Geomatics has become a pretty common term in Canada lately and includes many different disciplines such as geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, cartography, land surveying, global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), photogrammetry, geography and other related forms of spatial mapping. Using acronyms and abbreviations is commonly practiced in the Geomatics industry and most of the time people just assume that everybody else knows what every acronyms and abbreviation stands for. Well that is obviously not the case most of the time and over the years I have created myself a little digital cheat-sheet of geomatics acronyms and abbreviations that I use with my work in my writing.
Below is the collection of common acronyms and abbreviations that you may find in the Canadian Geomatics industry. If anybody knows of any key ones that missing off of this little cheat-sheet then let me know and I will gladly add them to the list.
3D Three Dimensional
AAG Association of American Geographers
ABGPS Airborne GPS
ABCLS Association of British Columbia Land Surveyors
A/C Aircraft
ACA American Cartographic Association
ACACC Association des cartothèques et archives cartographiques du Canada
ACC Association canadienne de cartographie
ACE Advanced Cartographic Environment
ACG Association canadienne des gèographes
ACLS Association of Canadian Lands Surveyors
ACMLA Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives
ADP Advanced digital processing
ADP Automated data processing
AGRG Applied Geomatics Research Group
ALSA Alberta Land Surveyors Association
Alt. Altitude
ALTM Airborne Laser Terrain Mapper
ALTMS Airborne Laser Topographic Mapping System
AM Automated Mapping
AMLS Association of Manitoba Land Surveyors
ANBLS Ascociation of New Brunswick Land Surveyors
ANSLS Ascociation of Nova Scotia Land Surveyors
AOI Area of Interest
AOLS Association of Ontario Land Surveyors
APBEL Atlantic Provinces Board of Examiners for Land Surveyors
APEILS Ascociation of Prince Edward Island Land Surveyors
ASPG American Society for Professional Geographers
ASPRS American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
ASTER Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer
AT Area Triangulation
ATR Automatic Target Recognition
AVHRR Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer
AM/FM Automated Mapping/Facilities Management
BCIT British Columbia Institute of Technology
BLDG Building
BM Bench mark
CACS Canadian Active Control System
CAD Computer Assisted Design
CADMAP Computer-aided drafting, mapping, and photogrammetry
CAG Canadian Association of Geographers
CaGIS Cartography and Geographic Information Society
CanSIS Canadian Soil Information System
CanVec Canadian Vector Data
CARL Canadian Association of Research Libraries
CBEPS Canadian Board of Examiners for Professional Surveyors
CCA Canadian Cartographic Association
CCRS Canada Centre for Remote Sensing
CGRG Canadian Geomorphology Research Group
CHA Canadian Hydrographic Association
CHS Canadian Hydrographic Service
CIG Canadian Institute of Geomatics
CIR Color infrared
CIS Canadian Institute of Surveying
CLI Canada Land Inventory
CLS Canada Lands Surveyor
CLSR Canada Lands Surveys Records
COGO Coordinate Geometry
COGS Centre of Geographic Sciences
CORS Continuously operated reference station(s)
CRN Canadian Road Network
CRSS Canadian Remote Sensing Society
CSA Canadian Space Agency
CSPG Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists
CSRS Canadian Spatial Reference System
CWRA Canadian Water Resources Program
DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
DB Data base
DBMS Database management system
DCW Digital Chart of the World
DD Decimal degrees
DEM Digital Elevation Model
DFO Department of Fisheries and Oceans
DGPS Differential Global Positioning System
DIPS Digital Image Processing System
DMTI Desktop Mapping Technologies Inc.
DN Digital Number
DND Department of National Defence
DNR Department of Natural Resources
DO Digital Ortho
DOQ Digital orthophoto quadrangle
DOQQ Digital orthophoto quarter quadrangle
DOT Departmentof Transportation
DPI Dots per inch
DQQ Digital quarter quadrangle
DRF Digital Raster File
DTD Digital Topographic Data
DTED Digital Terrain Elevation Data
DTM Digital Terrain Model
DVD Digital versatile disc
DXF Drawing Interchange File
DXF Digital Exchange Format
EA Environmental assessment
ECRF Earth Centered Reference Frame
ENVISAT Environmental Satellite
EO Earth observation
EOF End of File
EOSAT Earth Observation Satellite
EOT End of Text
ERDAS Earth Resources Data Analysis System
ERS Earth Remote Sensing Satellite
ESRI (Esri) Environmental Systems Research Institute
ETM Enhanced Thematic Mapper
FAC Feature analysis code
FACC Feature and Attribute Coding Catalog
FACS Feature Attribute Coding Standard; Feature Attribute Coding System
FCC False color composite
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency
FOV Field of view
GANS Geomatics Association of Nova Scotia
GCP Ground control point
GDP GeoConnections Discovery Portal
Geol. Geology
GeoNB NewBrunswick Online Map Viewer
GEOSAT Geodesy Satellite
GI Geographic information
