DEALING WITH COORDINATE SYSTEMS

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OVERVIEW:
Projections and coordinate systems are a complicated topic in GIS, but they form the basis for how a GIS can store,
analyze, and display spatial data. Understanding projections and coordinate systems is an important knowledge to
have, especially if you deal with many different sets of data that come from different sources.

INTRODUCTION TO COORDINATE SYSTEMS AND MAP PROJECTIONS

The latitude and longitude of a place is the most comprehensive and powerful method in attaching coordinates to
an earth’s feature. Latitude is the angular distance, in degrees, minutes, and seconds of a point north or south of
the Equator. Lines of latitude are often referred to as parallels. While longitude is the angular distance, in degrees,
minutes, and seconds, of a point east or west of the Prime (Greenwich) Meridian. Lines of longitude are often
referred to as meridians.

The earth’s shape is not a sphere; in fact, the Earth is slightly flattened, such that the distance between the Poles is
about 1 part in 300 less than the diameter at the Equator. The closest estimate of the earth’s shape is a spheroid
(also called ellipsoid) rather than a sphere. Because there is no exact fit of the entire earth, each country initially
felt free to adopt its own version of ellipsoid as the most accurate approximation to its own part of the Earth.
Without a single standard the maps produced by different countries using different ellipsoids could never be made
to fit together. In the Philippines, we adopt the Philippines Reference System of 1992 (PRS 92, an updated Luzon
1911) as the closest approximation of the shape of the earth for the country. Today an international standard is
also common in mapping – the World Geodetic System of 1984 (WGS 84)

There are many reasons for wanting to project the Earth’s surface onto a plane, rather than deal with the curved
surface. Primary reasons are:

The paper used to output GIS maps is flat

Flat maps are scanned and digitized to create GIS databases

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Square and rectangular rasters are flat

The Earth has to be projected to see all of it at once
It’s much easier to measure distance on a plane

In order to create flat maps, map projection where used to transform the latitude and longitude of the earth’s
feature on the ellipsoid to northing and easting (y and x) on the flat map.

Map Projection

From the illustration above you could see that projecting a curved surface such as PRS 92 or WGS 84 (or any other
ellipsoidal model) could distort the features in many ways. There would always be distortions introduced in flat
maps when transforming latitude and longitude to northing and easting. There are two primary types of map
projection according to the distortion they introduced in maps and these are conformal and equal area. Conformal
maps preserve the shapes of small features, thus the scales of the projections in x and y directions are always
equal. Equal area maps distort shapes but areas measured on the map are always in the same proportion to areas
on the Earth’s surface.

Map projections can also be categorized based on their developable surface. There are planar (also called
azimuthal), conical and cylindrical projections which are derived from their developable surface of plane, cone and
cylinder respectively.

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Mercator projection is the best-known cylindrical projection and is also conformal type. Its transverse counterpart
(transverse aspect is wrapped along a meridian instead of the equator) is adopted in many countries including the
country’s Philippine Transverse Mercator (PTM). PTM projection defines the whole Philippine extent in five zones,
Zone 1 to 5 with central meridians 117, 119, 121, 123 1nd 125 respectively. A global Transverse Mercator is also
very common in mapping – the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM). UTM defines the whole world extent in 60
th
zones with a span of 6 degrees from each zone. The Philippine is located in zone 51 or the 120 meridian.

Because each zone is a different projection (eg PTM is really 5 Transverse Mercator and UTM is 60 projections!),
there will be problems in fitting when we would combine two or more zones. In cases you would want to map a
large extent covering two zones, a single zone is adopted with the other area suffering the greater distortion. Due
to this reason, UTM is sometimes more preferred than PTM in mapping a larger extent of the Philippines (although
Palawan area is zone 50). On the other hand, PTM is preferred in mapping small area extent which require more
precision and accuracy such as in surveying and planning.

In order to quickly understand and apply the concept of coordinate system and map projection, we will
categorized the map coordinates used in the exercise into two types: Geographic Coordinate Systems (GCS) and
Projected Coordinate Systems (PCS). The difference between the two is that GCS is angular unit (latitude and
longitude) and unprojected while PCS is metric (northing and easting or X and Y) and projected. Example of GCS is
EPSG:4326 or WGS 84. Example of PCS is EPSG:32651 or UTM Zone 51N / WGS 84. The “/WGS 84” means the
projection universal transverse mercator (UTM) is built with WGS 84 as its base reference coordinate. For the lists
of EPSG codes see the website http://spatialreference.org/ref/epsg/

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LOADING VECTOR LAYER (RAIN INDUCED LANDSLIDE DATA):

Load the vector (philadmin2009.shp) and the raster (srtm41_90m_phl.img) files in a new QGIS session.

Add SDN_Rain_Induced_Landslide.shp, notice that in the Map View the landslide layer didn’t overlay to its
expected location in your base map layer.

