrument. disciplines. Stewardship
ns for
21 Optio g a Mile Down
eyin
27 Surv Moveme
nt
S on Earth
41 USG

MARCH 2018 xyHt 5


Cameron Beccario
Cameron (Earth Wind Map, page 56) is a
software engineer based in Tokyo. “Imag-
es like this are built from freely available
weather data produced by a sophisticat-
ed and publicly funded infrastructure,
from satellite to supercomputer.”
cambecc@nullschool.net
Robert Davis, GIS/LIS
Robert (Seven Standards for Delivering
sUAS Imagery, page 43) founded the Qui-
et Creek corporation, specializing in re-
mote sensing and geospatial analysis,
and is an ASPRS certified mapping sci-
entist. “The proliferation of sAUS as a
remote sensing tool opens a world of op-
portunity for surveyors and non-survey-
ors alike.”
robert@thequietcreek.com
Scott Immel, PLS
Scott (Monitoring a Historic Bridge Re-
placement, page 16) is a licensed land
surveyor in IL, IA, and WI along with be-
ing the survey manager for Fehr Gra-
ham, an engineering and environmental
firm with 10 offices in those states. He
has been involved in the survey industry
since 1992. “Sometimes a simple solution
can make a huge difference.”
simmel@fehr-graham.com
Contributors
LEFT: Cameron Beccario, Robert Davis, Scott Immel
BELOW: Heidi Jackson, Igor Musikhin, Matteo Luccio
Dan Muth,Gavin Schrock, James Shaw
Heidi Jackson Matteo Luccio
Heidi (Surveying Boot Camp, page 50) Matteo (Radiant.Earth, page 37) has been
has a B.A. in geography and an A.S. in covering geospatial topics for nearly 17
geomatics technology. She’s an active years. His degrees and research back-
member of LSAW and has served as a ground are in political science, with a
board member at the state and nation- focus on global issues. “Radiant.Earth is
al levels of the Young Surveyors Net- making Earth-observation technology ac-
work. She works as a full-time field cessible to the global development com-
crew member at LDES, Inc., on a vari- munity. This has the potential to greatly
ety of survey projects from residential enhance the ability of nonprofits to im-
to heavy construction. Heidi and her prove the lives of the planet’s poorest and
dog live in Bellingham, WA where they most vulnerable people.”
enjoy hiking and karaoke. matteo@palebluedotllc.com
jackson7heidi@gmail.com
Dan Muth, PLS, CFedS
Dan (Teaching Land Stewardship, page
Igor Musikhin, PhD 51) is a practicing land surveyor in eastern
Igor (Cool School, page 47) is vice-rec- Arizona and has been in the profession for
tor for international and innovation ac- 37 years. Among many other contributions,
tivities at the Siberian State University he’s been past president of NMPS, a past
of Geosystems and Technologies in the chairman of APLS, and the former mayor
Russian Federation. of Springerville, AZ. “Land surveying has
to be more than just measuring stuff. At
igor_musihin@mail.ru
some point we need to educate our clients
about land stewardship.”
dan.muth@dmjmpls.com
WE’RE LOOKING
for ideas and articles
from people in the positioning
and measurement fields.
Let us know if you’d like to
contribute.
Email shelly.cox@xyht.com
Gavin Schrock, PLS
Gavin (A New Line, page 22) is a land
surveyor, technology writer, and xyHt
editor. “It was a lot of fun working with
the team of Belgian surveyors on the
New Line feature. I hope I was able to
capture their enthusiasm for their work
and adopting new technologies.”
gavin.schrock@xyht.com, @schrockg
James M. Shaw Jr, LS
James (Real Surveying?, page 28) is a ge-
omatics project manager at Greenman-
Pedersen, Inc. where he heads up reality
capture projects including 3D laser scan-
ning, mobile lidar, and sUAS. “It is all too
common for us to get comfortable with
our limited perceptions. Challenge your
Weltanschauung. Do not settle on an an-
swer merely because it is familiar. Search
widely for the answer that produces the
greatest good. This applies equally to
defining surveying as it does to all ar-
eas of life. Leadership must ceaseless-
ly challenge the status quo to facilitate
progress.”
jshaw@gpinet.com
MARCH 2018 xyHt 15
monitoring a
Historic Bridge
replacement

