The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) says it is progressing with upgrading the Address Register to the new Geocentric Datum of Australia, GDA2020.
The agency says the transition to GDA2020 is “important for the work of the ABS, ensuring that our spatial information is accurate, up-to-date, and compatible with the latest global geospatial reference frames”.
The ABS Address Register is an up-to-date list of all known physical addresses within Australia, and contains key information:
- address use (e.g. residential, commercial, etc.)
- latitude and longitude ‘geocode’
- dwelling structure for residential addresses (e.g. separate house, semi-detached, etc)
The November Address Register Common Frame will be the first frame produced using GDA2020.
The Common Frame is a “point-in-time comprehensive snapshot” of physical addresses and is used for “producing Household Survey and Census frames, supporting data linkage and enabling fine-level geospatial analysis”.
Australian government agencies, businesses and pretty much everyone else who uses spatial data, is making the changeover to GDA2020. Since the previous GDA was released in 1994, the Australian continent has shifted by around 1.8 metres.
