CE 3500 Chapter : Datums Essay
Jonathan Lambes
CE 3500, sec. 1
Professor Mugnier
Nov. 7th 2012
The three countries I have chosen to compare and contrast are the Republic
of Albania, the Federative Republic of Brazil, and the Republic of South Africa. All
three countries came to attain a geodetic coordinate system in vastly different ways.
One through the pressure of neighboring countries, another through it’s own
internal motivation, the other through the expansion of other scientific research.
The first recorded survey dealing with the Republic of Albania was not
actually of the country of Albania, but of a neighboring country. Triangulation done
by the Austro-Hungarian’s (2nd Military Triangulation 1806-1869) used the Vienna
University as the origin of their datum; their works included the region of Albania.
The Italian Institute Instituto Geografico Militaire (IGM) first measured a baseline in
their city of Lecce in 1872 and observed a connection with Albania’s western isle of
Sazan. The Triangulation network that was established by the Military Geographic
Institute (MGI) of Vienna’s surveys were for the construction of geodetic mapping of
a region known as the Balkans. The MGI also observed a first order triangulation net
in the Adriatic region the included an Albanian baseline in the early 1900’s. While
the Austro-Hungarians and others were mapping outside of Albania’s borders using
a polyhedric projection, the Albanian Republic was mapping its’ territories based on
an ellipsoidal Bonne projection. Some date the Bonne projection origin in 1918, and
others in 1932; it’s located on the Tirane-Durres Highway in the Laprake
neighborhood of Tirane. Which today is currently centered in the median of a traffic
circle on the Tirane-Durres highway. In 1946 the Yugoslav first order net was tied
with the first order net of Albania. In 1955 the specialist of Military Topographic
Group of Albania performed a reconstruction of the IGM net to the requested
1:25000 scale. The network was then transformed from the IGM system into the
1942 coordinate system based on the Krassovsky ellipsoid. From 1970-1985 the
Albanian net was designed, rebuilt, measured and calculated by the Military
Topographic Institute of Albania, and termed the ALB86 System. In 1994 the U.S.
Department of Defense established the WGS84 Datum in cooperation with MTI
personnel. The coordinate system adopted after 1994 was the UTM Zone 34. This
coordinate reference system has transformation parameters for Albania published
by TR8350.2.
Vicente Pinzon first explored the Northern coast of Brazil in 1500. The
Imperial Commission of Brazil was formed in 1825 and was the first official
mapping agency of the country. In the late 19th century the Geological Commission
of Sao Paulo produced the first 1:100000 scale map of the nation. In 1913 and 1914
terrestrial photogrammetry was first used in Brazil. In 1922 the first map using
aerial photogrammetric procedures was published (Topographic Mapping of the
Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, M.A. Larsgaard. 1984). According to the TM
5-248. Foreign Maps, in 1925 the Brazilian government adopted the Hayford
International ellipsoid of 1909. Some of the major geodetic datum’s found in Brazil
were the Aratu Datum, Corregro Allegre Datum of 1949, Provisional South American
Datum of 1956, South American Datum of 1969, SIRGAS and WGS84. The original
Document Summary
The three countries i have chosen to compare and contrast are the republic of albania, the federative republic of brazil, and the republic of south africa. All three countries came to attain a geodetic coordinate system in vastly different ways. One through the pressure of neighboring countries, another through it"s own internal motivation, the other through the expansion of other scientific research. The first recorded survey dealing with the republic of albania was not. University as the origin of their datum; their works included the region of albania. The italian institute instituto geografico militaire (igm) first measured a baseline in. The triangulation network that was established by the military geographic actually of the country of albania, but of a neighboring country. Triangulation done by the austro-hungarian"s (2nd military triangulation 1806-1869) used the vienna their city of lecce in 1872 and observed a connection with albania"s western isle of.