16 xyHt MARCH 2018

A survey manager describes how monitoring
improved construction processes for the
replacement of an 85-year-old bridge
connecting Illinois and Iowa.
T
By Scott Immel, PLS
he Savanna-Sabula truss bridge, added to
the National Register of Historic Places
in 1999, carried passengers along U.S. 52
and Illinois 64 over the Mississippi River,
connecting the towns of Savanna, Illinois, and Sab-
ula, Iowa. According to the historic listing, structural
work on the Iowa side began in 1931, and the bridge
was opened to traffic on Dec. 2, 1932. A dedication
plaque references turning citizens’ “dreams into a re-
ality” by improving transportation and increasing
economic opportunity between the two states.
“The main section … is comprised of a series
of three rigid-connected through trusses, with a
520-foot, cantilevered center span flanked on both
sides by 309-foot anchor spans. All are supported
by spill-through concrete piers,” the listing notes.
“The bridge abuts directly into the cliffs on the east
side; on the west side a simply supported, 280-foot
through truss and a series of steel stringer spans form
the approach.”
Fast-forward several decades to the early 2010s,
when state officials determined that a replacement
was needed because the bridge was “structurally de-
ficient and functionally obsolete,” according to the
Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT)
bridge rating system.
The replacement bridge project started in late
2015 and is expected to be completed by summer
2018. The new bridge is 2,500 feet long and 40 feet
The new Savanna-Sabula bridge during its final phases
of tie arch construction.
17
wide, highlighted by a 546-foot-long steel tie
arch over a relocated navigation channel. The
original bridge will be disassembled and re-
moved early this year.
Most of the project was done with man-
ual, straightforward surveying methods. Us-
ing robotic total stations, GNSS units, digital
levels, and handheld collectors, my company
managed the control, set-out work points, and
verified construction. Fehr Graham is an engi-
neering and environmental firm with 10 offic-
es in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
The process was routine until crews went
to build the bridge’s tie arch during the sum-
mer of 2017. That’s when we began ongoing
discussions with Kraemer North America, the
general contractor, whose parent company is
Obayashi Corp., one of the world’s leading
construction contractors.
One of Obayashi’s well-known projects
is the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Me-
morial Bridge that crosses the Colorado Riv-
er, on the downstream side of the Hoover
Dam. Obayashi had used a Leica GeoMos
monitoring system to help build that arch
bridge—starting this practice of using mon-
itoring software and systems to determine
arch layout during construction—and want-
ed to use the process again for the Savanna-
Sabula bridge.
Obayashi’s Yuhei Tatatoku was the point
person, running what Kraemer called the
“Arch Erection Geometry Plan.” Leica’s Geo-
Mos software—usually reserved for monitor-
ing structures or land masses such as hillsides,
excavation walls, and tunnels that you don’t
want to move—was used during erection
of the tie arch pieces and verification of the
bridge’s final loaded location.

CHALLENGES
IDOT was the project owner. Like most
IDOT projects we have worked on over the
years, the control was in a State Plane Grid
Coordinate System and the construction plans
were based on a project alignment— in this
case, U.S. 52 traveling west over the Mississip-
pi River to Iowa and Illinois 84 heading north
to Hanover, Illinois.
This created a challenge with the Leica
GeoMoS software basing its measurements the process to find a solution that would au- A robotic total station site was placed on top of
a concrete pedestal with a weather station and
on a coordinate system (northing and easting) tomatically convert between the two and that electrical enclosure around a Sensemetric thread.
and the Arch Geometry Control Plan, which could be done by handheld collectors using
was based on the U.S. 52 alignment (Station GeoMoS.
and Offset). Another challenge was that the U.S. IDOT had to meet the requirements of the
Tatatoku was concerned with doing multi- Coast Guard wanted the navigational chan- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
ple calculations during crane lifts to verify that nel moved 150 feet west to accommodate Arch pieces were built on land, then de-
pieces were in the right locations. This began barges turning north at the river’s bend, and constructed and transported by a barge, where

18 xyHt MARCH 2018

The data needed to be instant,
in an easily readable format,
without multiple calculations
to verify work point locations, Hydrographic Survey Solutions
and accessible by all
CEESCOPE™
parties involved.
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a crane was used to install the arch pieces.

