AUSPOS processing system in demand

9 November 2013

Satellite orbiting the earth

An artist's impression of a GPS
satellite in orbit. Image courtesy
of NASA.

A significant increase in demand for Geoscience Australia's Global Position System processing service, AUSPOS from North American users during the recent shutdown of the United States government has continued well beyond the political settlement in the United States.

AUSPOS is a service that allows users to submit logged GPS data to Geoscience Australia's website where it is processed with respect to a global GPS tracking network providing coordinates with centimetre or better accuracy. AUSPOS is used extensively by the Australian geospatial, mining and construction industries to establish precise survey control for their projects. It is widely used also in defence and research applications around the world.

During the United States shut down, around half of the more than 5500 GPS data sets processed with the aid of AUSPOS were from institutions and individuals based in the United States. Since that time almost one-third of the 3200 processing requests have come from North America.

The demand for the AUSPOS processing system follows a recent review of freely available GPS processing systems outside the United States by the online publication, GPS World which rated AUSPOS as the best free online system.

The survey of seven systems operated by research organisations and universities worldwide evaluated a total of 32 files submitted to each of the processing services and compared the results to similar services provided by other international agencies, including the United States National Geodetic Survey's Online Positioning User Service, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Natural Resources Canada. AUSPOS consistently returned results with greater precision.