Chain surveying

• Right of way

  Gives you a right to pass through a property owned by another party.
• Cadastre

  Documentation which registers details of land ownership property boundaries and property value.
• Traverse surveying is used for measuring angles and distances between points forming coordinates of networking points. It is a land surveying method that is commonly used for larger scale projects as it requires multiple total stations.
• Traverse surveying is commonly used for Topological mapping with detailed contours and defined boundaries and general construction projects. The station required for this survey is generally a total station or a theodolite, however for this survey method a total station will be used as it is more accurate and can cover a greater area. 
• Open traverse- Is when a series of connected lines don't end up at the starting point. It is commonly used for large projects such as pipelines and roads making it harder for error checking as there is too much data to work with, additionally making it more time consuming. Furthermore, it is a more simple survey as survey points go straight forward in a line.
• Closed traverse- Is when a series of connected lines end up at the starting point forming a loop. Closed traverse is commonly used for projects such as determinating site boundaries, for general engineering projects and for topographic surveys.
• Additionally a Closed traverse has limited errors because of the thought loop closure and angular misclosure adjustments, allowing for easy error checking. Furthermore you will have to take more points while carrying out a Closed traverse survey to know the circumference of the site. 
• Access to site boundaries is required when completing this survey. Obtaining permission such as Right of Way which gives a legal right to pass through a property owned by another party. Furthermore it would be ideal to have a Cadastre documentation as it registers details regarding the land ownership, property boundaries and it’s value.
• Set up the tripod to a known benchmark point which establishes known elevation, ensuring the tripod is chin level. Mount the total station on top of the tripod ensuring it is levelled by adjusting its knobs and bring the bubble in the middle. Turn the station on and connect the tablet that comes with it with the station, using GPs technology oritate the total station, by plotting in your coordinates. Once that’s complete turn the laser on and point towards the point you’d like to measure and using an Electronic Distance Measurement (EDM) measures out distances of each point. The Total station will record the vertical and horizontal distance from the station to the laser point. Lastly once done, import all the data into a laptop, and create the topographical map using softwares such as autocad.
• The benefits of carrying out a traverse survey are that it can easily integrate with other softwares such as autocad and CSV, digital recording saves time and lastly EDM provides high accuracy.
• The Drawbacks of a traverse survey is the time spent on setting up multiple total stations, moreover taking even longer as you will have to level out each total station and if one of them becomes unlevel you will unfortunately have to adjust them again. Lastly it is weather dependent and can be quite expensive as each total station costs around £15k, plus labour cost.