CAPS Copernicus Applications for Professional Surveyors
In Italy there are some 95.000 professional certified surveyors (registered by the Italian National Council of Surveyor), 45,000 of which are already using the online geo-spatial services provided by GEOWEB platform. Surveyors provide a wide portfolio of legally and administrative binding activities, namely in the urban and rural property management and planning, at local community level. They perform topographic surveys, official cadastre updates and estimates, design and constructions management and supervision, value estimates for land and real estate, mortgage loans, and damages from hale, fires, flooding, as well as a variety of support activities to citizens and local Institutions. Professional surveyors are widening their competences and expertise to intercept additional lines of activities close to those typically carried out by civil and environmental engineers and architects and are interested in adopting new technologies to be more efficient and to increase their professional potentialities and new business opportunities. Surveyors are currently using CAD/GIS/BIM, terrestrial topographic instruments, GNSS, laser scanners, UAV and aerial surveys but are not yet using EO data, mainly because of their cost and the complexity of their acquisition and processing.
Copernicus can provide professional surveyors and local Institutions with cost-effective monitoring information, to keep under control land use/cover changes allowing surveyors to carry out first level detection as well as due diligence assessment activities, integrating Copernicus services with cadastre information and reporting to public authorities (Municipalities and Regions) in format/modalities tuned to their existing standards and operational procedures.
The aim of CAPS isto make surveyors become the door opener for Copernicus towards hundreds of Municipalities that make very limited use of EO data to perform their institutional tasks.
CAPS will develop and make available to professional surveyors two applications, based on Copernicus, dealing with the administrative handling of burned areas (to be recorded in the public cadastre to avoid land use changes) and the monitoring of land-use/cover changes to detect illegal situations (such as illegal buildings, spontaneous settlements, unauthorized waste areas, etc.).
The implementation of the CAPS action will be performed in synergy with the technology innovation programme of the Italian National Council of Surveyor.
Output and Results:
- Opening-up a completely new user basin for Copernicus made of 95,000 professional studios and of hundreds of Municipalities (especially the mid-small size ones) that are their main customer base, thus growing surveyors’ business and making Copernicus perceived as an innovative support by local ad ministrations;
- Improving effectiveness and efficiency of surveyors’ activities (less cost/time) and of their Municipality customers;
- Generating new business opportunities for thousands of professional surveyors in new fields of activity (land-use, agriculture, insurance, forestry, environment, etc.) and creating new opportunities for young people that can choose to become a surveyor;
- Fostering the adoption of CAPS in other European countries and planning the extension of CAPS to other European countries, harmonizingnew technical capabilities and new professional rolesof surveyors across countries thus contributing to raise the quality level of many workers and contributing to the growth of the digital economy in Europe (GEOWEB is active within the FIG (International Federation of Surveyors -http://www.fig.net/).