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A US report says the country is in the middle of a crisis due to a serious lack of geodesists. What’s the situation in Australia?

By Jonathan Nally

Arecent report out of the US depicts a depressing situation with regards to available pool of geodesy talent within that country, and particularly within its defence and intelligence communities. The research is cause for great concern for the US geodesy community and for government agencies… especially when comparisons are drawn with the situation in other countries, such as China.

The report notes that in the early 1990s, “the US government, especially the Department of Defense (DOD), largely disinvested in academic research and education in geodesy,” but that “the countries of the European Union that contributed the most to the development of geodesy in the preceding centuries have maintained healthy academic training and research programs, which is also the case in Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand”.

On the other hand, the report says that “China began to make large and ever-growing investments in geodetic training and research,” with the result that “it now has more PhD geodesists than the rest of the world combined”. And, in the early 2000s, “the greatest national collapse in geodetic capability occurred in the US, as its geodesists steadily retired, and most were not replaced”.

The report goes on to say that “Perhaps the most shocking example of the US decline relative to China is that the number of PhD geodesists in the entire DOD, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), is now approaching zero. The same is true of the US defense industry. The US is on the verge of being permanently eclipsed in geodesy and in the downstream geospatial technologies. This threatens our national security and poses major risks to an economy that is strongly tied to the geospatial revolution, on Earth and, eventually, in space.”

The report’s authors say that catching up “will require the US to invest in geodetic research and training on an industrial scale,” and suggest that a two-pronged approach will be needed (see below). They add that the “situation in academia is particularly urgent because if it is not addressed very soon the US will lose its ability to take corrective action at the scale required to avoid permanent disadvantage”.

The problem has been apparent for some time. In 2017, Juliana Blackwell, the Director of the National Geodetic Survey (NGS), told leaders at Ohio State University that “the rapidly shrinking pool of well-trained, American geodesists now threatens our ability to achieve core aspects of the NGS mission, and we are sure this concern is shared by NGA and other agencies of the Federal Government”. The following year, she told the NGA that “the reduction in the population of graduate students training in this field is clearly tied to declines in government funding of geodetic research in academia”.

Nicholas Brown, Geoscience Australia’s Director of National Geodesy, says that the report’s findings and its call for action “didn’t surprise me”.

“Geodesy skills are in demand across government, industry and academia,” he says. “There is an increasing recognition that location-based data is key to making better decisions. This means people trained in geodesy can apply their skills to a wide range of problems.”

Sten Claessens, Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Spatial Sciences at the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University, agrees, saying that “The main trend described in the report (declining investment in geodesy in the USA and increasing investment in China) is one I have noticed as well during my years as a geodesist. I feel the situation in Australia is somewhat similar to the USA, although perhaps not to the same extent.”

Brown says that governments are now competing with emerging industries like the Intelligent Transport Sector (e.g. driverless car technology) and providers of location-based services for a limited number of geodesists.

What makes a geodesist?

But what exactly is geodesy, and what is it that makes a person a geodesist? According to Brown, “Geodesy is the science of measuring the shape, size and gravity field of the Earth and how it changes over time”.

“A ‘geodesist’ is a broad term, just like the term ‘artist’ is a broad term,” he says. “Art has photographers, painters and sculptors; geodesy has scientists who specialise in defining the coordinate reference frame, monitoring changes in the spin rate of the Earth, measuring the impacts of climate change and detecting changes in the Earth’s gravity field, just to name a few.”

“A geodesist’s work results in a common reference frame that allows anyone to define their position on, below and above the surface of the Earth,” adds Irek Baran, WA Landgate’s Principal Geodesist. “We provide tools that allow the accurate representation of all features on the surface of the Earth onto a piece of paper or computer screen that we all know as maps.”

