Discussion

In this fieldwork, we are required to measure the area of the traverse. This fieldwork
is carried out around the fountain in front of the admin block at University College of
Technology Sarawak through traverse survey.
There are total of 5 stations and there 5 stations form a closed traverse. We marked
the stations as A, B, C, D and E before starting the fieldwork. We used total station, prism
reflectors, tripods, compass and pegs as the equipment in this fieldwork.
After setting up the total station, we used it to measure the distance and angles of five
stations as our field data. The total station is placed at station A and two prisms are placed at
station B and E respectively. First, we use the compass to determine the North Pole and face
the total station towards the north and set the reading of angle to zero. Then, we rotate the
total station clockwise to face towards the station B and E and get the readings. After we get
all the readings from one point, we switch the total station to station B and repeat the same
procedure again for the remanding station.
At the entire survey, we calculate the area of the traverse. First, we calculate the sum
of the interior angle by formula (𝑛 − 2) × 180°, n is the number of station of the traverse.
The total included angle that we get should is equal to 540⁰. However, from the data that we
recoded, the total included angle was 530⁰8’57’’. Thus, we knew that there was a misclosure
error occurred as there is a difference of 9⁰51’3’. There is a 1⁰58’12.6’ of error per station.
Therefore, we used the included angle method to calculate the correct bearing.
We calculate the latitudes and departures by formula
𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒 = 𝐿 cos ∝ & 𝑑𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 = 𝐿 sin ∝
L is distance and α is the angle between the points.
The linear misclosure is calculated by formula

𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑀𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒 = √(∑ 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒)2 + (∑ 𝐷𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒)2

The total traverse distance is 240.63 m. The linear misclosure that we calculated is 201.2912.
The adjustment of latitude and departure is done by Bowditch Adjustment Method and thus
we convert the adjusted latitude and departure to coordinates. We can calculate the area of
traverse by using formula
1
𝐴𝑟𝑒𝑎 = ∑ 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒 − ∑ 𝐷𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒
2
The final area of traverse that we got is 113.6 m2.