Integration of GPS, Drone Mapping, and Total Station Technologies with GIS and CAD Tools in Modern Land Surveying

Municipal planning in a newly formed administrative unit depends on a geospatial base that the unit lacks at the moment planning begins. Satellite positioning, drone mapping, and electronic total stations have each reached technical maturity, yet the distribution of survey tasks among them and the path their data follow into GIS and CAD environments receive less systematic attention than their accuracy. The review aims to classify integration schemes for the three technologies according to the tasks of municipal surveying and to trace the resulting data chain in practice-based records. Studies published from 2021 to 2026 were screened for accuracy values verified against independent checkpoints, and the reported figures were arranged into a task-by-technology matrix. The practical material comes from the 2019 survey of Tandur, Telangana, which covered 15.54 km² in a district formed in 2016, and whose records include 1,101 coded total station points along three streets, converted into AutoCAD street plans. Five integration schemes emerge from the analysis, ranging from total station traverses in local or GNSS-controlled frames to a full sequence in which satellite control, aerial capture, and terrestrial detailing converge within a single model. The matrix assigns network control to GNSS, area terrain capture to drones, and discrete features, frontages, and boundaries to the total station supported by ground RTK. The Tandur records show that feature codes and repeated station shots carry quality control from the field into the office, while the georeferencing of local coordinate frames determines whether CAD output can be imported into a GIS.