The AFREF project : background, rationale and progress
Wonnacott, Richard
A uniform co-ordinate reference system is fundamental to any project, application, service or product that requires some form of geo-referencing. Most countries in the world have established such reference systems that are used for national surveying, mapping, photogrammetry, remote sensing, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), development programs, and hazard mitigation (earthquake studies, fault motion, volcano monitoring, severe storms, etc). Many of these national co-ordinate systems are based on reference figures of the Earth which are somewhat outdated and, when based on a local origin or datum point, are restricted to a particular country, making cross-border or regional mapping, development, and planning projects very difficult indeed. In some instances, more than one datum has been used within a country. When using modern positioning technology such as GPS, technical understanding and careful mathematical manipulation is required to relate GPS derived coordinates to the national co-ordinate system upon which national surveying and mapping products and services are based. Many countries are therefore updating these national reference systems to be compatible with the global reference system and the GPS reference system in particular. On a continental scale, projects to unify the reference frames of the countries of Europe (EUREF), South America (SIRGAS) and North America have met with considerable success. The African Reference Frame project, AFREF, has the primary objective of defining a continental reference system for Africa to be fully consistent and homogeneous with the global reference frame of the ITRF. This paper describes the background, rationale and progress made with AFREF since 2000.
Event: 5th FIG Regional Conference for Africa : Promoting Land Administration and Good Governance
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