​Jan Van Sickle has many years of experience in GIS, GNSS, surveying and mapping. He began working with GPS in the early 1980s when he supervised control work using the Macrometer, the first commercial GPS receiver. He created and led the GIS department at Qwest Communications for the company’s 25,000-mile worldwide fiber optic network. He also led the team that built the GIS for natural gas gathering in the Barnett Shale. He assisted the supervision of the first GPS control survey of the Grand Canyon. He led the team that collected, processed and reported ground control positions for more than 120 cities around the world for the ortho-rectification of satellite imagery now utilized in a global web utility. He managed  control for the BIM of the White House and the creation of the worldwide T&E sites for two major earth observation satellites (Geoeye I and Geoeye II). He conducted a spatial accuracy comparison study for Maxar in Durban, South Africa, Seoul, South Korea and Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. He has provided  technical assistance in the reconstruction of the geodetic network of Nigeria. He has managed the
gravity/magnetic and hyperspectral/multispectral analysis of Borzon VII a concession block in the South Gobi in Mongolia. He created an imagery-based system of deriving road centerlines that meet the stringent Advanced Driver Assistance specifications. He has led nationwide seminars based on his three
books, GPS and GNSS for Land Surveyors, Basic GIS Coordinates and Surveying Solved Problems. He has been a featured speaker at many conferences. He was a Senior Lecturer at Penn State University. Jan earned his Ph.D. in geospatial engineering from the University of Colorado. He is a ASPRS Certified Photogrammetrist and Lidar Mapping Scientist. He is a licensed professional Land Surveyor in Colorado, California, Oregon, Texas, North Dakota, and West Virginia.

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GPS Modernization & GNSS
Thursday, January 8, 2026, 8:00 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.   

GPS, put in place with amazing speed considering the technological hurdles, is now critical to all sorts of positioning, navigation and timing around the world.  It’s that very criticality that requires the modernization. The oldest operational satellites in the current constellation were
launched in the 1990s.  Imagine using a personal computer of that vintage today.  It is not surprising that there are plans in place to alter the system substantially. What might be unexpected is many of those plans will be implemented entirely outside of the GPS system itself. GNSS, the Global Navigation Satellite System is here. New capabilities are available.  It is prudent to consider the ramifications of a constellation including QZSS (Japan), GLONASS (Russia), Beidou (China), GALILEO (EU), Nav1C (India) and GPS satellites.  Today there may be as many as 20-30 navigational satellites above your horizon. That provides you with much more and different capabilities than were available just a few years ago. How all this works is the subject of this seminar.
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Accuracy, Errors & Statistics
Thursday, January 8, 2026, 10:10 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

All measurements include error, they must, therefore, be adjusted. This is true no matter how they were gathered. In order to perform those adjustments properly the adjuster needs an understanding of the basic definitions of statistical observations, how they are derived from a
population of observations, sampling, and perhaps most importantly the interpretation of the results. This session includes those ideas.​
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Best Practices for GPS
Thursday, January 8, 2026, 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Most, not all, GPS/GNSS surveying relies on the idea of differential positioning. The mode of a base or reference receiver at a known location logging data at the same time as a receiver at an unknown location together provide the fundamental information for the determination of accurate coordinates.   Now, the most commonly used methods utilize receivers on reference stations that provide correction signals to the end user via a data link sometimes over the Internet, radio signal, or cell phone and often in real-time. Real-time kinematic (RTK) has become routine in development and engineering surveys where the distance between the base and roving receivers can most often be measured in thousands of feet. However, while RTK dominates the GPS/GNSS surveying applications the requirements of setting up a GPS/GNSS reference station on a known position, the establishment of a radio frequency transmitter and all attendant components before a single measurement can be made are both awkward and expensive. Real-Time Networks, RTN services have arisen around the world to provide RTCM real-time corrections to surveyors by a different means. There are definite advantages including the elimination of individual base station preparation and the measurement of longer baselines without rapid degradation of the results. This seminar is about making explaining some elements important to RTN operation and proposing some practical real-time best practices.