INTRODUCTION TO GEOMATICS OR SURVEYING SCIENCE
Terrestrial surveys with a much older history have been the fundaments for determining size
and shape of the earth, and of establishing country and continent wide reference Networks.
Ancient time, the surveyors were called as a person who uses geometry and primitive tools
such as surveying rope in order to define the Cadastral edge. A lot of words have been used in
order to express Geomatic Engineering from Ancient time to today such as Geometrist,
Surveyor, Survey Engineer, Geodesist, Photogrammetrist, Cartographer, Geoinformatiker,
Geomatician etc. As the parallel to the technological development, surveying and mapping
sector has improved itself and adapted to the new phenomena. Last two century, the most
affected engineering due to the revolution in computer and space technology may be
Geomatics all over the world.
Geomatics comes from the French word “géomatique”. Its roots are “geo” (Earth) and
“informatics” (information + automation + “ics” which is the accepted form for the name of
sciences). Another description of Geomatics was derived from two words
Geodesy+Geoinformatics. In the Latin language, the Geomatics correspond to Geomatica
(Ipbuker, 2008, Kemp, 2007, Yavasoglu et al. 2009). The Geomatics was defined in the
Oxford Dictionary as a new phenomena as follows;
“Geomatics: The mathematics of the earth; the science of the collection,
analysis, and interpretation of data, especially instrumental data, relating to the
earth's surface” .
Geomatic Engineering is a modern discipline, which integrates acquisition, modeling,
analysis, and management of spatially referenced data, i.e. data identified according to their
locations. Based on the scientific framework of geodesy, it uses terrestrial, marine, airborne,
and satellite-based sensors to acquire spatial and other data. It includes the process of
transforming spatially referenced data from different sources into common information
systems with well-defined accuracy characteristics. Beside of these, the Geomatics
involves intersection of the Physical, Biological, Business and Social sciences with respect to
mathematical and logical relationships as illuminated .
