Geographic Datum of Australia 2020

Geoscience Australia have been developing a framework to modernise the Geographic Datum of Australia. GDA 2020 is set to replace the existing GDA 1994 as of 1 January 2017. The new datum will correct co-ordinates from the 1994 projection by 1.8m northwards. This correction is needed to reflect the continual movement of the Australasian tectonic plate northward as a result of continental drift. The redefinition of the datum will result in higher positional accuracy for spatial receivers such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS).

EPS recently took part in an Australia-wide survey regarding the transition from GDA94 to GDA2020. The results of the survey were distributed following completion and have given our spatial team an indication of how quickly government and other consultancies will uptake the new datum.

The EPS internal spatial data team are skilled at the use of a number of analysis programs and at producing high quality figures. These in-house skills assist across all EPS service streams, particularly in ecology, property valuation and environmental assessment.