Positioning

Description

Positioning is Australia's authoritative, reliable, high accuracy spatial referencing system. The Positioning Service includes the coordinates and their uncertainty of all location based data promulgated from, or related to, the Australian Fiducial Network (AFN) and the Australian National Levelling Network (ANLN).

Datasets

Positioning is provided through the reference system using the Geocentric Datum of Australia 1994 (GDA94), the Australian Height Datum 1971 (AHD71) and the Australian Height Datum (Tasmania) 1983 (AHD-TAS83).

The Positioning Application is underpinned by physical geodetic infrastructure, such as the survey marks and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) networks, geodetic modelling (e.g. the coordinate transformations), and definitions of the Geoid and bathymetric reference surfaces.

Services include on-the-fly and post-production capability to correct GNSS measurements.

Purpose

Positioning is Australia's authoritative, reliable, high accuracy spatial referencing system and it provides a common reference for all geospatial data.

Services are used by specialists and non-specialists alike, for a growing number of applications. For example:

• surveying, construction

• mining

• precision agriculture

• asset capture

• tracking, navigation

• emergency response

• law enforcement, insurance, security

• climate/weather forecast and recreation

Current Status

While there is currently no nationally coordinated approach to managing the National Positioning Infrastructure (NPI) (i.e. Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) and the associated real-time positioning services), the NPI Implementation Plan does provide a roadmap to achieve this.

Real-time positioning services currently support 2–5 cm accuracy positioning but only in two jurisdictions, Victoria and NSW, with dense (70 km station spacing) CORS networks.

The national geoid model (i.e. AUSGeoid09) currently supports the measurement of height with respect to AHD using GNSS with an absolute uncertainty of 6 cm.

Future Status

The Positioning Service is being progressively upgraded with datum modernisation being driven by the anticipated development of the National Positioning Infrastructure (NPI) which will be capable of delivering coordinates with centimetre accuracy.

The refinement of the national geodetic infrastructure is outlined in the National Positioning Infrastructure (NPI) Plan.

Implementaton of the  NPI plan will improve the existing GNSS CORS infrastructure, governance and data sharing arrangements and will augment the existing infrastructure with a fully multi-GNSS capable, high integrity, trusted CORS network with a 200 km inter-station spacing.

The Permanent Committee on Geodesy (PCG) will update the Geocentric Datum of Australia 1994 (GDA94) by 2017.

This will be the first rigorous and dense 3D national adjustment. The national geoid model, AUSGeoid09, will undergo iterative improvements as additional terrestrial (gravity and survey) and satellite gravity and altimetry data becomes available.

In order to maximise the benefits of positioning and the enabling infrastructure, and to provide assurance to users of the fitness for purpose of the position outputs, guiding principles are required to enable the consistent and reliable determination and use of position information.

Standards

Document: Recognised value standard for position of the Australian Fiducial Network stations (refer to National Measurement Act 1960 - Recognised-value standard of measurement of position 2012 (No. 1) - F2012L00800, see http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2012L00800/Download)

Manual: GDA Technical Manual, see http://www.icsm.gov.au/gda/tech.html

Manual: Standard and Guidelines for the Australian Survey Control Network, Special Publication 1, http://www.icsm.gov.au

Access and Licensing

Products and Services are made available through Geoscience Australia

http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/positioning-navigation/geodesy/gnss-networks/data-and-site-logs

Products and Services relating to this dataset are made available under open access policy:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/

Jurisdictional datasets are also available under license:

Australian Capital Territory: http://www.planning.act.gov.au/tools_resources/survey-data-maps/surveying_data/surveyors_information/survey_control_marks

New South Wales: www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/surveying/scims_online

Northern Territory: http://www.lands.nt.gov.au/land-info/survey/geodetic-survey

Queensland: https://www.business.qld.gov.au/industry/titles-property-construction/surveying/permanent-survey-marks

South Australia: https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/housing-property-and-land/property-and-place-information/permanent-survey-marks

Tasmania: http://surcom.dpiw.tas.gov.au/surcom/jsp/login/index.jsp

Victoria: http://maps.land.vic.gov.au/lassi/SmesUI.jsp

Western Australia: http://www0.landgate.wa.gov.au/business-and-government/specialist-services/geodetic

Related Websites

• http://www.ga.gov.au/earth-monitoring.html
• http://www.ga.gov.au/ngrs/
• http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/positioning-navigation/geodesy/related-organisations
• http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/hazards/nuclear-monitoring

Coverage

Complete, current and continuous NGRS coverage for all Australia and its maritime jurisdictions supporting instantaneous, reliable and fit-for-purpose positioning and time services anywhere and anytime.

Sponsor

Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM)

Key Users

In addition to the traditional survey, mapping and navigation sectors, positioning applications have expanded into industry (e.g. mining, agriculture and engineering), financial transactions, transportation (including Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS)), recreation, disaster response and emergency management, environmental studies, and scientific research.

Additional

A draft Geography Markup Language (GML) Application Schema known as GeodesyML is currently available and being tested. GeodesyML defines an application-neutral format for the encoding of geodetic information. The focus for this draft version has been to incorporate the geodetic elements most commonly transferred between state and national geodetic agencies.

Version

1.1