“In my view, a geodesist is differentiated from a ‘standard’ surveyor by their focus on the theoretical side of the profession: rigorous analysis of survey measurements (in the broadest sense), definition of reference systems and frames, gravity and geoid models, etc,” adds Claessens. “Many geodesists today do not just focus on this but also on the use of geodetic observations for many scientific applications.”

Most Australian geodesists complete surveying, geomatics, geophysics or related studies and often later specialise in geodesy by doing Masters or PhD research. But “many people I know who work as a ‘geodesist’ don’t have formal training in geodesy,” says Brown. “They may have a background in astronomy, physics or mathematics and have started working on a geodesy project: for example, measuring sea level variation using satellite altimetry data. From that point on, in my mind, they are a geodesist.”

“There are formal qualifications for geodesists outside of Australia, but in Australia, there is no formal qualification for geodesists that I’m aware of,” says Claessens. “Some geodesy is covered in surveying courses… but even PhD courses in Australia, as far as I know, do not explicitly contain the term ‘geodesy’ — it’s Surveying or Spatial Sciences or Geospatial Sciences or Geospatial Engineering or Earth Sciences.”

The situation in Australia

The US report paints a pretty dire picture of the state of play in the country, but what’s the situation in Australia? Are we facing the same problems?

“I think Australia punches well above its weight when it comes to the number and quality of geodesy experts we have,” says Brown. “The challenge for Australia is that geodesy expertise is in demand, and we don’t have enough to cater for all the needs of government and industry.”

“If I was to be an optimist, this is an opportunity for us to demonstrate the value the scientific community brings and to advocate and find ways to train up more people with expertise in geodesy.”

Landgate’s Baran agrees. “I believe Australia is not yet in the same situation as the United States,” he says, noting the high-quality graduates who have been produced by organisations such as the Western Australian Geodesy Group at Curtin University.

“Many graduates from this group and from other geodesy programs have worked in the US, Europe and Asia while others stayed in Australia in roles across various organisations. Thanks to great leadership by many passionate geodesists in Australia, our country was able to ‘outsource’ the surplus of this sought-after speciality,” Baran says.

“However, this is rapidly changing,” he adds. “With increasing needs for accurate positioning through the growing popularity of location-based applications and decision making, geodesy is becoming a mainstream profession. With a slow decline in the number of graduates this may result in not having enough geodesists to satisfy future demands.”

“To prevent this situation, I believe we should promote broad multidisciplinary education, but above all organisations should recognise and adequately value a broad yet unique set of skills that a geodesist can offer.”

Curtin’s Claessens says that “it can be difficult to fill research positions in geodesy with suitable candidates, especially candidates from Australia”.

“A possible reason is that undergraduate students who pursue surveying in Australia do not have an interest in a career in geodesy, when there is easier money to be made in other areas,” he says.

“Many geodesists in Australia are born overseas, and it seems to me Australia will continue to rely on talent from other countries. For this it is important that there is sufficient funding for geodesy-related research projects, including scholarships for research students, and this to me appears to be a problem at present.”

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The China syndrome

It probably should come as no surprise that geodesy in China is going ahead in leaps and bounds, as indeed has been happening in many of its other industry sectors in recent decades. The numbers cited in the US report are quite staggering:

• There are around 150 colleges and universities in China with undergraduate and graduate programs in geodesy, surveying, mapping and geomatics, with an estimated combined undergraduate enrolment in the range of 9,000 to 12,500 students per year.
• The city of Wuhan with its university, national research centres and institutes is now the single biggest centre of geodetic research in the world, with the number of geodesy graduate students in Wuhan alone exceeding that of the whole US.
• China now has more geodesists than the rest of the world combined, and its geodesy researchers are better funded than their counterparts in the West.
• China is reaching parity with the US and Europe in terms of the number of peer-reviewed scientific papers published per year in pure and applied geodesy, and its publication rate is increasing more rapidly.

