An-Najah Staff

Two main factors were behind writing this manual. First, the lack of surveying textbooks or manuals that deal with field exercises in an organized and detailed way. Second, the fact that in many universities around the world, including An-Najah National University, the surveying lab is now being taught as a separate course which, in turn, needs a textbook. This document came to be a comprehensive reference which covers, in an organized and chronological way, both theoretical and practical matters concerning surveying field exercises. The content of this manual is divided into twenty lab exercises spread over 26 weeks of field work, 2 hours/week. Some exercises take more than one session, and this is indicated under the title of each exercise. The subject material starts with elementary chain surveying (tape measurements) principles and goes with an ascending order according to the surveying technological advances, and ends with satellite surveying, mainly GPS. From the author’s perspective and teaching experience, this manual is recommended to be taught in two undergraduate level practical courses, each is for one credit. The first course includes exercises 1 to 10, and this will take 14 weeks. The last week of the semester is usually reserved for the final practical exam. The second course includes exercises 11 to 20, and this will take 12 weeks. Due to the high importance of exercise 10 in surveying, and because it comes at the end of the first course when the students are very busy, I usually repeat this exercise (takes 2 weeks) at the beginning of the second course to make a total of 14 weeks. For engineering programs that teach only one practical surveying course, I suggest exercises 1--11+19+20 with some modification to fit the time framework. Exercises 11—17 should be included in a transportation engineering course, especially for civil engineering students. I specifically tried to make this manual as concise and easy to read and understand as possible. I hope that it will be useful to the readers and certainly welcome any comments that will help improve it in the future.