Mission Planning

1. I found one of the most valuable ASPRS 2009 presentations to be on mission planning.
2. QA is done before the project starts, QC during each phase.
3. The use of an independent 3rd party is often the best approach to managing the QA/QC program .

One of the most valuable sessions at the recent ASPRS 2009 conference in Baltimore was delivered by Kutalmis Saylam. His full presentation is included on the Conference Proceedings CD, or if you do not have access to that I can provide a copy. This is an excellent reference source for guiding this potentially daunting task.

Kutalmis works for GeoBC, a branch of the government in British Colombia. He describes his organization as a single door to access all provincial geographic information and applications. Certainly sounds much simpler and more efficient than our multiple agency approach.

His presentation was focused on airborne LiDAR mission planning, but many of the principles will of course apply to any survey data collection effort. As we have discussed, he started out by noting that unfortunately there are no published standards for LiDAR data collections that the public can reference. The USGS is in the process of drafting a base LiDAR spec, and ASPRS has also recently committed to developing a LiDAR manual, but these are not currently available. Another excellent mission planning reference source are the FEMA (Federal Emergency Mapping Agency) mapping guidelines.

One of the key concepts that he, and others that I have heard speak recently on the general issue of managing error budgets and overall QA/QC programs is the important distinction that should be made between QA and QC. Kutalmis points out that mission planning is part of the overall quality assurance program, along with accurate system configuration, well documented data processing and complete project delivery. QA happens before the project starts, QC occurs in real time during each phase of the operation. The plans have to be put in place so that all parties know what the rules are before the project is bid and awarded.

This jogs my memory about a comment that I received on the offshoring blog post from last week. The point was made to me that often it is the customer who puts pressure on the vendor to deliver at the lowest possible price, rather than at the best ratio of price to quality. That is why many professional organizations push for qualifications based selection procedures, not lowest bid. The surveying community has been, and in some cases continues to be their own worst enemy in this regard.

There is a lot of detail in this presentation, including cost/benefit analysis, ground control, airplane selection, flight planning – the list goes on. Many thanks to Kutalmis for this important reference source, and let me know if you would like a copy.

One final thought. If you do not have the experience and actually even if you do, it is often worth the investment to hire an independent 3rd party firm to manage the QA/QC program.