A National Network of Continuously Operating GPS Receivers (COGRs)
for the UK
The IESSG have recently obtained funding (under the Earth Observation
Science Initiative) from NERC to set up a data archive centre for UK
based Continuously Operating GPS Receivers (COGRs) which are used for
a variety of Environmental Monitoring applications, e.g. Monitoring
Vertical Land Movement at Tide Gauge sites and GPS
Meteorology/Climatology.
Currently we are dealing with 13 COGR sites around the UK (funded by
MAFF, Environment Agency, Meteorological Office and Proudman
Oceanographic Laboratory), which are all continuously collecting GPS
data for specific research projects. In order to optimise the use of
COGR data by the environmental community in the UK, an agreement has
been reached that these thirteen COGRs will be supplemented by data
from the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, who have recently announced
the establishment of a further 30 (approximately) COGRs (including 9
COGRs from the General Lighthouse Authorities) as active survey
reference stations. A further 3 COGRs from the National Physical
Laboratory (NPL), Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE) and the
Military Survey will also be included within the National GPS Network.
The IESSG will act as the data archive centre for all of this COGR
data, which will be made available for scientific purposes to bona
fide users via ftp protocol/internet. Details of availability are
still to be finalised.
The receivers presently recording within the network are 3 Trimble
SSIs and 10 Ashtech Z-XII all with choke ring antennas. We record at a
30 second epoch rate and download on a daily basis via modems,
although direct Internet connection is likely in the future.
Currently, the RINEX data is stored on a number of PCs (at the IESSG)
and then 'pushed' to several SGI workstations (at the IESSG). It is
planned by the end of February 1999 that the 'raw' (RINEX) data from
all COGRs which are operational will be archived on a single
workstation (with RAID system disk, 126Gb capacity), from where it
will be made available to the scientific community.
Expansion of the network will then be possible through the inclusion
of any other COGRs which may become operational in the future. If you
are interested in contributing COGR data to this network, or in
accessing the data for scientific purposes, please contact
[log in to unmask]
Dr. Leighton James Symons
Institute of Engineering Surveying & Space Geodesy (IESSG)
University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham
Notts
NG7 2RD
Tel- (0115) 8466027
Fax- (0115) 9513881
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