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WSRS2022 Task�Force Update

Richard Kleinmann & Howard Veregin

Wisconsin Land Information Association Annual Conference, Feb. 2022

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Goodbye NAD 83!

It’s been good knowin’ you

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Location…

…depends on time

What makes the new system complicated is that it will be dynamic.

Locations – both horizontal and vertical – will change over time.

Why? Because the crust of the earth is not stable (plate tectonics).

A change in time implies a movement in location, and the amount and direction of movement depends what plate you are on and where you are on the plate.

The new reference frame models MOST of this movement using an “Euler Pole” model of rotation. For North America, we are moving primarily in a counter-clockwise direction around an Euler Pole in the vicinity of the Galapagos Islands. In WI we are moving 2-3 centimeters per year, about ½ the rate your fingernails grow.

There is also an intra-frame distortion model (IFDM) that accounts for residual within-plate distortions not captured by the plate rotation model.

Since location explicitly depends on time, you will need a time stamp (called an epoch) to get a precise location.

There will also be different kinds of coordinates:

A Survey Epoch Coordinate (SEC) marks the location of a point on the date when it was surveyed.

A Reference Epoch Coordinate (REC) is a coordinate corresponding to one of the official reference epochs NGS will define, like 2022.0.

You have to use coordinates of the same epoch to make a meaningful line or polygon.

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We’re sorry…

…but your flight has been delayed

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NGS announced the initial delay in June 2020. The announcement stated that “it is not out of the question to consider a complete roll-out of the modernized NSRS to be somewhere in the 2024–2025 timeframe.”

In May, 2021, a further delay was announced. NGS stated that it did not know when modernization will be complete, but it is expected to be sometime “after 2025.”

This means NATRF2022 will not be available until after 2025.

But, some parts of the rollout are going ahead as planned, sort of:

SPCS (State Plane Coordinate System) deadlines did not change. This can be a bit confusing. NGS uses the term “SPCS” to refer to up to three separate statewide projection systems, including the 3-zone SPCS you are probably familiar with. To NGS, SPCS also includes a statewide single-zone projection as well as a statewide multi-zone system.

NGS is designing the single-zone projection for Wisconsin. In September, 2020, WSRS2022 met the deadline to submit a design for a multi-zone system to replace WISCRS. However, we will not be able to use the new system until after 2025 when NATRF2022 is released.

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Say so long to the Survey Foot

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This means that “any data derived from or published as a result of surveying, mapping, or any other activity within the U.S. that is expressed in terms of feet should only be based on the definition of one foot being equal to 0.3048 meter (exactly).”

The U.S. survey foot will not be supported by NGS in the modernized NSRS, including for SPCS2022, elevations, or any other components of the system.

But the U.S. survey foot will be maintained in NGS products and services in legacy applications, for example the computation of coordinates for the State Plane Coordinate System of 1983.

NGS has stated that the preferred term for the International Foot is simply the “foot” – although when needed to avoid confusion with the U.S. Survey Foot, use of the term “international foot” is an acceptable synonym for “foot.”

The difference between the US Survey Foot and the International Foot is a few parts per million.

The International foot is .3048 meters in length. The US Survey foot is .304 800 609 601 meters.

Many GIS users will probably not notice a difference – a fact that actually causes some concern over whether metadata will be correct. If the results are only marginally different, data creators may not enter the correct metadata for datasets they create.

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GPS on BM

Status

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GPS on BM is probably more of a surveyor thing than a GIS thing, at least as far as the field work goes.

BUT land records people and regulatory agencies will be interested in the benefits of this program.

Ultimately the accuracy of the coordinates representing PLSS monuments -- that much of the parcel mapping in the state is based on -- and the elevation of benchmarks that floodplain zoning is based on -- will be critical to your programs as they transition to the new datums.

