GNSS is Central to Modernization of NSRS

Right now, the National Geodetic Survey (NGS), part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is undergoing a massive project that will have profound impacts on the surveying industry within the United States. For the first time since the late 1980s, the organization is working to modernize the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS), work that has, in some forms, been happening for decades but has really ramped up more recently. Now, they are starting to approach the end of this work, which is expected to be completed within the next couple of years. GNSS is really at the heart of this entire effort, as satellites have transformed the way surveying can be done,

Geo Week News has been highlighting some of the work involved with this massive project, particularly through the lens of work being done by researchers in the Pacific Northwest, and specifically the Geospatial Center for the Arctic and Pacific (GCAP). They previously looked at the modernization efforts from a high level, and more specifically about how this work will affect the world of bathymetric surveying.

Today, we’re going to look at the modernization effort from another more specific lens, this time around GNSS. As we discussed in the first article within this series, GNSS is really at the heart of this entire effort, as satellites have transformed the way surveying can be done, a process that has only continued to grow as satellite launches become more accessible and more data is available. For this section, we spoke with Brian Weaver, an assistant professor and senior researcher with Oregon State University, Chase Simpson, a senior instructor of geomatics at Oregon State University, and Dan Gillins, Chief of Spatial Reference Systems Divisions with NGS.

Before getting into the specific work being done by the GCAP team around GNSS, it’s worth taking a brief look at the extent to which GNSS has altered surveying. In our first article from this series, NGS’s Galen Scott told Geo Week News that, shortly after the modernization effort in the 1980s is when GPS really started to become a viable, publicly available option for surveyors, and it was immediately clear that the industry would need to adjust. In some ways, this current modernization effort started at that point. Quite simply, the data from GNSS was noticeably more accurate than previous datums, and NGS has been trying to catch up since.

Gillins told Geo Week News, “GNSS has been such a disruptive technology. In my opinion, it’s changed just about everything we do at NGS.” Weaver backed that up, calling GNSS “the key to everything” in relation to modern surveying.

As we’ve outlined in some previous articles in this series, GCAP was given a series of eight “tasks” relating to this modernization effort to help achieve the objectives of a grant they received from NGS. Unsurprisingly given the importance of GNSS to the overall modernization undertaking, half of those tasks in some way fall under this umbrella. One of the big tasks, for which Weaver serves as the lead, was around the OPUS Projects, a service provided by NGS.

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