Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system

Geodesy
Fundamentals
  • Geodesy
  • Geodynamics
  • Geomatics
  • History
Concepts
  • Geographical distance
  • Geoid
  • Figure of the Earth (radius and circumference)
  • Geodetic coordinates
  • Geodetic datum
  • Geodesic
  • Horizontal position representation
  • Latitude / Longitude
  • Map projection
  • Reference ellipsoid
  • Satellite geodesy
  • Spatial reference system
  • Spatial relations
  • Vertical positions
Technologies
Standards (history)
NGVD 29 Sea Level Datum 1929
OSGB36 Ordnance Survey Great Britain 1936
SK-42 Systema Koordinat 1942 goda
ED50 European Datum 1950
SAD69 South American Datum 1969
GRS 80 Geodetic Reference System 1980
ISO 6709 Geographic point coord. 1983
NAD 83 North American Datum 1983
WGS 84 World Geodetic System 1984
NAVD 88 N. American Vertical Datum 1988
ETRS89 European Terrestrial Ref. Sys. 1989
GCJ-02 Chinese obfuscated datum 2002
Geo URI Internet link to a point 2010
  • International Terrestrial Reference System
  • Spatial Reference System Identifier (SRID)

The Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) is a projected coordinate system based on the transverse Mercator map projection of the Earth spheroid. Its parameters vary by nation or region or mapping system.

It assigns plane coordinates to locations on the surface of the Earth. Like the geographic coordinate system (latitude and longitude), it is a horizontal position representation, which means it ignores altitude and treats the earth surface as an oblate ellipsoid. However, it differs from latitude/longitude in that it divides earth into 60 zones and projects each to the plane as a basis for its coordinates. Specifying a location means specifying the zone and the x, y coordinate in that plane.

Most zones in UTM span 6 degrees of longitude, and each has a designated central meridian. The scale factor at the central meridian is specified to be 0.9996 of true scale for most UTM systems in use.[1][2]

  1. ^ "Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM)". PROJ coordinate transformation software library.
  2. ^ Snyder, John P. (1987). Map projections: A working manual. U.S. Government Printing Office.
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