CEE ECHO™
Kraemer wanted an automatic surveying sys- Advanced echo sounder
tem that would measure the work points of CEE USV™
the arch erection geometry plan on an hour-
ly basis—24 hours a day, seven days a week— Unmanned survey boat
with the ability of continuous measurements NEW CEE LINE™
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For GNSS data collectors
erection. The data needed to be instant, in an
easily readable format, without multiple calcu-
lations to verify work point locations, and ac- The Shallow Water Experts
cessible by all parties involved.
Royce Monk of the Fehr Graham’s Ro- CEE HydroSystems USA Inc.
chelle, Illinois, office was tasked with leading 701 Palomar Airport Rd, Ste 300
the onsite operation, with direction from me Carlsbad, CA 92011
as survey manager. www.ceehydrosystems.com
Early on, Fehr Graham realized data col- T: 760 492 4511
E: sales@ceehydrosystems.com
lection was going to be a significant capi-
tal outlay, purchased outright for a potential
three-month window. As a result, Leica con-
nected Fehr Graham with California-based
Sensemetrics Inc., that provides solutions for
management of distributed sensor networks,
to assist with the data.
The project continued with the use of two
Leica Geosystems 1-second heavy duty auto-
mated motorized total stations (once the arch

Big City Capabilities

was up, you can’t see through it to measure the
other side), two Sensemetrics thread network
devices (one being cellular connected), a weath-
er station for temperature and pressure measure-
ments, and three months’ usage of the GeoMoS
software, along with server hosting and cloud
data service. This allowed the project team to
manipulate and view measurements from any-
Small Town Service
where with internet access and the ability to lease
the equipment on a month-to-month basis.

USING THE MONITORING SYSTEM LiDAR and Digital Imaging for Mapping
The Sensemetrics threads created a plug-and-
play experience by connecting all the hardware
and software parts of GeoMoS. The cloud data
service made it simple to control the data and
push out readable spreadsheets for Kraemer.
Monk worked with Kraemer on building
Flight Operations
the two pedestals needed to hold the robotic (877) 293-7060
Columbus – Charlotte – Daytona
total stations on the south and north sides of admin@midwestaerialphoto.com
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MARCH 2018 xyHt 19

the bridge (Illinois side of the river). Each one
had three permanent points, or prisms, that
were measured once per hour, 24 hours a day,
seven days a week to verify no movement or
shifting.
Limited space was another challenge with
this project. The Iowa side had the most room
to place the pedestals, but the arch side of the
bridge was closer to Illinois. The river, railroad
tracks, and road pavement were placed on the
Illinois side.
Earlier discussions set the robotic total
stations on a new 2,500-foot retaining wall
on the Illinois side, but that was outside the
maximum distance to use the auto-target rec-
ognition feature on the total stations. By plac-
ing the pedestals across from the Illinois side
abutment, the farthest prism distance was cut
down to less than 1,100 feet.
In April 2017, the control network was set,
measured, and verified. The initial measure-
ments were completed with two sets of static
GNSS observations tied to the original pro-
ject baseline. The positions were refined and
verified with daily use of the 1-second total
station.
In May, Bryan Blott with Sensemetrics
helped with the initial hardware and software
setup. The GeoMoS system was programmed
20 xyHt MARCH 2018
with the state plane coordinates, and we were
able to start measuring and transmitting the
data.
HOW IT WORKED
The default mode for the GeoMoS system was
to measure, at the top of the hour, tempera-
ture, pressure, angle orientation, three location
checks, and the work prisms that were locat-
ed on the arch structure. When erection crane
lifts were taking place, the system was switched
to run continuously on the work prisms, while
conducting quality checks once an hour.
Initially, the prisms were to be bolted to the
arch pieces. However, after further discussions
with IDOT, we decided to use SECO’s Wall-
eye prism system along with a flat magnet that
had a 5/8-by-11-inch stud. This allowed the 50
or so prisms to be moved around and not com-
promise the weather-resistant coating on the
arch pieces.
Kraemer also used adhesive sign vinyl cir-
cles the size of the magnets to mark prism lo-
cations, so if one was bumped or moved it
could be placed back into its position. As cable
stay towers and arch pieces were added, more
prisms were incorporated to monitor construc-
tion and added into the GeoMoS system to be
measured and reported.
Prisms along the bottom tie girders were checked
continuously when the erection cranes were
setting the arch in place.
The Sensemetrics threads served as an inter-
net appliance that connected the robotic total
stations to each other and then to the web-based
GeoMos server and the cloud data service. The
service allowed Fehr Graham to control the data,
ensuring we could create administrator-type
data streams while permitting Tatatoku and oth-
ers on the arch erection team to copy, arrange,
and manipulate the real-time data coming from
the GeoMos system from anywhere.
The arch erection geometry control plan
had station and offset values calculated for the
major connections of the tie archway and at
different loading of the structure. The system
was to be used to measure and communicate
differences between calculated and as-con-
structed positions. The system was original-
ly programmed with all 44 arch and six cable
tower prism locations to be measured once per
hour through the entire series, transmitting
data for only the prisms on the structures as
the archway was built.
During the first crane lifts and part con-
nections, more positional information was
needed while parts were going up and to
see station and offset data instead of state
plane coordinates. As a result, Fehr Graham
changed its mode to have the system measure
only to prisms that were already on the struc-
ture, along with ones on the new pieces being
placed in a continuous mode. During times
when there was no construction on the arch-
way, the system was set back to once per hour
for the prisms located on the arch.
Because the system was cloud-based, Fehr
Graham could turn on and off the continuous
measurement mode anytime, anywhere. There
were times when one team member would
turn the system on at 6 a.m. before leaving the
house for the office, and Monk would turn it
off at 9 p.m. when the ironworkers were done
connecting the arch pieces for the day.
Kraemer also added and moved prisms
along the temporary cable towers to ensure
they remained straight and plumb while
holding up the arch pieces.

