Mapping and Positioning Services has two sections. Survey section and Revision & Quality Control (RQC) section. Jeff Kuran is the Head and Alistair Strachan is the Asst. Head of Mapping and Positioning Services.

The work in Mapping and Positioning Services is divided into two parts. Collection of Data on the Field and Integration of this collected data into the Database, in the Office. Survey section collects the data on the field and passes the data to RQC section to integrate in the database. This data is converted into digital form by RQC section. RQC section's primary job is to Manage & Maintain an online Database. No data is available to Public without a strict Quality Control check from RQC section.

RQC section manages three types of data. (1) Vector data, (2) Digital Elevation Model (DEM/DTM) data, & (3) Orthoimages. These three types of data are Stereocompiled from Aerial Photographs taken by flying over the country.

Photographs of Urban areas are taken by flying at a height of 4000 mts. Photographs of Non-Urban areas are taken by flying at a height of 30,000 mts. Qatar is no doubt a Rich country but still lots of land are yet to be developed. Thus we have maps of 1:1000 scale for Urban areas Stereocompiled from 1:4000 scale photos, and maps of 1:10,000 scale for Non-Urban areas Stereocompiled from 1:30,000 scale photos.

Do you wish to know more about Aerial Photography ?

Do you wish to know about Photogrammetric Stereocompilation ?

Using Stereoplotters initial Photo compilation is done by Intermap Technologies Ltd, Ontario, Canada.

After Sterecompilation the Quality of Sterecompilation is checked. Surveyors go to the field and at random collect x,y coordinates of some features and compare with the x,y coordinates of the same Stereocompiled features.

After this is done the data is passed on to RQC section by Survey section. In RQC section there are Programs/Routines which are run on the Stereocompiled data. There are three types of System checks done on the data. (1) Compliance check, (2) Topological check, and (3) Edge check. It's the system which does the three mentioned checks and generates the respective three Reports.

Over and above these three checks a Manual check is also done, not just by one person but by two persons on each and every data. The first person checks the data using the three respective Error Reports , Field sheets which has markings of Surveyor, and the photos from which the data was stereocompiled, as source of informations, in his Quality Control check. He simultaneously prepares a Error report. This all is again checked by a second person, in order to reduce the chances of missing compilation errors. A rigid and strict Quality Control check is done to maintain a consistent and a good quality database for the World to use it.

The data collected by Surveyor using Global Positioning System (GPS) is converted into Autocoad DXF files in Survey section and passed on to RQC section. Can we rely on the accuracy of the Topographic data ? Yes ! These data are so accurate that they are within 10cms of accuracy.

In Qatar, Al-Khor is a fast developing city. The data for this area has been upto_date. Any new Building or Road constructed is updated in the database by a very good and efficient method of communication.

The moment a Building is constructed, the owner of the Building approaches the Municipality of that locality to get Building occupancy permit. Immediately Surveyors in Survey section are informed to Survey. Thus after they survey we get the data from Surveyor while the owner gets his Building occupancy permit from the Municipality.