Abstract
The integrity of the Australian Height Datum (AHD) has remained in some question ever since its adoption in 1971. Indeed, its creators commented that using 30 tide gauges ‘placed a strain’ on the least-squares network adjustment of the —97,230 km of spirit levelling used to realise the AHD. Although the AHD seems to have served Australians well, the question remains — can the AHD be improved? Of course, re-levelling an entire continent the size of Australia is prohibitively expensive, especially in the current climate of economic rationalism. Therefore, a proposal is made to enhance and redefine the AHD using the additional levelling data collected since 1971, mean sea level observations made at new tide gauges, models of the sea-surface topography, nation-wide GPS height networks and a regionally refined gravimetric geoid model. This proposal is balanced against the arguments in favour of retaining the existing AHD, coupled with a geoid model that has been warped to fit the existing AHD using nation-wide GPS networks co-located with AHD benchmarks.
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References
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Featherstone, W.E. (2002). Prospects for the Australian Height Datum and Geoid Model. In: Ádám, J., Schwarz, KP. (eds) Vistas for Geodesy in the New Millennium. International Association of Geodesy Symposia, vol 125. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04709-5_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04709-5_17
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