BETTER SETUP
Once the threads were mounted onsite,
wired to the total stations, and turned on, it
was only a matter of logging onto the data
app, typing in the thread number, and select-
ing what type of sensor was being used and
from which web address the GeoMoS soft-
ware could be found.
The app showed all the measured data
from the sensors and allowed for custom-
ized delivery of the data with a georeferenced
photo (such as Google Earth), a JPEG im-
age of a plan sheet on detail, and line graph
output or tabular data (Kraemer wanted to
see tabular data based on the prism IDs). The
app also allowed the main user to control
what data other users could use and see.
Early on, Kraemer experienced issues with
the coordinate data format showing only
northing, easting, and elevation values because
the project plans were all based on station and
offset. Fehr Graham hoped this could be ad-
dressed by setting up a project baseline and
having the system measure to it and report the
differences, just like handheld collector soft-
ware does with normal surveying equipment.
However, this was not the case. Accord-
ing to Leica, at the time there was no pro-
graming that could do any kind of baseline
measuring. It was strictly coordinate values
for position measurements.
This meant Fehr Graham had to convert
the stationing and offsets to coordinates, and
then Kraemer had to convert the coordinates
to station and offsets—a tedious and time-
consuming process. The challenge was to find
Royce Monk of Fehr Graham places a Leica
Geosystems robotic total station on top of a
concrete pedestal.
a way to provide the data in real-time with-
out having to use any conversion equations.
Because the system was only going to
output coordinates, a project coordinate
system, based on the station and offsets in
the plans, needed to be determined. With
the U.S. 52 alignment through the arch seg-
ment being a straight line, the control net-
work and total station pedestal locations
were recalculated.
As a result, the GeoMoS system was re-
programmed to these coordinate values, and,
in turn, had to relearn and measure data
through the weekend before the next lift and
piece connection. I had the idea to type in
the stationing values for the easting and the
inverse of the offset values for the northing
coordinate. If the calculated U.S. 52 align-
ment offset was a +27.35, we typed in -27.35
for the value.
This allowed the system to continue to
measure in a coordinate system and gave
Kraemer something easy to recognize as a
station and offset without any additional
conversion time. When the system reported
an easting value of 15000.21 and a northing
value of -27.58 on a prism, this meant the
prism was at Station 150+00.21 and 27.58
feet right of the alignment.
PROJECT SUCCESSES
Our overarching (pun intended) goal was to
get the GeoMoS system up and running and
to simplify the data output Kraemer used to
make decisions on placing and tweaking the
tie arch pieces. Using this setup, the system
monitored the arch once per hour every day to
check movement.
With non-automated monitoring, a per-
son would need to survey once per hour, eve-
ry day, all day and all night. When Kraemer
wanted continuous measurements, a surveyor
couldn’t push the collector buttons fast enough
to get the robotic total station to measure faces
and distances in the time the GeoMoS system
could run through the prism list, let alone talk
to people on a radio to direct them on how to
move a piece into place.
Incorporating the GeoMoS and Sense-
metrics technologies allowed for several big
takeaways: keeping construction costs down,
making the best use of staff time, and execut-
ing the most precise job possible.
The successful collaboration was high-
lighted by Randy Blakehorn, secretary of
transportation for IDOT, and Mark Lowe,
director of the Iowa Department of Trans-
portation, during a ribbon-cutting ceremony
on the bridge before it opened to traffic. Res-
idents celebrated the past and the present in
October with Bridge Fest and the Last Ride,
with classic cars passing over the old bridge
one last time. ■

MARCH 2018 xyHt 21