DETERMINATION OF LOCAL QUASI-GEOID IN CENTRAL ANATOLIA FOR ENGINEERING AND GIS PURPOSES

Abstract

Requirement for a high resolution geoid model has increased substantially during the last few decades especially with the advent of Global Positioning System (GPS). Many countries across the world have already developed their own geoidal model which serve as the means of deriving orthometric heights from GNSS observations. On the other hand, the need for transformation of the ellipsoidal heights derived from GNSS observations to the physical orthometric heights has forced geodesists to determine the high precision local geoid heights. Besides, because orthometric heights are used in engineering and GIS applications, local quasi-geoid determination studies have become especially important. As it is well known, Turkey is situated on a tectonically very active region and earthquakes occurring in different times cause deformations in heights of levelling points of Turkish National Vertical Network. On the other hand, National Mapping Agency of Turkey (GDM: General Directorate of Mapping) which is responsible for the establishment and maintenance of national geodetic networks compute geoid models for whole Turkey and release them for public use in different periods. These GDM-computed geoid models are called “hybrid geoid” models. Hybrid geoid models are computed with the combination of gravimetric geoid models and geoid heights on the GPS_levelling points. And it is also known that the absolute accuracies of these geoid models are nearly at the 10 cm level or even worse. But, the requested accuracy is about better than 5 cm. Hence, in order to prove that the required accuracy levels can be achieved, A local gravimertric and quasi-geoid determination project using the resources of Selcuk University was initiated. Project area has been planned to cover a limited part of Central Anatolia including Konya. Necessary basic data (gravity, levelling etc.) for this Project have been obtained in the field by performing observations/measurements. Some other necessary data such as absolute gravity values have been obtained from GDM. And as the next phase, high accuracy (better than 5 cm) local gravimetric and quasi-geoid models will be computed for the limited part of Central Anatolia using the above mentioned data. In order to be able to reach this goal suitable geoid computations softwares must be used. In this project, we will use DFHRS software developed by the Karlsruhe Applied Sciences. The principle of the DFHRS software is based on the parametric model of N(φ, λ, h) as a continuos polynomial height reference surface (HRS). Following the quasi-geoid computation, when we reach the requested accuracy level, namely better than 5 cm, then it will have been shown that the GNSS based determination of orthometric heights (H) is much faster, easier to handle and much more economic, in comparison to classical geodetic levelling. On the other hand, it is possible to obtain a gravimetric geoid better than 10 cm accuracy by using global models and gravity data with 1-2 mGal accuracy. And you can only check such geoid only with GNSS/Levelling heights which provide better accuracies. Thus, according to the results to be obtained from this Project, a more comprehensive project will be launched and the project area will be expanded. Thus, additional gravity, levelling and GNSS measurements will be carried out in the new Project area for the determination of a high accuracy regional gravimetric geoid. Consequently, in this paper, all works carried out within the framework of this project and the reached preliminary results will be presented.