PLSO The Oregon Surveyor May June 2020

Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon |  www.plso.org 15 Featured Article What I learned The whole point of traveling to Switzer- land was to learn some things about their property boundary line system, also called a cadastral system, compare it to ours, and then figure out how to make changes and improvements here in the U.S. There were seven United States li- censed land surveyors on the trip. One from Oregon, one from Michigan, two from California, one from Wisconsin, and two from New York—Greg and I. The Swiss difference In the United States, in order to perform a property boundary survey, we have to perform record research at government offices, go out in the field and look for propertymonuments that may ormay not exist, survey and measure the features on and near the property, compile all of this information, evaluate what is good data and what data should be thrown away, and come up with the best loca- tion for the property lines based on all of this. We go through this process ev- ery time we perform a boundary survey. In Switzerland, you can go to a public facing website, type in an address, and look at the property lines, because they have already been established relative to physical features, and the coordinates and geometry are documented. You’ll also see symbols for the monuments that were set in the field to demarcate every property in the country! So ess- entially, Switzerland completed their “One Last Survey” and documented it in GIS, and these lines and monuments are considered law. I’m exaggerating a bit, because they really only surveyed/ published about 80% of the country, however the remaining areas are mostly the mountains and undeveloped lands. Switzerland’s federal government guid- ed their One Last Survey. They came up with the idea in 1912, and it took 100 years to get it done. They decided they would survey and document proper- ty lines, and those lines would become law. The federal government told the cantons (next municipality down), that they are responsible for establishing property lines for their lands. The can- tons were given funding, and they used continues on page 17 T Christine Gayron in Bern, Switzerland. All photos courtesy of Christine Gayron. The U.S. delegation at the local private survey office in Zurich.