Geodetic system

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This article describes a concept from surveying and geodesy. Datum is also the singular form of data. For the Austrian magazine, see Datum.

Geodetic systems or geodetic data are used in geodesy, navigation, surveying by cartographers and satellite navigation systems to translate positions indicated on their products to their real position on earth.

The systems are needed because the earth is not a perfect sphere.

Examples of map data are:

• WGS 84, 72, 64 and 60 of the World Geodetic System
• NAD83, the North American Datum which is very similar to WGS84
• NAD27, the older North American Datum, of which NAD83 was basically a readjustment [1]
• OSGB36 of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain
• ED50 : the European Datum

The difference in co-ordinates between data is commonly referred to as datum shift. The datum shift between two particular datums can vary from one place to another within one country or region, and can be anything from zero to hundreds of metres (or several kilometres for some remote islands). The North Pole, South Pole and Equator may be assumed to be in different positions on different datums, so True North may be very slightly different. Different datums use different estimates for the precise shape and size of the Earth (reference ellipsoids).

The difference between WGS84 and OSGB36 is up to 140 metres / 450 feet, which for some navigational purposes is an insignificant error. For most applications, such as surveying and dive site location for SCUBA divers, 140 metres is an unacceptably large error.

The main reason that there are a number of datums is that before the advent of GPS positioning, national map making organisations did not have a common surveying reference point and only produced maps for their locality.

Datum

In surveying and geodesy, a datum is a reference point or surface against which position measurements are made, and an associated model of the shape of the earth for computing positions. Horizontal datums are used for describing a point on the earth's surface, in latitude and longitude or another coordinate system. Vertical datums are used to measure elevations or underwater depths.

Horizontal datums

The horizontal datum is the model used to measure positions on the earth. A specific point on the earth can have substantially different coordinates, depending on the datum used to make the measurement. There are hundreds of locally-developed horizontal datums around the world, usually referenced to some convenient local reference point. Contemporary datums, based on increasingly accurate measurements of the shape of the earth, are intended to cover larger areas. The WGS84 datum, which is almost identical to the NAD83 datum used in North America, is a common standard datum.

Vertical datum

A vertical datum is used for measuring the elevations of points on the earth's surface. Vertical data are either tidal, based on sea levels, gravimetric, based on a geoid, or geodetic, based on the same ellipsoid models of the earth used for computing horizontal datums.

In common usage, elevations are often cited in height above sea level; this is a widely used tidal datum. Because ocean tides cause water levels to change constantly, the sea level is generally taken to be some average of the tide heights. Mean lower low water — the average of the lowest points the tide reached on each day during a measuring period of several years — is the datum used for measuring water depths on some nautical charts, for example; this is called the chart datum. Whilst the use of sea-level as a datum is useful for geologically recent topographic features, sea level has not stayed constant throughout geological time, so is less useful when measuring very long-term processes.

A geodetic vertical datum takes some specific zero point, and computes elevations based on the geodetic model being used, without further reference to sea levels. Usually, the starting reference point is a tide gauge, so at that point the geodetic and tidal datums might match, but due to sea level variations, the two scales may not match elsewhere. One example of a geoid datum is NAVD88, used in North America, which is referenced to a point in Quebec, Canada.

External links

• Peter H. Dana: Geodetic Datum Overview - Large amount of technical information and discussion.
• UK Ordnance Survey
• US National Geodetic Survey

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