GPS on BM is designed to help improve the quality of NGS models. This means a better local fit to movement vectors, which translates into more accurate coordinates. Recall that Reference Epoch Coordinates are computed based on Euler Pole rotations and Intra-Frame velocities, for both horizontal and vertical changes. GPS on BM data helps make those computations more accurate.

In Wisconsin the GPS on BM campaign is being coordinated by the Wisconsin DOT under the “GNSS Observation on Passive Stations Project.” There are many non-DOT partners are involved in the project.

NGS has divided the entire nation into a series of 10-km and 2-km hexagons, with the goal of getting at least one observation per hexagon. Since the start of 2021, Wisconsin has led the nation in the number of 10-km priority hexagons completed, and is second in the nation behind Minnesota in the number of 2-km hexagons.

You can help prepare for NSRS modernization by participating in GPS on BM. Your efforts will support improving the transformation tool to enable conversions to the new 2022 datums, help maintain the passive control network, and ensure new coordinates are calculated for all observed marks.

Because of the “time dependency” of the new system, passive control stations that do not have a GPS observation completed in the preceding 10 years may have a larger “error estimate” associated with the coordinates and elevations – which may not support your accuracy needs.

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WSRS2022 Focus Groups

Technical (Vonderohe, Schaefer)

Education/Outreach (Hughes)

Implementation/Adoption �(Erickson, Rihn)

Software/Hardware �(Kennedy, Koutnik, Elza)

Legislative (Damkot)

Funding (Merry)

What is WSRS2022?

A coalition of geospatial and surveying professionals in Wisconsin, including federal, state, regional, county and local governments, and agencies, corporations and associations involved in the production and utilization of spatial data.

The mission of WSRS2022 is to help ensure successful implementation of the new reference systems across the state.

Will address the technical, educational, communication, legislative and software aspects required to respond to NGS plans to better position Wisconsin to implement the new reference systems.

Formed in January 2019, support from WSLS.

We have six Focus Groups, each with leads, but also numerous members (who we do not list here).

Technical Focus Group

This is the group that has been most involved so far. Focus on designing a 2022 version of WISCRS that NGS would agree to include in its ecosystem (called WIGGS as we will see). Also focusing on the three-zone layer, documentation, distortion maps, coordinate conversion software, and other topics.

�Leads: Glen Schaefer (retired); Al Vonderohe (retired)

Legislative Focus Group

�Goals: Define the impacts of the new reference systems on state and local legislation and ordinances.

Make specific recommendations for updating legislation and ordinances, and da timeline to fit legislative calendars.

Lead: Eric Damkot (WLIA)

Education and Outreach Focus Group�Goals: Help “spread the word” and educate the community about the new reference systems and their implications for geospatial data and workflows.

Includes education of software vendors and developers, surveyors, utilities, GIS practitioners, educators, and students.

Lead: Corey Hughes (WCSA)

Software/Hardware Focus Group�Goals: Develop plans to incorporate the new reference systems into hardware and software in a way that serves the needs of the state’s users.

Initiate registration of new/modified Wisconsin coordinate systems with EPSG.

Develop transformation software, including NCAT or a Wisconsin-specific extension to NCAT.

Leads: Mike Koutnik (retired); James Kennedy (USGS); Hayden Elza (SCO)

Implementation and Adoption Focus Group�Goals: Identify implementation and adoption implications of the new reference systems, including best practices for transforming current data.

Leads: Jeremiah Erickson (LION); Nina Rihn (WI DNR)

Funding Focus Group�Goals: Investigate the funding implications of NGS’s modernization plans and identify funding opportunities for Wisconsin partners.

Lead: Rob Merry (SEWRPC)

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WSRS2022 Achievements

Summary of history and main achievements of WSRS2002 so far … relate mainly to development of a Low Distortion Projection (LDP) design that ties into the NGS ecosystem. Again, this is WIGGS. This turned out to be a bit of a struggle.

