T. Baker Smith to begin using GULFNet

Houma engineering firm T. Baker Smith will begin using the Global Positioning System to perform surveying jobs.

The company reached an agreement with the Louisiana State University Center for GeoInfor-matics to use its GULFNet System.

GULFNet uses GPS to conduct measurements within “millimeter accuracy,” said Paula Schouest, T. Baker Smith marketing director.

“This is state-of-the-art surveying technology,” she said. “GPS and a cell phone can get the elevation of anything quick. It’s above anything else.”

GULFNet, funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has 42 GPS stations in south Louisiana-including ones in Thibodaux, Houma and Morgan City – which gather data that is sent to LSU in Baton Rouge.

Each of the stations constantly communicates its position and elevation via satellite, making them useful to measure the heights of levees in south Louisiana.

Levees lose height here because of subsidence.

“It has the ability to measure consistently,” Schouest said.

The South Lafourche Levee District used GULFNet recently to measure land loss, she said.

“The GULFNet technology is a ‘quantum leap’ over conventional surveying which can take months,” Windell Curole, levee district director, stated in a release. “With this technology, in one day we covered the whole south Lafourche levee system.”

Before GULFNet, “A system of accurate elevations (was) nearly impossible to maintain,” said Center for GeoInformatics Director Roy Dokka at a conference in Houma last year. “Now we have a quick, accurate way to know, to fix it,” he said. “If you don’t know, you can’t fix it.”

GULFNet tracks land loss as well.

Data from GULFNet’s GPS station at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium building in Cocodrie indicates the structure is sinking a quarter inch annually.

“Cocodrie is slowly going down,” Dokka said. “The Gulf is creeping closer to Houma.”

Through T. Baker Smith’s research agreement with LSU, Schouest said the company provides feedback to LSU about how the system is working. Smith receives information about the system in return.