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NGS OPUS Receives Record Number of Shared Observations

April 16, 2021

Citizen scientists across the U.S. used NOAA’s Online Positioning User Service (OPUS) sharing utility in record numbers this March, adding 1,649 new geodetic control observations between local surveys and the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS), the nation’s coordinate system. Historically, it took more than three years for users to share the first 3,000 observations when the utility was launched 13 years ago. At this rate, users could exceed 3,000 observations in two months. Local users have been encouraged to update observations at traditional passive control stations as part of NGS's GPS on Bench Marks campaign, which will feed geophysical models linking the nation’s current latitude, longitude, and height system to the modernized NSRS, which is coming in a few years. These crowdsourced data are crucial to achieving the NGS mission of modernizing the NSRS.

For more information, contact: Rick Foote