Dawson was commissioned in the
Corps of Royal Engineers as 2nd Lieutenant on 1 March 1816, and between 1819 and 1829 took part in the
triangulation and mapping of
Ireland and
Scotland under
Thomas Colby. In 1831, he was recalled to England to survey the boundaries of the proposed
Parliamentary Boroughs for the
Great Reform Act, producing a series of one-inch and two-inch maps that are preserved in two volumes in the
British Library. File:Birmingham - Reform Act Map 1831.png|The proposed
Parliamentary Borough of
Birmingham, surveyed by Dawson in 1831 for the
Great Reform Act File:Robert K Dawson - Map of Bewdley from the Ordnance Survey - B1977.14.14941 - Yale Center for British Art.jpg|
Bewdley from the Ordnance Survey File:Bodleian Libraries, Horsham from the Ordnance Survey.jpg|
Horsham from the Ordnance Survey File:Bodleian Libraries, Oxford From the Ordnance Survey.jpg|
Oxford from the Ordnance Survey ==Death==