Permanent Committee Working Group 3 - First Circular

FIRST CIRCULAR for participation in the Asia and the Pacific Regional

Geodetic Project October 1997

Background to Project

The second meeting of the Permanent Committee on GIS infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific was convened in Sydney, Australia between 29 September and 4 October 1996.

Working Group 3 of the Permanent Committee, chaired in Sydney by Indonesia, proposed to undertake a precise regional Geodetic project in October 1991 utilising available permanent tracking space Geodesy techniques, with a view to establishing an integrated high level geodetic reference network across the region. The Asia and the Pacific Regional Geodetic Project was supported in a resolution by the Permanent Committee, at the Sydney meeting.

Project design

The project will assemble data from each geodetic technique in a data set which will be available for processing and analysis by participating centres. The space techniques employed will be:

VLBI

SLR

DORIS

PRARE

GPS

Each technique ground station will be accurately connected by local survey, to other nearby or collocated technique sites, employing OPS for long lines. Particular attention will be paid to the ground survey ties from antennas and telescopes to national geodetic control points. Local survey geodetic connections are the responsibility of the individual countries. Additional ties to absolute gravity and tide gauge sites would be considered

Non VLBI observational data will be assembled by AUSLIG in Australia, and made available electronically to participants and on CD-ROM. Following processing of individual technique solutions by several centres the results will be compared and combined solutions will be developed to produce a high level integrated solution for the region.

The intention is to use only data from permanent geodetic sites. With this in mind the data sets will comprise the approximate number of sites

• VLBI: 6 sites
• SLR: 16-20 sites
• DORIS 20 sites
• PRARE: 6sites
• GPS: 50 sites

Australia will manage the project in close cooperation with China and Japan.

Progress to date

Initial planning discussions have so far taken place with organisations involved in regional geodesy with the following outcomes:

• APSSG has endorsed the project.
• The Western Pacific Laser Ranging Network (WPLTN) have agreed to arrange the SLR data acquisition for the full month of October 1997 for all regional sites.
• CNES will make DORIS data available and GFZ is being consulted to make PRARE data available.
• The VLBI Asia Pacific telescope (APT) endorsed the Project to include two 24 hour VLBI observation periods during October 1997. The Shanghai Observatory will coordinate data acquisition and delivery of data to the USA.
• Goddard Space Flight Center has given an undertaking to arrange correlation of the VLBI
• GPS data will principally be available from IGS archives and will be supplemented by data from other permanent sites by participating countries.

Each member country of the Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific is now invited to participate in the project, in the supply of data from tracking sites or by undertaking analysis of the composite data sets.

If you arc interested in participating in this regional geodetic network please fax or email your response to the following. Responses received by 24 January will be collated prior to the next Permanent Committee meeting in Bangkok 1-2 February 1997.

John Manning
Manager
Geodesy
AUSLIG

Email: JohnManning@auslig.gov.au
Tel: +61 2 62014352
Fax: +61 2 62014366

PO Box 2
Belconnen
ACT
Australia 2617

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