The Sudanese Survey Department
The Sudanese Survey Department, known today as the Sudanese Survey Authority, is the only official government body authorised to carry out surveying work and produce maps in Sudan, according to Sudan's report submitted to the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management initiative. The department was founded in 1899, making it one of the oldest state institutions, and it began its work within the Corps of Engineers during the Condominium period, then continued its work after independence as the country's national mapping agency.
The department is responsible for topographic and geodetic surveying, land surveying and the determination of its boundaries, and the publication of the state's official maps. Among its most prominent products are the topographic map series at a scale of 1 to 250,000, completed in 171 sheets, and a series at a scale of 1 to 100,000, and it relies in its work on ground surveying, positioning devices, aerial surveying and photogrammetry.
Its structure includes specialised departments, including aerial surveying and photogrammetry, a Geographic Information Systems unit, the land records and boundaries departments, and a hydrographic surveying department concerned with maps of islands and coastal and territorial waters in the Red Sea and surveying the depths of lakes and rivers. The land and boundaries departments are working to digitise thousands of paper maps, some dating back to the 1920s, covering land ownership, grazing and fishing rights, livestock routes and the boundaries of states and tribes, and their work on demarcating state boundaries continues throughout the year.
Its tasks also include establishing first-order geodetic control points, and surveying obstacles around airports for navigation safety on commission from the Civil Aviation Authority. It prepared the first edition of the national specifications and standards for surveying work, which was approved by the Sudanese Engineering Council, and it represents Sudan in regional organisations specialised in cartography, remote sensing and boundary programmes.
(Sources: Sudan's report to the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management initiative UN-GGIM for 2015, Sudan's cartographic profile in the Geospatial Country Profile, Records of the Sudan Survey Department in the British Library archive)
— Editorial Team
