Projected coordinate system

"Easting and northing" redirects here. Not to be confused with East north up.
For broader coverage of this topic, see Spatial reference system.
Layout of a UTM coordinate system.
Geodesy
Fundamentals
Concepts
Technologies
Standards (history)
NGVD 29 Sea Level Datum 1929
OSGB36 Ordnance Survey Great Britain 1936
SK-42 Systema Koordinat 1942 goda
ED50 European Datum 1950
SAD69 South American Datum 1969
GRS 80 Geodetic Reference System 1980
ISO 6709 Geographic point coord. 1983
NAD 83 North American Datum 1983
WGS 84 World Geodetic System 1984
NAVD 88 N. American Vertical Datum 1988
ETRS89 European Terrestrial Ref. Sys. 1989
GCJ-02 Chinese obfuscated datum 2002
Geo URI Internet link to a point 2010

A projected coordinate system – also called a projected coordinate reference system, planar coordinate system, or grid reference system – is a type of spatial reference system that represents locations on Earth using Cartesian coordinates (x, y) on a planar surface created by a particular map projection.[1] Each projected coordinate system, such as "Universal Transverse Mercator WGS 84 Zone 26N," is defined by a choice of map projection (with specific parameters), a choice of geodetic datum to bind the coordinate system to real locations on the earth, an origin point, and a choice of unit of measure.[2] Hundreds of projected coordinate systems have been specified for various purposes in various regions.

When the first standardized coordinate systems were created during the 20th century, such as the Universal Transverse Mercator, State Plane Coordinate System, and British National Grid, they were commonly called grid systems; the term is still common in some domains such as the military that encode coordinates as alphanumeric grid references. However, the term projected coordinate system has recently become predominant to clearly differentiate it from other types of spatial reference system. The term is used in international standards such as the EPSG and ISO 19111 (also published by the Open Geospatial Consortium as Abstract Specification 2), and in most geographic information system software.[3][2]

  1. ^ Chang, Kang-tsung (2016). Introduction to Geographic Information Systems (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-259-92964-9.
  2. ^ a b "OGC Abstract Specification Topic 2: Referencing by coordinates Corrigendum". Open Geospatial Consortium. Retrieved 2018-12-25.
  3. ^ "Using the EPSG geodetic parameter dataset, Guidance Note 7-1". EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset. Geomatic Solutions. Retrieved 15 December 2021.