As someone who uses GPS on a daily basis, I can tell you the system is far from perfect, and IMO, the biggest problem with GPS today is inaccurate positioning data generated by corruption of the GPS signals, this in part being due to the crazy atmospheric conditions we are currently experiencing from this rather active solar cycle. Until things settle down, we've mandated all of our critical GPS control work be performed at night; while not a sure guarantee of a quiet atmosphere, the quality of the data gathered during nighttime hours seems to be much "cleaner".
Land surveyors around the world have been making good use of GPS for about the past 10 years, in areas of open terrain and for large topographic surveys that have good "sky", it's unthinkable to not use it. I depend on it daily to "get the job done".
Here's a link to some interesting GPS information for those of you who might not realize how important GPS has become to the world of civil engineering/land surveying:
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who uses GPS on a daily basis, I can tell you the system is far from perfect, and IMO, the biggest problem with GPS today is inaccurate positioning data generated by corruption of the GPS signals, this in part being due to the crazy atmospheric conditions we are currently experiencing from this rather active solar cycle. Until things settle down, we've mandated all of our critical GPS control work be performed at night; while not a sure guarantee of a quiet atmosphere, the quality of the data gathered during nighttime hours seems to be much "cleaner".
Land surveyors around the world have been making good use of GPS for about the past 10 years, in areas of open terrain and for large topographic surveys that have good "sky", it's unthinkable to not use it. I depend on it daily to "get the job done".
Here's a link to some interesting GPS information for those of you who might not realize how important GPS has become to the world of civil engineering/land surveying:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/cors-data.html