From Ocean Teacher Library

Latitude Longitude and Altitude Standards for Marine Data

Contents 1 Background 2 Standards Recommendation 3 Decisions 4 Additional Resources 5 Subsections of this Article 6 Information about this article 7 Contact

Background

In January, 2008, the IOC and JCOMM convened a workshop entitled the IODE/JCOMM Forum on Oceanographic Data Management and Exchange Standards (IOC Workshop Rept. 206), to consider selected principal issues on establishing marine data standards, with the goal of furthering marine data interoperability. In particular the aim of the workshop was to get broad agreement and commitment to adopt a number of standards related to ocean data management and exchange, thereby assembling not only the agreed conditions by which we operate, but in fact enact these agreements in the participants' respective organizations.

Standards Recommendation

Mr. Greg Reed (Australia AODCJF) introduced this item and moderated discussions. He reviewed the various ways latitude, longitude and altitude are represented in standards and so are available for adoption.

Mr. Reed's Overview Presentation

• ISO 6709:1983 Standard representation of latitude, longitude and altitude for geographic point locations - Describes a variable-length format for the representation of latitude, longitude and altitude for use in data interchange. Allows the use of normal sexagesimal notations involving degrees, minutes and seconds as well as various combinations of sexagesimal and decimal notations. Uses numeric characters 0 to 9, graphic characters plus (+), minus (-), full stop (.) and comma (,).

The meeting was informed that:

• Latitude, longitude and altitude/depth may be presented in different fields in electronic form to simplify machine processing
• There is a need to include a coordinate reference system (CRS) in the complete position reference
• There is a CRS proposed for non-spatial coordinates (such as pressure) as the vertical coordinate

Decisions

• It was recommended to adopt the ISO-6709 standard;
• It was agreed that Mr. T. de Bruin (The Netherlands NIOZ) will write the submission doc

Additional Resources

• Coordinate Systems for the Earth Surface
• Wikipedia: ISO 6709
• Coordinate and CoordinateList classes - ISO 6709 compliant - Technical discussion of the storage requirements for ISO-formatted coordinate data versus the older Degrees-Minutes-Seconds family of representations, plus code for conversions. Tables presenting limiting precision of latitude and longitude, when provided as single-precision floating point values, are included.
• A nearly official Coordinate Reference System Registry - Oil industry compilation of hundreds of CRSs worldwide

Subsections of this Article

No subsections available

Information about this article

Short title: Latitude, Longitude, Altitude

Description: none

Expertise level: beginner

Author: Murray.Brown

Approval status: approved

Approved by: Murray.Brown

Last change: 2009-9-1

Subsection of: Marine Data Standards

Contact

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