Converting latitude/longitude to Alberta 10 TM Projection

Question

I need to convert latitude/longitude coordinates into Easting/Northing coordinates in the Alberta 10 TM Projection.

The 10 TM projection is similar to UTM, but it is a custom projection for the province of Alberta, Canada. I think (with some effort) I could code it myself but would rather not reinvent the wheel if it's been done already.

Solution 1

Grab PROJ.4 Cartographic Projections library - open source library.

Suggested parameters for 10TM:

+proj=tmerc +lon_0=-115 +k_0=0.9992 +x_0=500000 +datum=NAD27

According to this post you may need to:

change the ellps to GRS80 if your 10TM data is referenced to the NAD83 datum (instead of NAD27/clrk66). You may also need to change the false northing (y_0) to be -5000000 if your 10TM coordinates for Alberta are less than 5,000,000 (an AltaLIS "standard").

I should mention that proj.4 is the library to get for any kind of geographic coordinate system transformation. There's pretty much no transformation it can't do.

I also recommend reading Map Projections-A Working Manual (Paperback) by John Snyder if you are into these kinds of things.. it's a classic. :) (fixed the link)

Solution 2

I've used GDAL (http://www.gdal.org) to do this. It supports bindings for many different languages as well.

Solution 3

For free GIS libraries, take a look here: http://www.freegis.org/database/?cat=12. Hopefully you can find something that fits your needs.

Solution 4

I would seriously consider using a third party dll to do this rather than code it yourself.

I don't know the full details of the 10 TM projection, but I worked on a project that required coordinate conversions between many different coordinate systems to a high degree of accuracy, including UTM and Lat/Long. We found that the maths involved was way too complicated.

Perhaps take a look at the open source PROJ.4: http://trac.osgeo.org/proj/

They seems to support a huge range of conversions, and so I hope Alberta 10 TM will be covered.

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