> This is interesting--I'll have to learn about it. I'm skimming > through the Wikipedia article, and some of the sites to which it links, > right now. Do you have any specific docs that I should read? > > Is the rest of the world doing something substantially similar, > or is this really just a US-only thing?
It is derived from a military system used by US and NATO called MGRS (Military Grid Reference System). When using NAD83 datum (the default) they are the same. I don't know if anyone else is using it. Most of the firefighters I have talked to say they are not using it yet but then they also seldom use latlon either. As cellphones and E911 support improve I think using coordinates will become very common. It is still pretty new in dispatch centers. I've been working with street addresses and they are a real mess. I'd much rather have firefighters sent to my geoaddress than die because they get dispatched to the same street address in the wrong county. http://www.911dispatch.com/2010/10/county-lines-cellular-complicate-fire-response/ The Wikipedia pages are a good start and contain references. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_grid_reference_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNG I suppose advocating for this opens the door to supporting any and all reference systems, not really a bad thing as long as the person(s) who want their reference system supported are willing to add the code... it does bring up the user interface issue though. > -rozzin. Brian Wilson Corvallis Oregon _______________________________________________ This message is sent to you from [email protected] mailing list. Visit http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/foss-gps to manage your subscription For more information, check http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS-GPS
