The Surveying Laboratory has an area of 1,720 square feet. This space stores the equipment and instruments used for the courses and investigations offered in the Civil Engineering and Surveying and Topography programs. It counts with instruments such as transit, level, total station, digital level, distance meter, electronic data collectors, global positioning system receptors, stereoscope, tape, milestone, and tripods. It also has the necessary equipment to do jobs of horizontal and vertical control of first order. Furthermore, it stores a electronic map library of the topographic quadranglesgeo-referenced from the Geological Service of the United States or USGS (for its acronym in English) in scale 1:30, 000 and 1:20,000. This laboratory features the oldest collection of aerial photographs taken of Puerto Rico in 1930 named PORTO RICO 1930, in a digital format, which are available online. In addition, it has available the digital format aerial photographs taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA (for its acronym in English).

Computers today are an indispensable tool in all fields of knowledge, and Surveying is not an exception. An indispensable component of surveying students is a computer with programs to do calculate and draw plans. In the Surveying and Topography Laboratory, programs such as AutoCAD, MrCAD, SurvCAD, SurveyPRo, and others are available. When it comes to Geographic Information System or GIS it has programming of ArcGIS of ESRI and its extensions 3D Analysis, Spatial Analysis, GeoStadistics, and Survey Analysis. Regarding Global Positioning System or GPS, we feature receivers of a single frequency and dual frequency differential mark or Real Time Kinematic.

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Thanks to a donation from the International Institute of Tropical Taxonomy, equipment and necessary programs have been provided to the laboratory in order to accomplish what is known in English as “Pre-press publishing system” for maps and documents. This provides the ability to develop maps in computers and texts, making them available to print. As part of the equipment of this system, it counts with PC-Pentium 100, Power Macintosh 8500, an Arcus II XGPA tracker, a digitizer 48”x 60”, plotter inkjet, two HP color printers, and two units Zip Drive of 100 MB each one.

The professors and students from the Surveying and Topography Program have had the opportunity of collaborating with other faculties and departments of the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus, such as the Department of Marine Sciences of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and other agencies of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico such as the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture and the Department of Justice. The academic member of the International Federation of Surveyors or FIG (known for its acronym in French) has an alliance since 2,000 with the Institute of Surveyors of the College of Engineers and Surveyors of Puerto Rico.