Geomatic Engineering

as a Profession.

B. J. Kawimbe
B.Eng., M.Sc.. MEIZ, MSIZ, CGDS, CSP, ZQF Occupation Standards Expert
 Contents
• General Introduction
• Fields and Practices
• Key Equipment
• Money Making Ventures
• Geomatics in General Engineering Fields
• Geomatics in Transportation
• Geomatics in Mining
• A review of the Recent Research on Geomatic Eng. In Zambia

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession

 Introduction

Many have defined Geomatic Engineering as a science

and technology of making earth observations of both
natural and man-made features on, below and above
the earth’s surface and the presentation of this
information in form of maps, plans, tables and
charts etc.

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 3

 Introduction
Geomatic Engineering programme establishment in 1982 as a Civil
Engineering section with support from Swedish International
Development Authority (SIDA) – (Sch. of. Eng Handbook, 2015)
1985 – the first Geomatic Engineers entered industry
1988 – the department was born with five main disciplines
 Cadastral and Engineering Surveying
 Cartography
 Geodesy
 Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
 Photogrammetry and Remote sensing (RS).
Between 1988 & 2020, 285 undergrads., ~13 MEng, 1 PhD postgrads.
were produced and deployed in different sectors of the economy
A wide range of employment sectors have taken up Geomatic
Engineers – versatility!
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 Fields and practices
.

DGPS – Point Positioning (3D) Principle of Geodesy – Earth Structure

Remote sensing Technology

Drone – Remote Sensing Equipment for a wide

range of Geomatic Engineering tasks

Aerial Photogrammetry – Wide Mapping 3D scanner – Volumetric analysis and

Deformation monitoring
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 Key Equipment
.

DGPS – Point Positioning (3D)

Theodolite Robotic Total Station – distance and angles

Automatic Level

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 Money Venture Practices
.

Surface analysis – DEMs

Deformation Monitoring

GIS in Crime analysis

Disaster Monitoring in GIS – Water Modeling GIS Overlays – Advanced Decision Making Tool

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession

Multi Criteria Analysis
7
 Geomatics in General Engineering

RS – 3D data acquisition

Latest GPS set – Small package

Hydrographic Surveying
Scanners in Earth Works

8
 Geomatic Eng. In Transportation Industry
.

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 . Geomatic Eng. In Transportation Industry

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 10

 . Geomatic Eng. In Transportation Industry

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 . Geomatic Eng. In Transportation Industry

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 12

 . Geomatic Eng. In Transportation Industry

Inverse Curve Radius – prediction model – use Road visibility analysis – line of sights,
of geometry models
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 Geomatic Eng. In Transportation Industry
.

Machine learning model

API function in python

Bounding boxes in API models

Use of road signs in road asset management,

damage detection, geolocation for data
collection for road asset management
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 Geomatic Eng. In Mining & Construction
.

Flight planning
Drone tech in mining for stockpile
estimations

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 . Key Courses
1. Engineering Mathematics
• Applied mathematics to programming and modelling
2. Programming and Artificial Intelligence
• Java, Matlab and Python
• Modelling
• Data acquisition
• Data management and manipulation
• Machine learning in automation data analysis especially drone and satellite
datasets
3. Space Science (Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems)
Satellites
Drones

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 16

 . Possible Employing Sectors
1. The Military –
• space science application
• MCA in cases of war and crimes
• asset management etc.
2. Water Utility Companies
• MCA and asset management
• Engineering works for dams, pipeline alignments etc
3. Mining
• Volumetric analysis works
• Land leases (mining and surface rights)
• Deformation monitoring
• Predictive analysis of disasters (e.g. dam collapse)
• Setting out works etc.

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 . Possible Employing Sectors
4. Mobile Networks Companies
• Asset management
• MCA
5. Power Utility Companies
• routing through MCA & RS
• Asset management DBs
6. Banks
• MCA for outlets
• Asset management

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 18

 . Possible Employing Sectors
7. Tourism Industry –
• Security systems through GIS, e.g. Thermal imagery
• DBs
• Routing
• Construction
• Web mapping
8. Wild Life Organizations
• Geo-tagging
• Web mapping
• Security systems through GIS, e.g. Thermal imagery
9. Remote Sensing Centre
• Management of National Spatial Data Infrastructure through GIS & RS

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 19

 . Possible Employing Sectors
10. RDA
• Road & rail way construction
 Curve ranging (spirals and transition curves)
 Setting out
 Earth works
 Grade management etc.
• Deformation detection and motoring
11. Ministry of Lands & Local Government
• Land leases
• Cartography
• General land administration
• Construction works
We can not exhaust all, Geomatics is versatile! Whoever wants spatial
information NEEDS a Geomatic Engineer.
April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 20
 Research Excerpt - Motivation

It has been four (4) decades since the establishment of Geomatic
Engineering education at UNZA.
It was thus deemed appropriate to appraise the programme through
the experiences from the professionals in the industry.
In so doing also assess any need for repackaging the programme for
the benefit of industry.

