Image © Commonwealth of Australia on behalf of ICSM
NSW’s DCS Spatial Services has announced that from November 2021, new web services aligned to GDA2020 are available via its Spatial Collaboration Portal.
This is part of the agency’s continued work towards supporting GDA2020-aligned data and services.
According to Spatial Services, the new web services offer better support for requests in multiple Coordinate Reference Systems (‘multiCRS’), and enable additional flexibility to transform the data on the client-side if required.
Traditionally, Spatial Services web services have been published in WG8 84 / Web Mercator (aligned to GDA94), which has led to challenges with alignment of WGS 84 and GDA2020 data.
New GDA2020 web services are needed to support GDA2020-aligned environments and applications (approximately 1.5m north-east of GDA94).
GDA2020-aligned services and multiCRS functionality are expected to replace existing GDA94-aligned services over time. From November 2021 until at least June 2022, new GDA2020-aligned services will be offered in parallel with existing GDA94-aligned services.
It is recommended that users test the new web service capabilities and GDA2020-alignment in existing and new applications during this period.
After June 2022, existing web service URLs will begin to adopt the demonstrated GDA2020-alignment, and the ‘multiCRS’ and ‘GDA2020’ named services will be marked as deprecated. Users will be able to incorporate GDA2020-aligned services into existing GDA94 environments.
Further information is available via a series of information sheets.
In related news, the NSW GDA2020 and AGRS Implementation Policy is under review for re-publication (November 2021) to reaffirm and clarify support for WGS 84-aligned-to-GDA2020 services.
NSW Spatial Services says that it has concluded, in agreement with the majority of Australians jurisdictions, that:
- Misalignments are inevitable for data based on the low-accuracy static WGS 84
- ‘Sophisticated’ data custodians are better placed to bring WGS 84 data and services into alignment with modern GNSS positioning, rather than relying on end-users to realign new GNSS positions onto web maps now approximately 2 metres out of date.
- From July 2021, any new WGS 84 service deployed by Spatial Services will be aligned to GDA2020, and existing WGS 84-aligned-to-GDA94 services will begin to be deprecated.
- Modernising the alignment of other common third-party WGS 84 data or basemaps currently aligned to GDA94 will be advocated through the national GDA working group.
Further information on this is available via information sheets available on Spatial Services’ GDA2020 web page.
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