First met as “Discovery Team” in summer 2018 to respond to NGS’s Federal Register Notice about SPCS2022 – and its policies and procedures defining the projection systems in use for SPCS2022. Again, note that according to NGS, SPCS does NOT just refer to the 3-zone system you are familiar with when we say “SPCS” but also a statewide zone and other multi-zone layers.

The “problem” for us was that NGS developed these policies from scratch, not recognizing that some states, like WI, had been using LDPs for decades. Therefore, WISCRS would have to be significantly modified to meet NGS policies. Specifically, WISCRS violated NGS LDP policies for

zone size
Zone parameters (false northings, scale factors, and others)

Also we objected to the idea that we could not have BOTH a 59-zone LDP and a 3-zone “traditional” SPCS.

The Discovery Team drafted a response to that Notice in 2018, arguing our case. This began a long back-and-forth dialog with NGS via email, in person and phone, after the Task Force was formally convened in 2019.

In the summer of 2019 we reiterated our requests from the previous year and got a negative response. However, we persevered and eventually reached a compromise in Jan 2020 in which we would be allowed to use our LDP parameters, but we would not get a three-zone layer.

We submitted our proposal to NGS in March 2020, following this compromise. This was followed up with our submission of the LDP design in September 2020. Still waiting on official approval of this design, although apparently it’s coming.

Alan Vonderohe and Glen Schaefer deserve most of the credit for the LDP design.

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WIGGS

A new planet is born

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Pandemic Activities

doldrums, n. /‘dōl-drəmz / The combined effect of a pandemic and a delay in the NGS 2022 rollout

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Technical Focus Group

Documentation

Heat Maps

Three-Zone Layer

Coordinate Converter

Current activities of the Tech FG

Documentation of the process to create the WIGGS zones. Alan and Glen currently working on this. Will be published online.

Heat Maps. These maps will show linear distortion for each of the 59 WIGGS zones, based on computations Alan will perform. These maps will be useful to visually show where distortion varies over the zone. Depends on distance from standard parallels/central meridian, as well as elevation.

Three-zone layer. We are trying to decide if users will want a three-zone layer, an updated 2022 version of the 3-zone SPCS most users are familiar with. If so, we will need to design the layer so that its distortion characteristics compete favorably with the single-zone layer NGS is developing.

The tech FG is working with the Software/Hardware Group to develop a WI-specific coordinate conversion tool, since NGS NCAT Tool will not be able to be used to convert old WISCRS coordinates, or a new three-zone layer.

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Other Focus�Group Activities

Based on our Rediscovery Meeting in the fall we have renewed efforts on all FGs:

Legislative Focus Group:

Prep legislation amendments by end of 2022 to be ready for legislative session

Focus on state legislation first. Local effort will be more of an educational one.

Implementation/Adoption and Education Focus Groups:

Int’l foot issue – let the community know about this, and come up with action items/best practices for metadata.

Workflows needed to convert different types of data sets -- vertical, orthos, parcels, floodplain, etc.

Make sure metadata is up-to-date for existing datasets, and inventory data.

Immediate things:

Flyer, brochure or web blog with links on the int’l foot. (Legis FG to assist)
Communication about importance of making sure metadata is ready.

Software/Hardware Focus Group:

WI-specific conversion software to be built using NGS NCAT API. Need to focus some attention on user needs/requirements.

Work with Tech FG on this.

Funding Focus Group:

Possible to leverage funding to allow migrating the 911 data to the new datum.

Many questions: How willing are the Counties going to be to convert data, due to dollars and budget?

Funds at UW to help train data conversion tools and applications use?

Is there any funding available from FEMA floodplain mapping for conversion?

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Volunteers Needed

www.sco.wisc.edu/community/wsrs2022

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Contact us

Richard Kleinmann

KleinmannR@AyresAssociates.com

Howard Veregin

veregin@wisc.edu

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Coordinate conversion tool and three-zone layer needs.

Take our Surveys

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What do you need from the WSRS2022 Task Force?