What Is a Geodetic System?

The World Geodetic System (WGS) refers to the four world geodetic systems established by the United States Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) since 1960: WGS60, WGS66, WGS72, and WGS84.

The World Geodetic System (WGS) refers to the collective name of the four World Geodetic Systems (WGS60, WGS66, WGS72, and WGS84) established by the United States Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) since 1960.

The main tasks of establishing a World Geodetic System (WGS) are as follows:

1. Study the shape of the moon and the planets of the solar system and their gravitational fields.

2. Establish and maintain national and global astronomical and geodetic level control networks and precision level networks and marine geodetic control networks with a high-tech level in order to meet

3. The needs of national economy and national defense construction.

4. Research on instruments and methods for obtaining high-precision measurement results.

5. Study the mathematical transformation of the projection of the earth's surface to an ellipsoid or plane and related geodetic calculations.

6. Investigate the theory and methods of mathematical processing of large-scale, high-precision and multi-category terrestrial networks, space networks and their associated networks, and the establishment and application of measurement databases.

Compared with WGS60, WGS66, and WGS72, WGS84 is the most accurate geodetic reference frame. It is determined globally using the latest and most recent geodetic data. WGS84 provides accurate reference frame, earth gravity field model, normal gravity formula, geoid and the conversion parameters of 105 local (and regional) geodetic datums including all continents and major marine islands. ^[1]