Surveying or land surveying is the science and art of making essential measurements to determine the relative position or three-dimensional of points – or physical and cultural details –on or beneath the surface of the earth. Surveying determines these points, which serve as basis for land maps and boundaries.

A land survey is advisable to resolve dispute on boundaries for ownership and governmental purposes, especially if there are uncertainties in property location before the design and construction of buildings, roads, fences, landscaping and other land-based improvements.

A surveyor must be adept in the fields of applied mathematics and sciences (geometry, physics and trigonometry) and law. He must be highly-technical and analytical. His job entails him to perform boundary surveys, telling to land owners the specific points of their boundaries, map topographies of land for engineering design, establish elevations of home for flood insurance, perform title surveys for real estate transactions, certify that structures are properly built and build control networks that land parcels can relate to in a given area.

A right surveying equipment is vital for land surveying. Early manual surveying equipments have been used over the time to measure distance, direction, vertical and horizontal positions, time and astronomical location, like in ancient Egypt’s use of a rope stretcher and the Arab’s use of a rotating alhidade. However, many of these tools have turned archaic by the advent of modern technology.

Most of today’s modern surveying equipment technology includes a combination of optics –to roughly orient the device, dual selectable lasers, prodigious amounts of memory to record thousands of measurements and a ton of jobs simultaneously. Response times of calculations are also given in less than a half-second as the accuracy rapidly approaches the parts per billion of range.

The technology of surveying is constantly changing and will go on for the coming years. The days when the use a basic surveying equipment like chains to measure distance, stadia for elevation and distance, plumb bobs and levels are over. However, for a surveyor, the sense of accomplishment for a job well done is definitely guaranteed with the use of modern technology and the appreciation of old methods.