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The Transportation Research Board Committee for Geospatial Data Acquisition Technologies in Design and Construction recently held its summer meeting in Philadelphia in late July. A portion of the meeting included presentations and discussions concerning mobile mapping. Typical of some forums, the discussion generated opinions and opportunities about this emerging technology. I personally find the discussion more genuine when both the advantages and disadvantages of a technology are discussed.
Stating that mobile mapping is an emerging technology might be an understatement. Lewis Graham with GeoCue reported there are roughly 265 mobile mapping units in the US, but only 15 would be considered metric quality units. Metric quality would be those units being used to support the engineering applications for design. The remaining units would be those more closely aligned with GIS and asset management.
Much of the discussion concerning mobile mapping centered on accuracy, precision and the associated costs. The difficulty with this technology is attempting to make sure end users understand the limitations in accuracy and precision involved with mobile mapping. Various techniques and technologies can lead the end user to erroneous conclusions. The massive amounts of data collected by the non-metric quality units typically produce the high precision but lower accuracy results. It is easy to view the data with the high precision and think high accuracy goes with it based on the massive amount of points collected. Lewis also expressed an opinion that lot of folks may be disappointed when they try to leverage GIS quality 3D data for high accuracy work.
