Cicilia
Friberg and Per Olsson work as surveyors for the Stenungsunds
community in Sweden. In only 50 years Stenungsund has changed from a
quiet summer resort into a regional business centre. The population
today is four times what it used to be. With this constant expansion
it is up to the local surveying department to keep all the survey
data on this developing region up-to-date.
Surveyor - Cicilia
Friberg
"Stenungsund
is a 23.000 people community which covers an area of 254
square kilometres and is situated North of
Gothenburg. The city started out as a summer town where people would
go to the beach and they would only live here during the summer
months", Friberg states. "The harbor town is surrounded by
several smaller islands and a lot of forests." This makes
Stenungsund a fantastic environment for outdoor life with the
archipelago and salt water in the west and woods and fresh water
lakes in the east.
Open
and green space In
the industrialized nearby city of Gothenburg there is not a lot of
free space for young people to live, so a lot of them have moved to
Stenungsund. 4,000 People commute to their work in Stenungsund
daily. Almost as many have chosen to settle in Stenungsund and
commute elsewhere. "Every day they drive 45
minutes to their work, but they do have a lot more open and green
space to live here. The region is certainly growing." Looking
out over the wide harbor and the forested islands that surround it,
it is hard to disagree.
The
right information The
area the 28 employee surveying department has to cover is quite
spread out and includes an island. "We set out and map the area
of the community, but also offer maps of the infrastructure like the
pipelines for water and the buildings. The area consists of several
small islands and also there are still a lot of uninhabited forests
and hills surrounding us. For this spread out community we put the
boundaries down so people have the right information, if they want to
buy some land. We basically offer the complete package of services:
from the survey to the map."
Surveyor - Per
Olsson
Local
government She
continues: "We are part of the local government and as such have
a building office which puts money into the community." The
Municipalities of Sweden (kommun) are the local government entities.
The current 290 municipalities form sub-divisions to the 21 Counties
of Sweden (Län). All municipalities are of a uniform type.
At
the centre "We
have 28 Employees many of which are engineers like technical
engineers, plan engineers and water engineers. They all need our
services. We are at the centre of the entire engineering force,
because they basically all need a map to do their work. For instance
we are currently building a large project where we will build 350 new
buildings, new roads and new pipes on the coast. All those projects
eventually come back to the level of the map."
Clearly
see the points Doing
a survey for this whole area is a big challenge. "For us to find
the right points on the ground and to use these as points for the map
can be difficult. Because there are so many hills and deep forests it
can be hard to get a bearing. We work with two
pieces of Topcon's
HiPer GPS and one total station; the GPT-9003A. We have had the
Topcon instruments for one year now. We use the Total Station on the
pipelines and heights. We chose Topcon for the ease. It is easier to
handle than other products. You can clearly see all the points on the
display. You have a map with you where you can see where you are at.
We use the GPS for setting out points and check the height with the
Total Station."
An
easy choice "The
GPT 9003A was an easy choice for us. We were looking for a piece of
quality and it is user friendly. It is very important that it is user
friendly, because not everybody that works with it here is a
surveyor. One of the advantages is that the files are easily
interchangeable from the GPS to the Total Station as we work with the
same data collector in between; the Topcon FC-200 with radio. It
basically offers us one user interface. The data collector software
on the GPS and on the Total Station can give a complete view of the
map. Between these systems it is easy to move files."
Dimitri Lambermont
is a Technical Writer
for Topcon Europe Positioning B.V., The Netherlands.
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Cicilia
Friberg and Per Olsson work as surveyors for the Stenungsunds
community in Sweden. In only 50 years Stenungsund has changed from a
quiet summer resort into a regional business centre. The population
today is four times what it used to be. With this constant expansion
it is up to the local surveying department to keep all the survey
data on this developing region up-to-date.
