Course Description

The course begins with an introduction to the Earth's shape, the ellipsoid, the geoid, coordinate systems, coordinate reference systems and datums. The rest of the material focuses on the process of representing coordinated points on the ellipsoid onto a flat surface (a map). The three developable surfaces (cylindrical, conical and plane) and the errors introduced in area shape and scale are discussed. The importance of choosing a suitable map projection for a given region and basic computations are studied as well.