Quick Links
Coordinate systems are used to accurately identify locations on the Earth’s surface, and are one of the fundamental building blocks that make modern Geographic Information Systems possible. Many of the links below refer to our 2009 publication, Wisconsin Coordinate Reference Systems. This 119-page publication is a revision of the Wisconsin Coordinate Systems handbook published by the SCO in 1995. The new handbook contains expanded information on coordinate reference systems commonly used in Wisconsin.
Background and Reference Material
- About “WISCRS” and county coordinate reference systems in Wisconsin
- Wisconsin Coordinate Reference Systems Handbook, Second Edition
- About the U.S. National Grid
- Coordinate conversion and transformation concepts
- Datums Explained (Video)
- What’s Next for Geodetic Datums? (Video)
- WSRS2022: Wisconsin Spatial Reference System 2022 Task Force
Coordinate Conversion & Transformation Tools
- NGS Coordinate Conversion and Transformation Tool (NCAT) – Online tool for moving between State Plane, UTM, lat/lon, and USNG coordinates across several North American datums
- WI-SDMS Translator – Desktop (Windows only) tool for converting between common coordinate systems used in Wisconsin. (Note: do NOT use SDMS for operations involving datum transformations.)
- Coordinate Conversion Workbook and ConCoord – Two coordinate conversion products for Wisconsin coordinate systems, both written by Jerry Mahun. Each product supports Geodetic, Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM), Wisconsin Transverse Mercator (WTM), State Plane Coordinate (SPC) and County systems on WCCS and WISCRS. The Coordinate Conversion Workbook is an Excel workbook for Direct (Geodetic to Grid) and Inverse (Grid to Geodetic) conversions. ConCoord (Convert Coordinates) is a Windows program to perform Direct, Inverse, and Grid to Grid conversions.
- VERTCON – The federal standard for NSRS vertical datum transformations. It computes an approximate modeled difference in orthometric height between the NGVD 29 and NAVD 88 datums based upon a latitude and longitude location
- IGLD85 – A datum transformation tool that converts NAVD 88 Helmert heights to IGLD85 dynamic heights and vice-versa
- PROJ 4: Cartographic Projections Library
Coordinate Test Data
The purpose of these test data is to provide coordinate values in each Wisconsin county that vendors can use to test their NAD 83 software conversion routines between the various NAD 83-based coordinate systems used in Wisconsin.
This is a new test data file in PDF format (dated April 6, 2021) that replaces the previous Excel test data files on this SCO page. The new file includes WISCRS, SPC, WTM and UTM coordinates.
The new file was provided by the WSRS2022 Technical Focus Group.
