The discipline of Geomatics has been supporting the pipeline industry in the form of land surveying for decades. However, the term Geomatics is a fairly modern description of a discipline (1) that has expanded further beyond traditional field surveys to include the elements below. This holistic definition of Geomatics is the one we apply throughout this book.
• global positioning system (GPS)
• geodesy
• aerial and satellite imagery acquisition and processing
• cartography
• web-based and mobile mapping
• geographic information systems (GIS) and
• spatial data management (SDM)
All these geomatics practices listed have innovated aspects of pipeline system design, maintenance, and operations through their ability to generate and deal with data that support business decisions. Innovation is the driving force behind the adoption of geomatic techniques and technology in pipelines as we look to automate processes, do more desktop studies, and store greater amounts of data as it becomes cheaper and is easier to access and store.
