Contributions of surveying in the development of regional infrastructures : an African perspective
Onyeka, Eugene Chukwunwike
Since its modest beginning in ancient Egypt where it was used to re-establish the boundaries of farm holdings after their obliteration by the annual floods, surveying has widened in both scope and spatial coverage. With time, it became an indispensable tool in all extensive projects involving spatial data. In order to be useful, the spatial data must all be tied to the same reference frame or to different reference frames whose relationships can be determined. This requirement severely restricted infrastructural developments to areas within one geodetic reference system, usually a nation. As cooperation between countries within regions increased, it became necessary to extend infrastructural developments across national frontiers. Following this new attitude, a number of laudable regional projects have been conceived. One such project is the channelling of some waters of Oubangui River at Palambo in Central Africa Republic, through a navigable canal, to Lake Chad in north-eastern Nigeria. This paper examines the contributions of surveying in the development of such regional infrastructures. It also discusses the challenges posed by the existence of heterogeneous geodetic datums in the development of regional infrastructures and supports the establishment of a unified reference frame for Africa.
Event: XXIII International FIG Congress : Shaping the change
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