Rejuvenating Pre-GPS Era Geophysical Surveys Using The National Map

AbstractOld geophysical surveys [pre–Global Positioning System (GPS)] stand as valuable, largely untapped sources of scientific data. If data from these surveys were in a format that had reasonable accuracy, availability, and ease of access, they could be more widely used. In this paper, a pre-GPS s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of surveying engineering 2012-05, Vol.138 (2), p.57-65
Main Authors: Shoberg, Tom, Stoddard, Paul R, Finn, Michael P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Availability
Data sources
Geophysics
Satellite navigation systems
Stands
Stations
Surveying
Technical Papers
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Summary:AbstractOld geophysical surveys [pre–Global Positioning System (GPS)] stand as valuable, largely untapped sources of scientific data. If data from these surveys were in a format that had reasonable accuracy, availability, and ease of access, they could be more widely used. In this paper, a pre-GPS survey is integrated into a modern geographic database, in this case, The National Map (TNM). The ultimate goal is to improve the accuracy, precision, provenance, and ease of access of the geospatial components of archived geophysical data. An unique set of data sources was assembled for this purpose. A comparison of these different data sources indicates that more than 80% of stations were positioned on The National Map within 15 m (horizontal) and 2 m (vertical) of the GPS-derived coordinates for each station within the survey. Although online database coordinate accuracy continues to improve, these results imply that web databases have already matured to a point where it is possible to integrate pre-GPS era survey coordinate data with reasonable positional accuracy.
ISSN:0733-9453
1943-5428
DOI:10.1061/(ASCE)SU.1943-5428.0000068