PLSO The Oregon Surveyor May June 2020

Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon |  www.plso.org 13 Featured Article our clients don’t get any better picture of what they own than their ancestors did. We still pretty much survey one property or block at a time, even though we now have the capability and digital capaci- ty to manage it all as one large dataset. Pie in the sky you say? Well, FIG started a committee to explore this in 1994. The concept was calledCadastre 2014, because they hoped to have accomplished their goals by then. Switzerland has done just that. They’ve mapped the entire country, about a third the size of New York, and they have about 400 private surveyors who are licensed to manage and con- tribute to the database. A small group of surveyors from the Unit- ed States, including my partner Christine Gayron and me, went to Switzerland re- cently, by invitation from the Swisstopo bureau, to learn how they accomplished what they did. I have an alternate press release already written, should things not work out as I de- scribed earlier. It goes something like this: “Google, Apple, andMicrosoft made a joint announcement today, standing next to the governor and other representatives of the state of New York, that they have entered the title insurance and land sur- veying industries. Using New York state as their pilot program, they will scan ev- ery deed in every county records office, then locate every property mark they can find using a new technology they’ve developed that is similar to their street view vehicles. All data will be made free- ly available to the public. Title insurance policies will cost approximately one tenth of current rates. The boundary determi- nation will be signed by a California man who just got his license in New York state and is very excited to be working with the team. The project is expected to take one year to complete. Retracement surveys will no longer be necessary. An app will be provided to allow homeowners to de- sign and submit their own subdivisions.” I’m holding on to both versions of the press release. Let’s see how it goes.  x Greg de Bruin is past-president of the New York State Association of Professional Land Surveyors (NYSAPLS) and is a partner, along with Christine Gayron, of Gayron de Bruin Land Surveying and Engineering PC, www.gayrondebruin.com . Christine wrote the article about Switzerland on the next page. The U.S. delegation at the Leica factory in Herrbrugg, Switzerland. Survey point in Switzerland.