This week is a big one in the geospatial community both in the United States and abroad. Within the U.S., today marks the penultimate day of National Surveyors Week, an annual celebration of surveyors first put into place during Ronald Reagan’s administration. The week is dedicated to celebrating the profession, with the self-proclaimed number one goal being the education of the public about the work surveyors do and the importance of that work.
Today also marks the celebration of Global Surveyors’ Day, a celebration that has been in place every year on March 21 dating back to 2018, and is described as being a “way to globally recognize the ground-breakers, pioneers, individuals and the industry that has shaped our history and continues to be the foundation of our communities”
These two days bumping up against each other is not a coincidence, as every National Surveyors Week at least until 2030 includes March 21, according to the website. For us at Geo Week News, it marks a perfect time for us to honor the profession and the often-overlooked impact the work has on our economy and just general day-to-day lives.
When most of our society thinks about our built environment, minds generally tend to move toward architects, engineers, and construction workers as the drivers of these structures. To be clear, they of course are major contributors to the projects and deserve the credit they get. However, this work could not happen without the surveyors on the project. These are the people who initially measure and map the site, creating precise boundaries, elevations, and reference points. Without this baseline work, buildings are in danger of not standing straight, and various projects would not fit together as seamlessly as they currently do.
Even thinking about some of the most important issues of our time, surveyors play a major role in our monitoring of the environment as we track the effects of climate change, in how we recover from and respond to natural disasters, and just generally in how we operate our public safety apparatuses. Regular surveys of our most vulnerable areas, for example, require meticulous precision and training to ensure that we are capturing all of the changes that could be happening to the world around us, allowing us to stay one step ahead of climate change and making plans based upon the data collected by these geospatial professionals.
We also have covered extensively the role that surveying can play in assisting the recovery from disasters around the country and world. Immediately after a disaster, aerial surveys with either crewed or uncrewed aircraft are often used to find the areas that need the most immediate attention from crews on the ground. As time moves on, that data remains important for the long-term recovery, and of course surveyors are used to ensure safe construction in the rebuild phase.
That’s just a very quick roundup of what surveyors add to our modern life, as a more full list would require a full book rather than a quick blog online. The most resonant analogy I’ve heard about surveyors relates back to the sports world with referees and umpires. In sports, it’s generally said that if you know the name of a referee or an umpire that’s a bad thing because they’re only noticed when they make a mistake.
I think the same sentiment is true with surveyors, but obviously with a much more important impact. Mistakes by surveyors would be immediately noticed and could be potentially catastrophic in the worst case. The very fact that most people aren’t even aware of the importance of this work is a testament to how good surveyors are at what they do – even if the result is an underappreciation for that work. That’s what makes days and weeks like this important, to shine a light on professionals who deserve that shine.
