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Abstract
A Progress Report on the AFREF Project
Richard Wonnacott
Director of Survey
Services, Chief
Directorate: Surveys and
Mapping, South Africa
The AFREF project was formally accepted by the United Nations Economic Commission
for Africa in August 2004 although a great deal of preparation had been done
prior to this. The primary goal of AFREF is to create a unified geodetic reference frame
for Africa to be consistent with the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF)
and will form the foundation upon which all geospatial data, products and services
will be based. The fundamental tool to be used to create such a reference frame is a
network of permanent GNSS tracking stations. Although primarily a positioning tool,
GNSS has many inter-disciplinary scientific applications such weather forecasting, climate
monitoring, timing and space weather monitoring, disaster mitigation to mention
but a few. This paper describes the rationale and progress made with AFREF and
the installation of the core network of permanent GNSS base stations.
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