Heard Island Coast GIS Dataset

Full description

A coastline of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, created in the AMBIS (Australian Maritime Boundaries Information System) by Geoscience Australia (previously AUSLIG).

Lineage

Progress Code: completed

Statement: In 1996 as part of the Australian Maritime Boundaries Information System (AMBIS) the coastline of Heard and McDonald Islands were captured by digitising the information from the satellite image map produced by Geoscience Australia (previously AUSLIG) for the AAD in 1991 (reference no.GIU 91/045). The following information is from that satellite image map: Projection: Transverse Mercatior Grid: UTM Grid Zone43 Horizontal datum: WGS84 Image: Multispectral Space Image SPOT 1 acquired 9 Sept 1988 SPOT 2 acquired 31 March 1991 GRS Coordinates K245 J458. On this map where no imagery was available 1980 aerial photography was used for some islands and rocks around Heard Island and the McDonald Island. To capture the coastline a database was created using Geovision software on a UNIX workstation with a 9100 CalComp digitiser table attached. The database was defined as lat/long coordinates using WGS84. The database was opened and the graphic display coordinate system was changed to UTM Zone 43 ready for digitising. Four (4) control points were established to enable translation between table and world coordinates. Upon registration the max residual was approximately 55 metres for the Heard Island area and about 32 metres for the McDonald Islands inset. This captured data were then compared with the previously captured data from the 1985 map (produced by GA in Dec 1985 - reference no. NMP85/072) and near vertical and oblique aerial photography taken in 1980 to help complete and define features that were not clear on the image map. Aerial Photography used included CASC 9495 prints 63-81, 7-14 and 51-60 CASC 9493 prints 7-18: CASC 9494 prints 18-33. Once all the information was checked for completeness an extract of the data was taken (gina_out) and converted through gina_pci (a program written by DOSLI - NZ) to a suitable format (*.lin files and *.pnt files) ready for input into ARC/INFO. Coverages were generated from these input files, built for polygons and the attribute tables modified and filled according to the specifications generate by AAD. Usually mapped to a Universal Transverse Mercator projection, Zone 43.