November 2, 2010 – The Howard County Survey Division is pleased to announce that the Technology and Communication Services Department, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has created an App that will allow users of smart cell phones to access the County Geodetic control network.
The link for cell phones Mobile App is: http://gis.howardcountymd.gov/GGeodetic/GGeodeticMobile.asp
The link for regular PC version is: http://gis.howardcountymd.gov/GGeodetic/GGeodetic.asp
You just need to hijack it to your smart phone it can also be used on your computer. There are two buttons, one will give you a one mile radius of the screen center and the other will give you a one mile radius from where you are on a smart phone. It is using Google maps for the background which means you can get the street map or the satellite map as a background.
The red triangles are the horizontal control and the blue squares are the vertical control (bench marks). Take note that the vertical control stations do not show in the exact geographic position on the maps. Since the vertical controls are for elevation only their geographic position is approximate. So for the vertical control you need to use the sketch to recover the stations. The horizontal stations plot in their coordinate position so you may be able to navigate to the point.
A screen shot of a horizontal station in the street map view. Click on the red station number to get a view of the recovery sketch.
A screen shot of a horizontal station in the satellite view.
—Jeff Hobbs, Chief, Survey Division; Dept. of Public Works; Howard County, Maryland