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OPERATIONAL CONCEPTS AND NEW TECHNOLOGY 
ARE WE SATISFIED WITH THE PERFORMANCE OF OUR PROFESSION? 
By 
Teodor J. Blachut, Ottawa. * 
INTRODUCTION 
The following is a discussion of a subject that is central to the field of surveying and mapping: 
the relationship between the basic operational concepts and modern technology in national 
surveying and mapping programs. The current practice, which consists.of fitting advanced techni- 
ques into old fashioned concepts has had little success and has proven to be most unproductive. 
This is a very grave situation because we are seriously lagging behind in fulfilling our professional 
obligation: to provide nations with adequate land informa tion to be used for a variety of urgent- 
ly needed programs and activities. According to the United Nations' statistics, 5O 000 000 persons 
are dying every year of starvation and another 500 000 000 are living on the verge of starvation. 
On the other hand, our earth still has sufficient resources to provide all of us with the necessary 
food and commodities, but to benefit from this, a concerted effort must be mounted by all 
nations. This effort should be in two directions: 
1. The reckless destruction of the ambient conditions and some of the basic resources sup- 
porting our life system must be carefully monitored and eventually stopped. 
2. Massive programs and works must be put into place, requiring large investments. | refer 
here to engineering and social programs, such as the development of land and water 
communication and transport systems, drainage and irrigation projects, land reforms, 
food production for human and animal consumption, exploitation of extensive forest 
and ocean resources, rehabilitation of existing substandard settlements and construction 
of hundreds of thousands of power stations, factories, schools, hospitals and other public 
utility buildings etc. 
To develop these programs a reliable land information system based on large scale maps is 
needed . This system, in addition to containing geometric information on land extention, its 
topography and its comp lete planimetric contents, should also contain drainage patterns and the 
availability of water, soil classification, present land use, forest classification in wooded areas, 
the land ownership situation, including property or land usage boundaries and the names of 
owners or users. The information must be continuously updated, which means, the system must 
be dynamic. Without this information the authorities responsible for the administration, planning 
and development of the country cannot fu nction. It should be noted that the need to know who 
uses the land and how, is independent of the political or ideoiogical characteristics of the coun- 
try, since for the general management and development of the country, the land use and land 
users are of primary interest. This is why Continental China for examp le, is making a great effort 
to establish a cadastre, in spite of the fact that the land belongs to the state. 
This situation requires no further explanation and argument in an African country, on a 
continent subjected to an especially painful and cruel experience in this regard. One should, 
however, not think that the backwardness and resulting delays in our field are limited to develop- 
ing countries. The operational concepts in our field in some of the ‘’advanced’’ countries are 
occasionally even more archaic than in underdeveloped countries, but the results are less visible, 
because the rich, advanced countries have the means to compensate for the obvious deficiencies 
* Dr. Teodor J. Blachut, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is the retired head of the Photogrammetric 
Research, National Research Council of Canada, where many novel concepts and techniques originated. 
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