South Carolina Survey Law

[ridemgis]

In an effort to take some of the heat out of the GIS/Survey discussion, I invite you to consider the following language from South Carolina law on licensing for GIS. The definitions clearly state that a "GIS Surveyor" license requirement only applies to the electronic or computerized data related to land and geodetic surveying and photogrammetric survey. Read the following carefully. Before you panic, go on to read the exclusion in the next section, 40-22-290. Tier A Exclusions
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SC Section 4-22-20 Definitions:
(24) "Practice of TIER A surveying" means providing professional services including, but not limited to, consultation investigation, testimony evaluation, expert technical testimony, planning, mapping, assembling, and interpreting reliable scientific measurements and information relative to the location, size, shape, or physical features of the earth, the space above the earth, or part of the earth, and utilization and development of these facts and interpretation into an orderly survey map, site plan, report, description, or project. The practice of TIER A surveying consists of three separate disciplines: land surveying, photogrammetry, and geographic information systems. A surveyor may be licensed in one or more of the disciplines and practice is restricted to only the discipline or disciplines for which the land surveyor is licensed. The practice of TIER A surveying does not include the use of geographic information systems to create maps pursuant to Section 40-22-290, analyze data, or create reports. The scope of the individual disciplines are identified as follows:
(a) Land surveyor:

(1) locates, relocates, establishes, reestablishes, lays out, or retraces any property line or boundary of any tract of land or any road, right-of-way, easement, alignment, or elevation of any fixed works embraced within the practice of land surveying, or makes any survey for the subdivision of land;

(2) determines, by the use of principles of land surveying, the position for any survey monument or reference point; or sets, resets, or replaces such monument or reference; determines the topographic configuration or contour of the earth's surface with terrestrial measurements; conducts hydrographic surveys;

(3) conducts geodetic surveying which includes surveying for determination of geographic position in an international three-dimensional coordinate system, where the curvature of the earth must be taken into account when determining directions and distances; geodetic surveying includes the use of terrestrial measurements of angles and distances, as well as measured ranges to artificial satellites.

(b) A photogrammetric surveyor determines the configuration or contour of the earth's surface or the position of fixed objects on the earth's surface by applying the principles of mathematics on remotely sensed data, such as photogrammetry.

(c) A geographic information systems surveyor creates, prepares, or modifies electronic or computerized data including land information systems and geographic information systems relative to the performance of the activities described in subitems (a) and (b).
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SECTION 40-22-290. TIER A surveying; exclusions. [SC ST SEC 40-22-290]
The practice of TIER A surveying does not include:

(1) the creation of maps:

(a) prepared by private firms or government agencies for use as guides to motorists, boaters, aviators, or pedestrians;

(b) prepared for publication in a gazetteer or atlas as an education tool or reference publication;

(c) prepared for or by education institutions for use in the curriculum of any course of study or academic research;

(d) produced by any broadcast or print media firm as an illustrative guide to the geographic location of any event;

(e) prepared by lay persons for conversational or illustrative purposes, including advertising material and use guides;

(2) the transcription of existing documents or land records into geographic information systems/land information systems by manual or electronic means;

(3) the transcription of public record data into a cadastre (tax maps and associated records) and the maintenance of that cadastre by either manual or electronic means, including tax maps and zoning maps;

(4) the use of all documents or databases prepared by any federal agency and documents or databases using federal data by any person to prepare documents and databases including, but not limited to, federal and military versions of quadrangle topographic maps, military maps, and satellite imagery;

(5) the use of all civilian or commercial remotely-sensed satellite data;

(6) all maps and databases created by any firm, in either hardcopy or electronic form, by full-time employees of that firm, of features that are wholly contained within properties that the firm owns, leases, rents, or has exclusive use or shared easement to, are exempt from the definition of surveying. This exclusion includes public and private utility companies preparing inventory maps of their facilities as long as those maps and databases are not provided to anyone outside the company with any data that illustrates property ownership lines of property the firm does not own, lease, rent, or on which they have exclusive use or shared easement;

