Geodesy and Geodynamics (Jan 2022)
Uzbekistan's coordinate system transformation from CS42 to WGS84 using distortion grid model
Abstract
Currently, a non-geocentric geodetic coordinate system introduced in 1942 (CS42), based on the Krasovsky ellipsoid and the Baltic system of normal heights introduced in 1977, is used for geodetic works in the Republic of Uzbekistan. The development of the GNSS network proposes a task of transition to a new geocentric system based on the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) ellipsoid. Many software products adopt 3- or 7-parameter conversions, which can cause errors up to several meters and are not suitable for many applications. In this case, local transformations using a grid of differences between observation points with known coordinates in both datums would give the best accuracy. In this paper, we discuss various interpolation methods (Kriging, Minimum Curvature, Inverse Distance to a Power and Radial Basis Function) to solve the distortion modeling between CS42 and WGS84 systems for national datum improvement. The results show that the distortion models share a common tendency for all interpolation methods: the maximum horizontal displacements are concentrated along the West Tien Shan lineament, which is the boundary of the relief lowering. The discrepancies between the grid-based (calculated) and GPS-measured coordinates are evaluated. Statistical and spatial analysis has confirmed that for the coordinate transformation from CS42 to WGS84 and vice versa, grid-based transformation with Radial Basis Function interpolation has a high accuracy transformation. Analysis of the available data across the eastern part of the country shows that some positional distortions existed between the CS42 and WGS84 datums. For the best RBF method, the magnitude of these distortions is about 0.019–0.755 m with a standard deviation of 0.015 m.
