EDMCAL: Processing EDM calibrations in NSW
The Surveyor General of New South Wales is a verifying authority under the National Measurement Act 1960 and responsible for ensuring that surveyors use verified measuring equipment. According to the Surveying and Spatial Information Regulation 2012, surveyors are required to verify their Electronic Distance Measurement (EDM) equipment in relation to an Australian standard of measurement of length at least once a year. For this purpose, Land and Property Information (LPI) provides and maintains several EDM baselines across the state. LPI is currently in the process of improving this infrastructure by upgrading existing baselines and building new baselines for the calibration of EDM instruments. This paper presents the current status of EDM baseline infrastructure in NSW and outlines the data processing performed by LPI in regards to EDM calibrations. The EDMCAL software currently employed by LPI is described and compared to a spreadsheet calculation generated by the University of New South Wales. Finally, LPI’s new online EDM baseline booking system is introduced. This online system should now be used by surveyors to book access to all EDM baselines in NSW in order to allow efficient and effective use of existing and future baseline infrastructure.
Improving survey infrastructure in NSW: Construction of the Eglinton EDM baseline
The Surveyor General is a Verifying Authority under the National Measurement Act 1960 and responsible for ensuring that surveyors use verified measuring equipment. This is achieved, for example, through the provision and maintenance of Electronic Distance Measurement (EDM) baselines. Consequently, the Surveying and Spatial Information Regulation 2012 requires surveyors to verify their measuring equipment in relation to an Australian standard of measurement of length at least once a year. Land and Property Information (LPI) is the sole organisation responsible for constructing, maintaining, monitoring and verifying all these baselines within New South Wales. LPI is currently in the process of improving its survey infrastructure by upgrading existing baselines if possible (to include a larger number of pillars) and building new baselines for the calibration of EDM instruments. This paper outlines the issues that need to be considered in the construction of a state-of-the-art EDM baseline, using the newly constructed 7-pillar Eglinton EDM baseline (located in Bathurst) as an example. Topics covered include site selection, planning, logistics, Work Health and Safety considerations, pillar construction and baseline verification.
Performance Characteristics of Small Global-Positioning-System Tracking Collars
Recent technological advances have made possible the development of animal-tracking devices based on the global positioning system (GPS) that are much smaller than what were available previously. However, potential limitations in size-dependent technologies and differences in patterns of behavior between small and large animals could mean that miniaturized GPS tracking devices may not function as well as their larger counterparts. Here, we evaluate the performance characteristics of 105-g GPS collars suitable for prolonged use on animals weighing as little as 2.5 kg. We tested 9 collars in stationary trials at a single reference site and in field deployments on common brushtail possums ( Trichosurus vulpecula/ ), a semi-arboreal, nocturnal marsupial. We found in both trials that individual collars differed in several measures of positional accuracy and precision, yet overall the small collars compared favorably with published results of larger devices in similar habitats. Differences in operational characteristics between the two trials were mainly in the number and spatial configuration of satellites used to calculate position fixes, resulting in an increase in median location error from 9.8 m in the stationary tests to an estimated 14.7 m in the field trials. Most probably, these effects were due to dissimilarities in microhabitat features and variation in the orientation of GPS antennae which occurred when the possums changed their body posture during movement. The collars evaluated in this study promise to be a valuable tool for the study of the ecology, behavior, and conservation of many small-to-medium sized animals.