Basic GIS Coordinates

Coordinates are integral building tools for GIS, cartography, surveying and are vital to the many applications we use today such as smart phones, car navigation systems and driverless cars. Basic GIS Coordinates, Third Edition grants readers with a solid understanding of coordinates and coordinate systems and how they operate as well as valuable insight into what causes them to malfunction. This practical and comprehensive guide lays out the foundation of a coordinate system and the implications behind building it as it elaborates on heights, two coordinate systems, and the rectangular system.The previous editions described horizontal and vertical datums such as the North American Datum 1983 (NAD 83) and the North American Vertical Datum 1988 (NAVD 88). Both will be replaced in 2022 or thereabouts. The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) plans to replace NAD83 with a new semi-dynamic terrestrial reference frame for North America and a new vertical datum will replace NAVD88. The foundation of the new vertical datum will be a temporally tracked gravimetric geoid. The interim period is intended to smooth the transition to the new paradigm and this new edition explores the changes and provides assistance in understanding them.

Jan Van Sickle has many years of experience in GIS, GPS, surveying, mapping, and imagery. He began working with GPS in the early 1980s when he supervised control work using the Macrometer, the first commercial GPS receiver. He created and led the GIS department at Qwest Communications, Denver, Colorado, for the company’s 25,000-mile worldwide fiber optic network. He also led the team that built the GIS for natural gas gathering in the Barnett Shale. He has led nationwide seminars based on his three books: GPS for Land Surveyors, Basic GIS Coordinates, and Surveying Solved Problems. He led the team that collected, processed, and reported control positions for more than 120 cities around the world for the ortho-rectification of satellite imagery now utilized in a global web utility. He managed the creation of the worldwide T&E sites for two major earth observation satellites that are used for frequent accuracy assessments. He created an imagery-based system of deriving road centerlines that meet the stringent Advanced Driver Assistance specifications and developed a method of forest inventory to help quantify that depleted resource in Armenia. He assisted the supervision of the first GPS survey of the Grand Canyon for the photogrammetric evaluation of sandbar erosion along the Colorado River. He has performed three-dimensional mapping with terrestrial photogrammetry and LiDAR as well as Building Information Modeling for major buildings in Washington, DC. He was a member of the team of authors for the Geospatial Technology Competency Model for the Department of Labor.