(7) the creation of maps and databases depicting the distribution of natural or cultural resources prepared by foresters, geologists, soil scientists, geophysicists, biologists, geographers, archeologists, historians, urban and regional planners, or other individuals qualified to prepare such maps as long as any property boundaries shown are either supplied by a professional surveyor or transcribed from public deed or plat records converted from tax maps or cadastre, or are clearly not intended to serve as legal property boundaries;

(8) the creation of all maps and geo-referenced databases depicting physical features and events prepared by any government agency where the access to that data is restricted by statute, including geo-referenced data generated by law enforcement agencies involving crime statistics and criminal activities;

(9) the work of any official or employee of a political subdivision of this State while in the performance of their official duties involving Emergency 911 mapping, land use mapping, property tax mapping, remote sensing and implementation, maintenance, creation, and distribution of mapping grade GIS data as part of a political subdivision's geographic information system.
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It should be quite clear from this that very few of us would need to be licensed under these provisions.
Now don't you feel a whole lot better?
PJ

[SCGISSurveyor]

Greetings from South Carolina!

The piece posted by "ridemgis" certainly hits at the heart of the law. But as you can imagine, even the law as it's written can't answer all of the questions and concerns that a law like this will raise. In truth, it's all a little hazy to us too, but I'll be glad to answer any questions or concerns. I am one of the licensed GIS-Surveyors here in SC. So if anyone has any questions about the process, the issues surrounding it, the application of the law, or anything else I'll be glad to help out as much as I can.

My two primary complaints with the law are: 1) the law tells us what we can not do with our license far more than it tells us what we can do, and 2) it is only applied to the private sector and not the public sector.

I'm happy to discuss or share observations with anyone concerned about this law.

Have a great day!

Eric

Eric Schmidt, GISP
The Winyah Bay Co, Inc.
Georgetown, SC
service@winyahbayco.com
(843) 240-4826
Licensed SC GIS-Surveyor (Lic #24117)

[EJOBPLS2000]

07-08-09

Eric:

Greetings, welcome to the “Lively Experiment”.

I have a couple of questions. I am a Professional Land Surveyor. I use GIS to supplement and complement the work I do as a surveyor and consider myself a GIS Practitioner.

If I were to become Licensed Land Surveyor in South Carolina, at what point under the South Carolina rules would I need to become a “GIS Surveyor”?

Would I need to become a “GIS Surveyor” or would I get a free pass because I am a Professional Land Surveyor?

Would you prefer the term Geospatial Professional or Professional Mapper rather than GIS Surveyor?

Can a GIS Surveyor collect data with a GPS or by other means to add to a GIS Database?

Look forward to hearing from you.

ejob

[SCGISSurveyor]

ejob,

Sorry for the tardy reply. The quick answer is that you would, indeed, receive a "free pass" from the GIS Surveyor tag if you were already a Professional Land Surveyor. This betrays the protectionist nature of the law. In short, A LPS can legally do anything a GIS-S can do, but the GIS-S can't legally do anything the LPS can do.

As for the terminology, I'm not wild about being called a surveyor of any kind because of the confusion it begs. I hold the LPS profession in very high regard. That being said, I'm not a surveyor by any common usage of the term. To call me one only causes the aforementioned confusion. Of course, I also don't have a quick alternative suggestion so I've never incorporated that issue into my soapbox.

As to what you can do with the GIS Surveyor's license, I've yet to get a good, clear answer on that. I've been trying to get involved in the surveyor community so I can get involved in the discussion. So far it's been a good experience and I've been welcomed - after a little initial suspicion. So to answer you more directly, there's very little from the licensing board telling me for what I can actually use my license. I think as much as anything it shows that I'm keeping good faith with the surveyor's community.

Hope this is informative...and again, sorry for the delayed reply.

Eric