The report’s authors also point out that “China’s BeiDou system is at least as good as GPS, and arguably it is significantly better. BeiDou now has more world-wide users than GPS.” They also opine that “The geodetic sub-systems that enable China’s satellites and space program seem to have reached parity with” those of the US.

“We believe that much can be learned from China’s human and capital investments in geodesy and the adjacent disciplines and technologies, including their use of parallel or redundant tasking in the pursuit of its key goals, so as to ensure that its overall strategy is much less vulnerable to sequential ‘weakest link’ failures,” the report says.

Fixing the US problem

The report’s authors recommend a two-pronged approach to solving the geodesy crisis in the US, the first of which is greatly expanded training and recruitment. They suggest three methods to achieve this:

1. A general education, outreach and mass recruitment effort aimed at thousands (eventually tens of thousands) of mostly young people, that provides free, self-paced and useful instruction in the various branches of geodesy via the internet (such as YouTube), supplemented by occasional ‘inspirational’ videos in which geodesists and other geospatial specialists describe the fascinations of the discipline, the adventures of geodetic fieldwork, and the career opportunities available.
2. In-house training of the existing employees of the government’s geospatial organisations, via remote access to university courses, by enrolling part-time in local universities, or providing employees with leave to undertake studies anywhere in the country, at the organisation’s expense.
3. Advanced academic training for young researchers. A significant fraction of the most talented and hardworking (and mostly young) scientists that can be encouraged to enter the field, should become full-time graduate students engaged in serious research in a top-flight program.

The second part of the two-pronged approach boils down simply to greatly expanded research and technical development. “There should be a concerted effort to fund multiple geodesy research projects in each academic geodesy program, ensuring that these contracts and grants allow for the expansion of the geodetic faculty and their PhD staff scientists and technicians, and provide the necessary funds for many more American graduate students as well,” the report recommends.

“More than one research group should be funded to investigate any technically difficult and potentially crucial topic. As the community of US geodesists expands, so should the level of funding, to keep this growth on track. There should be regular encounters between academic geodesists, their students, government geodesists and industry, not only to seek synergies in R&D, but so that recent MS and PhD graduates are quickly and optimally placed.”

What does Australia need to do?

Even though Australia may not be in quite the same situation as the US currently finds itself in, it is important that we don’t let things slide and, indeed, work to make the situation better and more secure. After all, a lot is riding on it.

“Australia, like the rest of the world, has a growing dependence on geodesy,” says Brown. “For example, under the direction of the Australian Space Agency, the Australian Government seeks to transform and grow our space industry over 10 years. A vital foundation to enable this transformation is expertise in geodesy to assist in satellite design and launch.”

“If we then look to the downstream applications of this burgeoning space program, there is a huge reliance to take the raw data from positioning and imagery satellites and apply it to the needs of industries such as agriculture, construction, mining, maritime, aviation etc.”

Claessens agrees, noting that, for example, “the number of applications that rely on the GNSS CORS network is increasing. A shortage of geodesists would potentially weaken the quality of Australia’s geodetic infrastructure, which would impact all the applications that rely on it. When I say ‘weaken’, I mean in relation to the rest of the world rather than in relation to the current situation. Australia’s geodesy workforce needs to continue to innovate and expand.”

Brown says that part of the challenge of attracting more people to the profession is “selling it”.

“We need to get better at explaining what geodesy is and what a career in geodesy can offer,” he says.”

“When I talk to school students and university students, the first thing I tell them is that within 12 months of being at Geoscience Australia and working in the field of geodesy, I had the opportunity to live in Antarctica for four months working on sea level studies, plate tectonic studies, and upgrading the technology we use to define the global coordinate reference frame.

“Since then, a career working in geodesy has allowed me to travel the world including eight Pacific island countries, the USA, Canada, Germany and a 12-month secondment to the UK working with experts in the University of Cambridge,” he adds.

“This would probably make a great recruitment campaign: Study geodesy — see the world!”

This article was first published in the Aug/Sep 2022 issue of Position magazine.

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