This paper studies the contribution of airborne gravity data to improvement of gravimetric geoid modelling across the mountainous area in Colorado, USA. First, airborne gravity data was processed, filtered, and downward-continued. Then, three gravity anomaly grids were prepared; the first grid only from the terrestrial gravity data, the second grid only from the downward-continued airborne gravity data, and the third grid from combined downward-continued airborne and terrestrial gravity data. Gravimetric geoid models with the three gravity anomaly grids were determined using the least-squares modification of Stokes’ formula with additive corrections (LSMSA) method. The absolute and relative accuracy of the computed gravimetric geoid models was estimated on GNSS/levelling points. Results exhibit the accuracy improved by 1.1 cm or 20% in terms of standard deviation when airborne and terrestrial gravity data was used for geoid computation, compared to the geoid model computed only from terrestrial gravity data. Finally, the spectral analysis of surface gravity anomaly grids and geoid models was performed, which provided insights into specific wavelength bands in which airborne gravity data contributed and improved the power spectrum.

This paper presents empirical research on coordinate transformation models that enable coordinate transformations between the historical astro-geodetic datums and datums related to the European Terrestrial Reference System (ETRS), through a case study of the Republic of Croatia. Thirteen models were investigated for the transformation from the historical Croatian State Coordinate System (HDKS) to the Croatian Terrestrial Reference System (HTRS96): Molodensky 3 and 5 parameter (standard and abridged) conformal transformation models, 7 parameter transformation models (Bursa-Wolf and Molodensky-Badekas model), Affine transformation models (8, 9, 12 parameter), Multiple Regression Equation approach, and several transformation models that include extending of the aforementioned 7 parameter and 8, 9, 12 parameter Affine transformation models with distortion modelling. Most of the models were investigated for the first time over the Croatian territory. Analysis of transformation models performance was conducted using an independent data set of reliable geodetic points. The study provides mutual comparison of the models and their comparison with the official Croatian transformation model called T7D. Furthermore, the most appropriate transformation model(s) were defined regarding the required accuracy and the available resources for the coordinate transformation models implementation. In addition, the paper provides a brief theoretical background and equations of each transformation model and summarises the bibliography on the research topic.

Conformal coordinate transformations very often are not accurate enough to be used for the coordinate transformations between local and global geodetic datums because of the inhomogeneity of the spatial data in different geodetic datums. Therefore, distortion modeling is used to improve the accuracy of the coordinate transformations. This paper presents empirical research on distortion modeling methods used to improve the coordinate transformation process from local to global geodetic datum and vice versa. Various models of distortion shifts in different grid resolutions were computed, evaluated, and compared with the official Croatian model of distortion shifts. Tested modeling methods are inverse distance to a power, kriging, minimum curvature, modified Shepard’s method, natural neighbor, nearest neighbor, polynomial regression, radial basis function, triangulation with linear interpolation, moving average, local polynomial, and least-squares collocation. Distortion model performance was evalua...