The practice of TIER A surveying does not include:

(1) the creation of nontechnical maps:

(a) prepared by private firms or government agencies for use as guides to motorists, boaters, aviators, or pedestrians;

(b) prepared for publication in a gazetteer or atlas as an education tool or reference publication;

(c) prepared for or by educational institutions for use in the curriculum of any course of study or academic research;

(d) produced by any broadcast or print media firm as an illustrative guide to the geographic location of any event;

(e) prepared by lay persons for conversational or illustrative purposes, including advertising material and use guides;

(2) the transcription of existing documents or land records into geographic information systems/land information systems by manual or electronic means;

(3) the transcription of public record data into a cadastre (tax maps and associated records) and the maintenance of that cadastre by either manual or electronic means, including tax maps and zoning maps;

(4) the use of all documents or databases prepared by any federal agency and documents or databases using federal data by any person to prepare documents and databases including, but not limited to, federal and military versions of quadrangle topographic maps, military maps, and satellite imagery;

(5) the use of all civilian or commercial remotely-sensed satellite data;

(6) all maps and databases created by any firm, in either hardcopy or electronic form, by full-time employees of that firm, of features that are wholly contained within properties that the firm owns, leases, rents, or has exclusive use or shared easement to, are exempt from the definition of surveying. This exclusion includes public and private utility companies preparing inventory maps of their facilities as long as those maps and databases are not provided to anyone outside the company with any data that illustrates property ownership lines of property the firm does not own, lease, rent, or on which they have exclusive use or shared easement;

(7) the creation of maps and databases depicting the distribution of natural or cultural resources prepared by foresters, geologists, soil scientists, geophysicists, biologists, geographers, archeologists, historians, urban and regional planners, or other individuals qualified to prepare such maps as long as any property boundaries shown are either supplied by a professional surveyor or transcribed from public deed or plat records converted from tax maps or cadastre, or are clearly not intended to serve as legal property boundaries;

(8) the creation of all maps and geo-referenced databases depicting physical features and events prepared by any government agency where the access to that data is restricted by statute, including geo-referenced data generated by law enforcement agencies involving crime statistics and criminal activities;

(9) the work of any official or employee of a political subdivision of this State while in the performance of their official duties involving Emergency 911 mapping, land use mapping, property tax mapping, remote sensing and implementation, maintenance, creation, and distribution of mapping grade GIS data as part of a political subdivision's geographic information system.

HISTORY: 2000 Act No. 311, Section 1; 2007 Act No. 58, Section 1; 2016 Act No. 259 (S.685), Section 16, eff June 3, 2016.

Effect of Amendment

2016 Act No. 259, Section 16, in (1), inserted "nontechnical", and in (1)(c), substituted "educational institutions" for "education institutions".