Spatial reference system


A spatial reference system or coordinate reference system is a coordinate-based local, regional or global system used to locate geographical entities. A spatial reference system defines a specific map projection, as well as transformations between different spatial reference systems. Spatial reference systems are defined by the OGC's Simple Feature Access using well-known text representation of coordinate reference systems, and support has been implemented by several standards-based geographic information systems. Spatial reference systems can be referred to using a SRID integer, including EPSG codes defined by the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers.
It is specified in ISO 19111:2007 Geographic information—Spatial referencing by coordinates, prepared by ISO/TC 211, also published as OGC Abstract Specification, Topic 2: Spatial referencing by coordinate.

Components

In this Abstract Specification, a coordinate reference system shall be composed of one coordinate system and one datum.
A coordinate system is a set of mathematical rules for specifying how coordinates are to be assigned to points, such as: affine, cylindrical, Cartesian, ellipsoidal, linear, polar, spherical, vertical, etc.
A datum is a set of parameters that define the position of the origin, the scale, and the orientation of a coordinate system.
The main subtypes of coordinate reference system are: geodetic, vertical, engineering, and image; additional subtypes are: derived, projected, and compound.

Examples

Some systems are:
A Spatial Reference System Identifier is a unique value used to unambiguously identify projected, unprojected, and local spatial coordinate system definitions. These coordinate systems form the heart of all GIS applications.
Virtually all major spatial vendors have created their own SRID implementation or refer to those of an authority, such as the EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset.
SRIDs are the primary key for the Open Geospatial Consortium spatial_ref_sys metadata table for the Simple Features for SQL Specification, Versions 1.1 and 1.2, which is defined as follows:

CREATE TABLE SPATIAL_REF_SYS
SRID INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
AUTH_NAME CHARACTER VARYING,
AUTH_SRID INTEGER,
SRTEXT CHARACTER VARYING

In spatially enabled databases, SRIDs are used to uniquely identify the coordinate systems used to define columns of spatial data or individual spatial objects in a spatial column. SRIDs are typically associated with a well-known text string definition of the coordinate system.
Here are two common coordinate systems with their EPSG SRID value followed by their WKT:
UTM, Zone 17N, NAD27 — SRID 2029:

PROJCS,
PARAMETER,
PARAMETER,
PARAMETER,
PARAMETER,
PARAMETER,
AUTHORITY,
AXIS,
AXIS"Northing",NORTH

[WGS84 — SRID 4326

GEOGCS["WGS 84",
DATUM["WGS_1984",
SPHEROID["WGS 84",6378137,298.257223563,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","7030",
AUTHORITY["EPSG","6326",
PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901",
UNIT["degree",0.01745329251994328,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","9122",
AUTHORITY["EPSG","4326"

SRID values associated with spatial data can be used to constrain spatial operations — for instance, spatial operations cannot be performed between spatial objects with differing SRIDs in some systems, or trigger coordinate system transformations between spatial objects in others.