Spatial reference systems

For locating a point on Earth one can use identifiers like city name or postal address — an approach known as spatial reference systems by identifiers — or use numerical values valid in a given coordinate system like latitudes and longitudes — an approach known as spatial reference systems by coordinates. Each reference system implies approximations like the choice of a figure of the Earth (geoid, ellipsoid, etc.) used as an approximation of Earth shape, the choice of geometric properties (angles, distances, etc.) to be preserved when a map is shown on plane surface, and a lost of precision when coordinates are transformed to systems using a different datum.

A very common misbelief is that one can avoid this complexity by using a single coordinate reference system (typically WGS84) as a universal system for all data. The next chapters will explain why the reality is not so simple. Whether a universal reference system can suit an application needs or not depends on the desired positional accuracy and the kind of calculations to be performed with the data. Unless otherwise specified, Apache SIS aims to represent coordinates on Earth with an accuracy of one centimetre or better. But the accuracy can be altered by various situations:

• Points should be inside the domain of validity as given by ReferenceSystem.getDomainOfValidity().
• Distance measurements in a given map projection are true only is some special locations, named for instance “standards parallels”.
• Positional accuracy is altered after coordinate transformations. The new accuracy is described by CoordinateOperation.getCoordinateOperationAccuracy().
• Finding the most appropriate coordinate transformation parameters require the use of a geodetic dataset like EPSG. Declaring those parameters within the CRS (for example with a TOWGS84 element) is often not sufficient.

The sis-referencing module provides a set of classes implementing different specializations of the ReferenceSystem interface, together with required components. Those implementations store spatial reference system descriptions, together with metadata like their domain of validity. However those objects do not perform any operation on coordinate values. Coordinates conversions or transformations are performed by another family of types, with CoordinateOperation as the root interface. Those types will be discussed in another section.