Inertial technology has been successfully used in surveying and geodesy for more than a decade. Although results in positioning and gravity vector determination have been excellent, the high cost of the stable platform systems, their bulkiness and their susceptibility to down times in a rough production environment, have somewhat limited the use of this new technology. In addition, a number of interesting applications could not be attempted because raw accelerations and angular velocities at a high data rate were not available. The Department of Surveying Engineering at the University of Calgary has therefore studied the use of strapdown technology for surveying applications and the paper summarizes results achieved during the last two years. They show that strapdown technology offers an economic, versatile and reliable way to solve surveying problems in a number of areas where platform systems could not be used or were not competitive. Four developments will be specifically highlighted. The testing of a Strap-down Inertial Survey System (SISS), the development of an inertial pipeline monitoring system, the testing of an integrated INS/GPS for airborne photogrammetry and line imaging, and studies leading to the development of an inertial system for industrial alignment surveys. In each case, the concept of the specific application will be outlined and a brief discussion of the results achieved to date will be given.