HON-22729 Copan Ruinas Assignment

 Using Google Satellite & Open Street Maps as the Base for Copan Ruinas GIS System Background We are all familiar with using Google Map for location and navigation with our mobile phones. We can see our track as we drive along the roads on the map. It generally falls within the width of the road, especially if we are zoomed out. Similarly we can see where we are on the map if we are looking for a restaurant or store in town. The single band GPS/GNSS (L1) receiver in our phone gives us a location within 5 to 10 m in urban areas, normally that is enough for what we need. In addition the Google satellite image also is accurate within 2 to 15 m depending on where you are in the world. We can see that when we are using it while we are walking along a street. Sometimes if we look at the image it shows that we are on the right side of the road even though we are walking along the left. This is because of the accuracies of the GNSS receiver and the google map image registration. If we ...

Solid Waste Stockpile Monitoring with Drone Photogrammetry on a Budget Background Solid waste stockpile monitoring involves the systematic, real-time, or periodic evaluation of waste piles to manage volume, ensure environmental safety, and maintain regulatory compliance. Modern monitoring techniques, such as 3D LiDAR scanners and UAV (drone) photogrammetry, have largely replaced manual, less accurate estimations, allowing for safe, continuous, and high-resolution tracking of waste quantities.  The following is a step-by-step example to show how local government with limited resources and equipment can monitor and manage their solid waste sites using low cost consumer drones like the DJI mini 4 Pro and single phase GPS/GNSS hand held receivers for ground control with Open Source applications like WebODM. Naturally better results can be achieved with higher grade equipment but I will show in this web blog that anyone can start even with limited resources.  The Basic Tools and Eq...

Copan Ruinas - Solid Waste Management Assessment Situation Analysis 2026 Background Copan Rurinas had a solid waste management (SWM) site north of the town near Quebracho. It had some resistance by local land owners and a previous mayor moved the SWM site to its present location between the sewage lagoons and the Copan River around 2015. It is an environmentally hazardous site with potential leaching to the river and potential for the solid waste to be washed downstream during high flood events on the river. The town had a SWM study undertaken by a Catalyste+ Advisor Henning Rasmussen (see Appendix),who recommended a new site south of the town. This site did not receive approval from the National government because it had potential to leach into local water supplies downstream. At this time it is important to find a new SWM site. In the interim, the town should dyke the toe of the waste pile adjacent to the river to stabilize the landfill from encroaching further into the floodplain...

  Background Historically local governments in many countries used optical survey instruments to map their cadastre and public works projects. Many municipalities establish a baseline using a survey control benchmark in the square near their municipal offices to establish a baseline to measure their surveys from.  In the Philippines the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers originally established the geographic coordinates of these control monuments using celestial observations. These coordinates have been updated with the launching of the GPS satellites by the U.S. Department of Defence in 1978.  Since then Europe, China, Russia and others have added their own constellations of satellites to augment positional accuracy and to decrease the reliance on one nation for that service. They are referred to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) as a whole for precise geo-spatial positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services. They are named respectively Galileo, BeiDou, Glonas...