GI Geospatial information
GIAC Geomatics Industry Association of Canada
GIS Geographic Information System
GIS Geographical Information System
GIS Geographic Information Services
GIS Geographical Information Science
GLONASS Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System (Russia)
GMT Greenwich Mean Time
GN Grid north
GNSS Global Navigation Satellite System
GoC Government of Canada
GPR Ground Penetrating Radar
GPS Global Positioning System
GRASS Geographic Resource Analysis Support System
GRD Ground Resolved Distance
GRIDS Grid Referenced Information Display System
GRS 80 Geodetic Reference System of 1980
GRS Geodetic Reference System
GSC Geological Survey of Canada
GTA Greater Toronto Area
GUI Graphical User Interface
GVI Green vegetation index
ha Hectare; Hektar
HBM Hydrologic bench mark
HC Hard copy
HDOP Horizontal Dilution of Precision
HF High frequency
HP Hewlett Packard
HPN High Precision Network
HSV Hue Saturation Value
HTML Hyper Text Markup Language
ICA International Cartographic Association
IGS International GNSS Service
ILMF International LiDAR Mapping Forum
ILRIS Intelligent Laser Range Imaging Scanner (Optech)
IMAGE Integrated Mapping and Geographic Encoding System
INS Inertial Navigation System
InSAR Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar
I/O Input/output
JP2 JPEG2000
JRSS Japanese remote sensing satellite
KB Kilobyte
KBPS Kilobytes per second
KGPS Kinematic GPS
kHz Kilohertz
km Kilometer
LANDSAT Land Satellite
L/C Land cover
LCA Land cover analysis
LCC Lambert conformal conic (projection)
LIDAR (LiDAR) Light Detection And Ranging
LIO Land Information Ontario
LMS Large-scale mapping system
LMS Lidar Mapping Suite
LOS Line-of-sight
LRIS Land Registration and Information Service (Maritimes)
LRIS Land Related Information Service (Alberta)
LRS Linear Referencing System
LSI LiDAR Services International
MB Megabyte
MCE Mapping and Charting Establishment
MGUG Manitoba GIS Users Group
MLW Mean low water
MRSID multi resolution seamless image database
MSL Mean sea level
MTM Maritime Transverse Mercator
MTO Ministry of Transportation
NACCSM National Advisory Committee on Control Surveys and Mapping
NAD North American Datum
NAD 27 North American Datum of 1927
NAD 83 North American Datum of 1983
NAPL National Air Photo Library
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NAVD North American Vertical Datum
NAVD 88 North American Vertical Datum 1988
NLS Ascociation of Nova Scotia Land Surveyors
NGVD National Geodetic Vertical Datum
NGVD29 National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929
NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (U.S.)
NMAS National Map Accuracy Standards
NRCan Natural Resources Canada
NTS National Topographic System
OAGQ Ordre des arpenteurs-géomètres du Québec
OCRS Ontario Centre for Remote Sensing
ODC Open Data Consortium
OGC Open GIS Consortium
OGDE Ontario Geographic Data Exchange
OGS Ontario Geological Survey
OQ Orthophoto quadrangle
ORN Ontario Road Network
ORRI Orthorectified radar imagery
OTF On the fly
PAC Public Archives of Canada
PCA Principal components analysis
PE&RS Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
PID Polygon identification number
PID Property identification number
PIN Parcel identification number
Pixel Picture element
PK Peak
PLN Plan
PNG Portable Network Graphic
POS Position and Orientation System
PQ Province Quebec
PLS Provincial Land Surveyor
PLS Public Land Survey
QA Quality assurance
QA/QC Quality assurance/quality control
QC Quality control
QGIS Quantum GIS
QS Quadratic splines
RA Rural area
RADAR Radio Detecting and Ranging
RADARSAT RADAR Satellite
RAM Random access memory
R&D Research and development
RDI Resource Data International Inc.
RGB Red-green-blue
RIP Raster Image Processing
RMS Root mean square
RMSE Root mean squared error
RTK Real Time Kinematic
SAR Synthetic aperture radar
SDB Spatial data base
SDE Spatial Database Engine
SDSS Spatial decision support systems
SLAR Side Looking Airborne Radar
SLP Slope
SLSA Saskatchewan Land Surveyors Association
SMB Surveys and Mapping Branch
SMIRR Shuttle Multispectral Infrared Radiometer
SNB Service New Brunswick
SPC State Plane Coordinate
SPCS State Plane Coordinate System(s)
SQL Standard Query Language
Sta Station
S-VGA Super Video Graphics Array
TBD To be determined
TGO Trimble Geomatics Office
TIFF Tagged Image File Format
TIGER Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing
TIN Triangular Irregular Network
TIR Thermal infrared
TIRS Thermal Infrared Scanner
TM Thematic Mapper (Landsat); Timber management
TPS Thin-plate splines; Topcon Positioning Systems
TQ Topographic quadrangle
TVC Tagged Vector Contours
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
UBC University of British Columbia
UNB University of New Brunswick
URISA Urban and Regional Information Systems Association
UTC Universal Time Coordinated; Urban Traffic Control System (Siemans)
UTM Universal Transverse Mercator
U of C University of Calgary
U of T University of Toronto
WMF Windows Metafile Format
WWW World Wide Web
W3C World Wide Web Consortium
XML eXtensible Markup Language
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