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 Aim

To assess and review the impact of Geomatic Engineering

professionals in the country from inception to date.

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 Assessment Factors (Objectives)
Most Practiced Fields Graduate employment
Graduate Employing (discipline) within status (Self-employed
Sectors Geomatics Engineering or Employed)

To assess the To assess any To answer the

basis upon which possibility of question as to
curriculum some of these whether a
improvements disciplines being Geomatic
could be based. on the verge of Engineer is
phasing out or capable of
being excelling as a
A very critical role overshadowed by freelancer or they
in guiding CPDs new technologies. solely depend on
(Collin et al., being formally
2012). employed

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 Survey & Material
WhatsApp

Realizing the
challenge of capturing
the targeted number
of graduates from
1985 to 2020, it was
only feasible through
some sort of Emails Survey
e-questionnaire -
Survey monkey
Facebook

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 24

 Results

Fig.2

 
It is clear that the number of female graduates
has been low but is steadily increasing from
2001 as could be seen from the graph that
there had been only one (1) female graduate
in 2001 until 2017 there on.

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 Results – Employing Sectors
General Employment Status
2%
6%

92%

Self-Employed Formal Employed Unemployed

Fig 4: General overview of the employment status

among Geomatic Engineers in Zambia

Fig 3: Employment level per selected major sectors of the

economy about 48% of the graduates were employed in
Government under either central government or Local
government. The remaining 52% was shared among the
rest of the sectors
April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 26
 Results – Discipline Practice Levels,
Postgrad. Programmes Awareness, &
Undergrad. Programme Rating.

Fig 6

Fig 5

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession

Fig 7 27
 Analysis

 Attractive survey methods & techniques, Fig.1&2 (Yue et al., 2016)

 Adventurous & goal oriented modern women, Fig. 1&2.

 Strong link between sustainable development of economies &

industries and the spatial information, Fig. 3&4 (Gong et al., 2017;
Olaleye et al., 2010).
 Benefits of business-related information presented in the context of the geographic
environment. The implication is that geospatial information adds value to business.

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 28

 Analysis

 OGC (2015) report that in United States alone, a 1.6 Trillion USD is
generated from spatial data and services annually – explains 48%
(Central & Local government) employment level, Fig. 3.

 The “Other Private” sector in figure 3 standing at 15% covered a

wide range of sectors - Most noticeable:
 Mobile Service Providers such as Airtel and MTN,
 Banks
 Electoral Commission of Zambia
 Water Sewerage Companies
 Self-employment
This presents the notion of versatility in the skills of a Geomatic Engineer.

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 29

 Analysis

 Figure 4: the 6% self-employment indicates

 Ease of self-setup – translating into equipment &
software affordability and availability
 High demand for Geomatic Engineering services
 Potential of the profession to reduce the unemployment
levels
 Fig.6: Awareness & willingness @ 76.92%
 normal distribution
 zero poor or bad rating;
It is clear that the profession has a great relation and
application to the industry.
April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 30
 Analysis

 Fig. 5 and Table 1 results clearly shows that a lot is taking place in
the Engineering surveying, Geodesy, Cadastral surveying and the
GIS world – thus a 56% recommendation for adaptation to new
technologies and 36% for intensive practical work

 Generally, two major factors of influence on the profession were

identified.
• Technological advancements
• Population growth - high demand for resources and services

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 31

 Conclusion
 There is rapid evolution of the profession.
 Strongly requires:
 moving in tandem with the new trends
 a marching skill and knowledge advancement to stay afloat.

 High correlation between wide range of employing organizations and

profession versatility
 Meanwhile climate change and resilience are currently a point of
focus for many countries and its effect is here for a long time. The
Geomatic Engineer will always be one of the key pieces in prevention
and mitigation which revolves around Spatial Information, Prediction
through 2D/3D and 4D GIS analysis.

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 32

 References

Collin, K., Van der Heijden, B., Lewis, P., 2012. Continuing professional development: Continuing professional development. Int. J. Train. Dev. 16, 155–163.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2419.2012.00410.x
Gong, J., Yue, P., Woldai, T., Tsai, F., Vyas, A., Wu, H., Gruen, A., Wang, L., Musikhin, I., 2017. Geoinformatics education and outreach: looking forward. Geo-
Spat. Inf. Sci. 20, 209–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/10095020.2017.1337319
OGC, 2015. W3C and OGC to Collaborate to Integrate Spatial Data on the Web.
School of Engineering, 2015. SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING STUDENT HANDBOOK 2015-2020.
Yue, P., Ramachandran, R., Baumann, P., Khalsa, S.J.S., Deng, M., Jiang, L., 2016. Recent Activities in Earth Data Science [Technical Committees]. IEEE Geosci.
Remote Sens. Mag. 4, 84–89. https://doi.org/10.1109/MGRS.2016.2600528

April, 2022 Engineering Communication - Geomatic Engineering as a Profession 33