Status and Plans of the National
Geodetic Survey’s Gravity Database Update
Daniel
R. Roman and Yan Ming Wang
October
13-14, 2005 Austin, Texas
1)This was a joint NOAA-NRL-NASA effort designed to satisfy a number of
institutional needs.
2) I’d like to thank my co-authors and their support staffs for all
their hard work on this.
3) What I’m covering today represents the results from the first of
three studies to be covered in the next few years. This is still a work in
progress and will serve as an update on our progress.
4) It has been funded by the National Ocean Service’s Partnership
Proposal program in an effort to refine the gravimetric geoid model in
littoral regions and to better understand the nature of the errors associated
with the North American Vertical Datum of 1988.
5) NAVD 88 is the official U.S. vertical datum from which all heights on
topographic charts are measured.
6) Meter-level biases and trends are thought to exist within NAVD 88 –
bringing into question its utility for emergency and coastal management.
