Summary
Geodetic infrastructure is critical to everything from navigation to emergency response to precision farming. Canada benefits from global geodetic infrastructure, but lacks national capacity to contribute to global efforts and keep critical systems running when interruptions happen.
What is geodetics and why is it important?
Geodetics, or geodesy, is the science of measuring the Earth’s size, shape, orientation and gravity field and how they change over time. Geodetic infrastructure is foundational to positioning activities on Earth and helps to monitor climate change, coastal hazards, and sea level changes, among numerous other systems and processes. Enhancing geodetic infrastructure has implications for sovereignty, national security, economic development, and scientific advancement.
This assessment will examine opportunities associated with renewed domestic investment in geodetic infrastructure, the risks associated with reduced access to high-quality geodetic information, and whether Canada has sufficient infrastructure to meet its current and future needs.
This project was supported by the Government of Canada through the Strategic Science Fund.