The 3-D Global Spatial Data Model: Principles and Applications, Second Edition

About Earl F. Burkholder

A native Virginian Earl F. Burkholder grew up in Virginias Shenandoah Valley and graduated from Eastern Mennonite High School in 1964. He earned a BS in civil engineering from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor Michigan in 1973 and an MS in civil engineering (Geodesy) in 1980. From 1980 to 1993 he taught upper division surveying classes at the Oregon Institute of Technology Klamath Falls Oregon. After five years of being self-employed he taught in the Surveying Engineering program at New Mexico State University from 1998 to his retirement in 2010. His professional career began as a draftsman with Gould Engineering Inc. of Flint Michigan in 1968. Following graduating from University of Michigan Ann Arbor Michigan he worked five years for Commonwealth Associates Inc. of Jackson Michigan an international consulting firm for the utility industry. Assigned to the Transmission Line Engineering Division at Commonwealth he was responsible for surveying related computations on projects in numerous states and was promoted to Survey Project Manager prior to leaving in 1978 to attend Purdue University. While teaching at Oregon Tech he became editor of the ASCE Journal of Surveying Engineering and served two separate four-year terms; 19851989 and 19931998. He also became involved in ABET accreditation activities while at Oregon Tech and went on to serve on the Engineering Related Accreditation Commission (now known as the Applied Science Accreditation Commission) culminating as chair of the RAC in 2000/2001.While self-employed he completed three major projects for the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) Waukesha Wisconsin. The first project was to develop a reliable bidirectional algorithm for transforming data between the NAD 27 datum being used by SEWRPC and the new NAD 83 datum published by the National Geodetic Survey (NGS). Upon successful completion of the horizontal transformation project the next project was a similar assignment for the bidirectional transformation of data between the NGVD 29 datum (again being used by SEWRPC) and the new NAVD 88 datum published by NGS. Prior to beginning the horizontal transformation project he suggested to Dr. Bauer SEWRPC Executive Director that the datum horizontal and vertical transformation challenges would be an excellent opportunity to combine the two databases into a single 3-D database. After a rather short deliberation Dr. Bauer indicated that the 3-D proposal was untested too radical and not proven practical. However upon completion of the first two projects Dr. Bauer commissioned the preparation of a report outlining and defining how such an integrated model could be implemented. That report became the basis for the first edition of The 3-D Global Spatial Data Model: Foundation of the Spatial Data Infrastructure published by CRC Press in 2008.