Peace mending

War-torn Iraq tries to rebuild its network

Picture this: You are in charge of setting up a new geospatial reference system that will serve a large area and will be used to accurately survey road and bridge construction projects and renovations to water supply systems. The system must be usable for military and civilian projects.

The job comes with some problems: a badly deteriorated infrastructure, the possibility of sniper fire and the reality of roadside bombs.

Building a reference network in war-torn Iraq is the job of Wissam Al Hassani of the Iraqi Ministry of Water. Al Hassani worked for several years on a single project: surveying the country’s damaged water system. That was extremely difficult since the country’s survey infrastructure was a hodgepodge system based on a British system developed after the 1921 occupation; that system was woefully out-of-date and inaccurate. A 1970s Polish-designed system was of little use since there was little existing documentation.

Al Hassani got his chance to literally change the way surveying operations were viewed in his country. The U.N. gifted an Iraqi ministry with four Topcon Total Stations (two GTS-225s and two GTS-710s); however, no one knew what to do with them. Lacking training and fearing the military might react poorly to unauthorized experimentation with the systems, the Total Stations sat in a warehouse in their unopened Topcon boxes.

At the time, the one man who had some idea of what to do with the Total Stations, Al Hassani, was working on a dam and bridge project in the north of Iraq. The equipment he was using on the site was very old and barely serviceable. The job was not going well. When the Minister of Water visited the dam and saw the problems, he asked Al Hassani what he needed to get the job done.

Al Hassani did not hesitate: “I need one of the Topcon Total Stations,” he said, and he got it. “I became the first Iraqi to use the Total Stations.”

Of course it was not quite that simple. Al Hassani had only seen pictures of the Total Station and read articles and websites about how it worked. The Minister wanted proof that he could use the system, so Al Hassani took home the manuals and began to read. Though he could read English, the going was still difficult.

With no one in the entire country who could train him, and direct contact with Topcon representatives simply out of the question due to the military restrictions, Al Hassani taught himself. In just a few days he had the brand-new GTS-225 working.

Because of his hard work and dedication, Al Hassani was designated as the resident survey expert in Iraq. A year later, all four instruments were destroyed in the fighting when a coalition of forces attacked Iraq.

Working with another U.N. grant to build a reference network, Al Hassani chose to go with the company that gave them their first shot at GPS technology—Topcon.