Share your thoughts on the US National Grid
One of the conversations I have been having recently with a number of individuals is in regards to the US National Grid. The US National Grid stems from a recommendation from the Department of Homeland Security for the use of a nationally defined coordinate system for all spatial referencing, mapping, and reporting. The US National Grid uses the Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system and a reference system based on the Military Grid Reference System. While we all like the concept of greater interoperability, questions always arise as to how well these types of standardization efforts work. I would very much like to hear your thoughts on the USNG and whether your agency or institution will adopt it.
For more information on USNG please look at http://www.fgdc.gov/usng as well as the great work being done by Talbot Brooks et al at Delta State University http://mississippi.deltastate.edu/
Thanks for your comments.
Comments
National Grid for Interoperability
I agree, the US National Grid is worth looking at when considering a grid reference system for interoperability. This is the only grid that is continuous and seamless across the country.
In most cases, Latitude and Longitude or the Public Land Survey System (Township, Section and Range) are used to provide location information. Each of these locating methods provides opportunity for error. Latitude and Longitude may be presented in degrees, minutes, or seconds or decimal degrees. The information is not easily converted from one format to the other in the field.
The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) while easy to use, is not a seamless system that exists in all fifty states. Most of the States on the East Coast are not mapped in the PLSS. It is usually, but not always a consistently measured grid.
Use of the National Grid would eliminate these problems. Once trained in the system, responders would be able to locate themselves or an incident anywhere in the country and be able to give meaningful location information to anyone else familiar with the grid system.
An example of use of the USNG comes from SAR. Since the USNG is a metric based grid, it would be easy to lay out a search grid, scaled down to meters in size.
Here is a link to an excellent explanatory poster from Skagit County GIS in WA. http://www.fgdc.gov/usng/educational-resources/Skagit%20County%20USNG%20...
It is easy to get started, if you have a hand held GPS device, check it. It probably includes the US National Grid, or the Military Grid Reference System. The values are the same.
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