AUSPOS, Geoscience Australia’s openly available online GPS processing service, has been upgraded to Version 3.1.
Geoscience Australia has announced the release of version 3.1 of AUSPOS, marking the first major upgrade since version 3.0 became available in 2024.
AUSPOS provides users such as surveyors, as well as researchers and industry and government professionals, with a practical way to obtain precise positioning aligned to the Australian national datum GDA2020 and to the international reference frame.
According to Geoscience Australia GNNS Team Leader, Salim Masoumi, the biggest change in version 3.1 was moving the core GNSS processing software from Bernese v5.2 to Bernese v5.4. Bernese refers to high-precision, multi-GNSS post-processing software developed by the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern.
“But we also took the opportunity to update a range of the scientific models and processing strategies used by AUSPOS, including ocean tidal loading, troposphere modelling, polar motion, orbit modelling and the treatment of signal biases,” said Masoumi.
“We also upgraded the underlying operating environment and security of the cloud platform.”
The upgrade to the new release required extensive testing.
“For example, we re-processed around 2,300 AUSPOS jobs from the National GNSS Campaign Archive and found that more than 92% produced co-ordinate differences between v3.0 and v3.1 that were within their reported 95% confidence-level uncertainties,” said Masoumi. “We also tested thousands of jobs submitted by members of the public.”
“So, there has been a lot of scientific analysis, software development, testing and operational work behind what users ultimately experience as a straightforward online service.”
A vital behind-the-scenes service
According Masoumi, AUSPOS processes more than 200,000 ‘jobs’ per year from around the world, with around 70% of them from Australian users.
“AUSPOS provides precise positioning to a diverse international user community and supports surveying, cadastral activities, geodetic infrastructure and geophysical research, as well as access to the global reference frame,” said Masoumi.
“Within Australia it also has an important role that users may not necessarily see,” he added.
“States and territories use AUSPOS as part of the quality-control and assessment of GNSS information submitted to the National GNSS Campaign Archive. AUSPOS-derived co-ordinates and their uncertainty information then contribute to the national least-squares adjustment used to determine consistent GDA2020 co-ordinates across Australian jurisdictions.”
Masoumi says Geoscience Australia is already working on further enhancements for future AUSPOS releases.
“I wouldn’t want to get ahead of the team by promising features before they’re ready, but our focus is on continuously improving the service and keeping the underlying scientific models, processing approaches and technology current,” he said.
“That’s really important for a service that people depend on for precise positioning.”
Related reading:
AUSPOS 3.0 found to enhance accuracy and reliability
AUSPOS 3.0 goes live, aligned with ITRF2020
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