Effect of Small Errors
* From N. Bowditch, American Practical Navigator, U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office,1966 Ed.
For small regions, all the map projections are the same.*
Take such statements with a grain of salt.
- The original Bowditch book is very old.
- In navigation, meters of error are small.
- In geodesy, a meter is small to some, large to others.
- In GPS applications, a meter is big.
- To a gunner who aims at the turret ring of an enemy tank, a meter is really big.
- It only takes a small curvature distortion to hide or uncover a target, and on some terrain surfaces this is a frequent occurrence.
- In some real time embedded systems, small errors may accumulate.
The application domain determines what is small, in M&S very accurate representations of spatial reference frameworks are required for verification, validation & accedidation support and
to promote a level playing field.