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| Reference frame | Agency responsible | Description | Sample realizations |
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| International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) | International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems (IERS) | Most accurate reference system available, applicable worldwide. Not tied to a specific tectonic plate, but rather a theoretical definition of the Earth. Commonly used in scientific applications, but less so in practice where a more localized reference frame is often utilized | ITRF94 ITRF96 ITRF97 ITRF2000 ITRF2005 ITRF2008 ITRF2014 ITRF2020 (preliminary status, still unreleased) |
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| North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) | NOAA NGS | Current reference frame for North America has been determined to be nongeocentric by approximately 2.2 m, replaced NAD27 and soon to be replaced by NATRF2022 | NAD83 NAD83 (HARN) NAD83 (CORS96) epoch 2002.00 NAD83 (NSRS) NAD83 (2011) epoch 2010.00 |
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| NATRF2022 (https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/datums/newdatums/index.shtml) | NOAA NGS | Forthcoming reference frame to be tied to the latest IGS reference frame for North America. Separate reference frames are developed for the Pacific, Mariana, and Caribbean plate | This will serve as a dynamic datum based on tectonic models, data submitted to OPUS on marks, and CORSs |
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| European Terrestrial Reference System 89 (ETRS89) | EUREF | Coincident with the ITRS at the epoch 1989.0 and fixed to the stable part of the Eurasian Plate ever since. It is the current reference system for Europe | ETRF94 ETRF96 ETRF97 ETRF2000, which is recommended frame to use for georeferencing regardless of the existence of the subsequent realizations ETRF2005 ETRF2008 ETRF2014 |
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| World Geodetic System of 1984 (WGS84) | U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) | Global datum defined for the GPS system. Many software, surveys, and maps are referenced to WGS84 without specifying the realization utilized. In other cases, software assumes that datums such as NAD83 are equivalent to WGS84; however, this is not valid when accuracies better than 1 m are desired | WGS84 (Doppler) epoch N/A WGS84 (G730) epoch 1994.00 WGS84 (G873) epoch 1997.00 WGS84 (G1150) epoch 2001.00 WGS84 (G1674) epoch 2005.00 WGS84 (G1762) epoch 2005.00 |
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