Since 2019 the official spatial reference in Bavaria has been set to the European Terrestrial Reference System 1989 with Universal Transverse Mercator Projection ETRS89/UTM. Embedded in the administrative responsibility of the Bavarian State Ministry of Environment, the National Park is obliged to transform accordingly all operative geospatial data (mainly referenced in the previous system German Main Triangular Network with Gauss-Krüger Projection DHDN/GK).
As the conversion of the coordinate reference system affects all subordinate geodata-holding authorities, the Bavarian Ministry of Environment established the project group “PG-UTM” in 2018. Within the setting of this project group, it was possible to develop common specifications for the conversion process as well as appropriate tools for their implementation in geographic information systems (GIS).
The national park administration operates a long-standing spatial data infrastructure (SDI) and looks back on approximately 40-years of working with spatial data. In order to ensure future compatibility with basic spatial datasets (such as aerial imagery or topographic maps) produced by the Bavarian Surveying and Mapping Authority (BVV) and thematic spatial data of other Bavarian authorities, the national park’s geodata created in former coordinate reference systems has to be transferred into the new system. A user manual specifically written to integrate as many of the park’s GIS-users as possible in the conversion process indicates relevant aspects to consider when transforming geospatial vector and raster data. Besides that, project and print templates were adapted according to the new standard for the use within ArcGIS Pro software. The main project outcome comprises approximately 500 UTM-Layers created from different data sources and migrated into the thematic information system (Fachinformationssystem - FIS), a component of the national park SDI. The project covered a period of 2 years from July 2019 until the end of June 2021.
Head of data management team, spatial data infrastructure (SDI), cross-disciplinary integration of applications-data-interfaces, climate observation network.