Because the big guys (Bill Gates of Microsoft and Jeff Bezos of Amazon for example) of the billion dollar + digital world have decided that there is money to be made by building a 3D virtual world it’s time to ask questions about just what liability for accuracy is to be bestowed on these efforts. In our overly litigious society surly the Virtual World big guys are going to be sued for providing information that is fundamentally “incorrect”.    

Your country has over 2 centuries of land title law that applies to the delineation of land title interest in the real world.  The only people in this country who are legally qualified to provide land title information as it relates to the delineation of property lines are Professional Land Surveyors.  The Virtual World guys are going to say that the boundary lines they show in their digital files are not meant to be “Certified Correct”.  So why are the Professional Land Surveyors of the world and their organizations not up in arms about the false boundary line information that is everywhere in public and private online Geographic Information Systems (GIS). 

I have a presentation that will call into action the “PLS Guys & Gals to get it together because there is a lot of land surveying work to be done in the Virtual World.  I have developed the concept of the next level of wareable Lidar technology that I believe will put land surveyors back in the game.  John W. Veatch PLS [email protected]  And by the way there is well over a $billion Dollars in Land Surveying work now availabel in FEMA Flood Zone mapping just waiting for the PLS of our country to get together and say we can do this.

John W. Veatch over ½ a century as a PLS & the inventor of advance technology survey systems.  My career has included being an owner of companies ranging in size from 1 man (me) to over 600 engineering, planning, and surveying personnel.  I have been a partner in the acquisitions, planning, engineering, surveying and sale of multi million of dollars of real property ranging in size from 1unit or lot to projects involving over 1000 acres. Now my sons and I now have a company that has produced over 40,000 land title surveys for real estate transaction as well as my patented satellite survey for commercial property transactions from Baltimore MD. to Palm Beach Calf.

A land title survey is that drawing of the property buyer get at the settlement table when they buy real property.  It required for title insurance purposes because the title insurance company needs to know exactly what they are insuring so the title insurance company hires a professional land surveyor to go to the site and perform a survey.  Here are some of the real world things the insurance company that insures the title to a real estate transaction needs to know.

1. That the properly has legal access
2. The precise size & dimensions
3. If there are any easements, rights of way either recorded or implied.
4. The location of all structures
5. If there any encroachments

All of these things are to be shown on the land title survey prepared and certified correct by a Professional Land Surveyor.  Moreover if the property in or near a flood zone a FEMA elevation certificate is to be prepared and certified correct by a Professional Land Surveyor.

As these things are done in today’s market they are one off site specific projects.  However with the system 1 have developed the entire block of homes and related real property could be surveyed with very little additional effort.  You may now be asking what so special about this data that only Professional Land Surveyors can produce it?

Here’s the dirty little secret; for more than the last 100 years the sneaky Land Surveyors of this country have buried most of the property boundary corners that they have set in the ground.  Now these points are easy enough to locate if you have a shovel and the proper equipment (a magnetic pipe finder) and know where to look.  But the problem for the Virtual World guys in that none of the new lidar, gps, gnss and other advanced technology Real World date collecting devises can see or precisely locate  them.  So the GIS folks of the world have resorted to low tech processes in a very misguided attempt to show property line data in there systems.  So here’s a “heads up” to the new 3D Virtual World if you guys go this route you will be asking for (and deserving) a mountain of law suites.

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