By reviewing the coordinate system of your newly loaded vector layer (recall: Right click layer > Properties >
General tab). You will see that the coordinate system of this layer is EPSG:25395 - Luzon 1911 / Philippines zone V.
This coordinate system is different from your base map.

From the previous module, you also found out that your vector layer – philadmin2009.shp has a PCS EPSG:32651 -
UTM 51N/WGS84 and your raster layer – srtm41_90m_phl.img has a GCS EPSG: 4326 - WGS84.

As the vector admin layer will be your reference base map, its coordinate EPSG:32651 will be the coordinate
system of all your dataset. That means every dataset (vector or raster) that are different from this coordinate
system will be reprojected to this coordinate system. Failure to do so can make analysis and mapping to have
unexpected and incorrect result.

To outline the procedure:

SDN_Rain_Induced_Landslide.shp coordinate system EPSG:25395 - Luzon 1911 / Philippines zone V will be

reprojected to EPSG:32651 - UTM 51N/WGS84
srtm41_90m_phl.img coordinate system EPSG: 4326 - WGS84 will be reprojected to EPSG:32651 - UTM
51N/WGS84

REPROJECTING VECTOR LAYER:

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To show reprojection of vector layer, we will project SDN_Rain_Induced_Landslide.shp to EPSG:32651 - UTM

51N/WGS84.

To reproject, we need to save your SDN_Rain_Induced_Landslide to another coordinate system. To do this, right-
click the layer and click Save as… In the dialog box change the select Selected CRS in the CRS field, then specify the
new coordinate system (in this case EPSG:32651) then OK. Simple as that.

Select
SDN_Rain_Induced_Landslide.shp,
then right-click

Click Save As…

Specify Selected CRS

Specify the output file by clicking Browse,

save the file in the Output folder as
SDN_Rain_Induced_Landslide_UTM

Click the other Browse button to specify

the new CRS

Select WGS 84/UTM zone 51N

Click OK in CRS Selector

Finally click OK in the Save Layer dialog

box

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This procedure is very similar to the previous module’s Export Data Layers except for the reprojection step. You
can load or add the new Vector Layer to your current session. This new layer should overlay with the
philadmin2009.

The reprojected vector

layer overlaid to the Base
Map philadmin2009.shp
layer

Additional Challenge: Reproject all your vector layer’s (eg hazard maps and other layers) coordinate reference
system (CRS) into your base map’s CRS. The idea is that all your layers should have only one coordinate system.
Visually inspect the output of reprojection by loading the data in your QGIS session and observing your data
overlaid to your base map.

REPROJECTING RASTER LAYER:

The reprojection of raster is not quite simple compared to the vector approach. In this exercise, we will project the
SRTM to your reference base map’s coordinate system. This means projecting from EPSG:4326 (WGS 84) to
EPSG:32651 (UTM51N/WGS84). To do this, we need a tool in the Raster menu called Warp (Reproject). Warp is
under Projections section of the Raster menu.

Click Raster menu, then

Projection, then Warp

Warp dialog box appears

Select and specify output file.

Save it to your Output folder
and name it
SRTM_Reprojected

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Cross the Target SRS, then

click Select

Specify the target SRS in the

dialog box that appears.

Click OK

And finally click OK in Warp

dialog box.

The reprojection may take a

while. NOTE: do not press
anything while QGIS is
processing, it may end up in
a “not responding” error

You can now add the reprojected data layer to the current QGIS session. This layer should perfectly overlay with
the Admin Boundaries.

NOTE: Reprojection is done when the data layers have previously been assigned a SRS/CRS different from the
base layer. If a data set has no previous coordinate system such as scanned maps, the more appropriate
procedure is georeferencing. This is will be covered in the next module.

The reprojected raster

perfectly overlaid to your
vector layers

The final challenge will be to convert all your raster dataset to a single coordinate system by reprojecting them.
The suggested SRS/CRS is EPSG: 32651 or UTM51N/WGS84, the municipality admin boundaries’ coordinate
system.

WRAP UP

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In this module you have learned the basics of coordinate system in GIS and its importance in integrating several
data layers. You have also learned there are two main categories of coordinate systems in GIS – the GCS
(Geographic Coordinate System or the unprojected) and the PCS (Projected Coordinate System or simply the
projected). It is important that when dealing with multiple data layers the coordinate system of every layer is
uniform and consistent with each other. This means that you need to reproject each layer into a single coordinate
system (GCS or PCS) before performing the next process in GIS.

In mapping large area extent such as mapping a region or the whole Philippine, UTM is preferred. This is due to the
fact that it can cover large extent with just a single (or two if Palawan is included) zone of projection. This
minimizes distortions on other area when putting together the maps. In mapping smaller area extent but larger
precision requirement, PTM is the preferred projection.

Dealing with Coordinate Systems