Did you happen to read the editorial by Juan Plaza that NSPS helpfully linked on the Surveyor Says website? It is entitled Are Drone Photogrammetrists and Land Surveyors Heading to a Confrontation? | Commercial UAV News. And it was originally taken for the Commercial UAV News website.
The title of the editorial is revealing. I don’t know, are we headed for a confrontation? What do you think? It’s like asking if a brick wall and teenager driving too fast in a sports car are headed for a confrontation. The wall is just there, doing its job holding up a roof. It’s not headed anywhere. All the ‘heading’ is being done by one party.
I encourage you to read the piece while trying to keep an open mind and then, when you are done, to draw some conclusions about where the supposedly unified profession of Surveying and Mapping is headed. Are we facing yet another part of our historical bundle of services about to be calved off like a collapsing glacier?
The author seems to be arguing that the practice of Surveying is not “Life and Death” so who cares if a non-licensed entity is producing aerial mapping. Gosh, I am ever so slightly offended by that conclusion. At least the Institute for Justice camouflages their relentless attacks on our profession with a garland of “Constitutional Rights” issues, fallacious though they may be. Plaza is basically equating us with tradesmen.
My favorite part:
“Being a medical doctor, a structural engineer, or a commercial pilot can also have huge implications—in this case life or death. Therefore, all these and many other professions are licensed and regulated by membership boards that establish rules and codes of conduct. The famous Bar Association of every state that regulates the legal profession is a prime example of behavioral monitoring and providing clear guidelines to ensure leveled application of the law.
The difference with land surveying is that rarely are human lives at stake, and the only implication of a wrong measurement is possibly financial. Regardless of the amount, it is only money. I believe we all agree that land surveyors conducting legal boundary surveys should be licensed by responsible membership boards in charge of enforcing the laws of the state or local legislature. But outside of that, is it really necessary to have a license to produce a non-legally binding map?”
How much of our court system is taken up with suits involving “only money”? Somehow this cat thinks our liability for producing faulty photogrammetry is trivial and uses that as the basis of an argument that drone mapping should probably be exempt from regulation. And his argument that surveying doesn’t carry the burden of life and death is spurious at best. Try laying out a bridge or highway overcrossing in the wrong location, and see what happens. Get the superelevation wrong when staking a freeway and watch the cars go careening off the high side during rain/snow events. Seems pretty ‘life and death’ to me. Amateur drone mapping that fails to identify low hanging power lines or shallow gas lines can have fatal consequences, too. But this is all about commerce and doggone it, Quadcopter Bob has a right to make a living too. Requiring a license is just so unfair. At least that seems to be the gist of the argument. That and the implication that we should just be reasonable and let it go. After all, it’s only money.
The advocates for allowing unlicensed and unregulated production of aerial mapping are aiming for a collision with the brick wall of public protection through licensure and regulation. They want to bust through that wall and keep going on to other things. And let’s be real, this is happening for reasons of commerce masquerading as important “free speech” issues. They spotted a market and they want in, regulations be damned. While Plaza is saying “It’s only money”, what unlicensed practitioners are saying is, “Look at all that money, I want some of it.”
I’ve been beating this drum for many years. So, I’m asking you folks, when are we going to wake up and see where this is headed? Where is the vigorous response to these licensure and practice threats that we might reasonably expect from organizations that represent surveyors and Surveying? Why aren’t the boards of registration banding together and taking a proactive stance in fighting off these challenges? Don’t they have an umbrella council for exactly that purpose? Each court case threatening licensure seems to be viewed in isolation of the others, even if they are being tried concurrently and share the same attorneys. That is poor pattern recognition, if nothing else.
Look, we lost control over surveying as it relates to machine guidance because it was “only dirt”. We lost GIS before that because it was only “meta data”. Now the degradation of licensure threatens to pare down our services some more because producing aerial mapping is only about money as Plaza suggests. Pretty soon we’ll all have to find other employment — after all it’s only a job, right?