Brazil National Geospatial Framework

Improve land management in Brazil through a transfer of Canadian expertise in national geospatial frameworks. Contribute to trade and investment through participation of private industry partners in the implementation of the framework. Expand linkages between Canadian and Brazilian public, private, and non-governmental institutions.

Objectives

ESS will provide advice, technology and training to:

• unify the numerous, disconnected coordinates systems currently in use and developed over the past several decades in Brazil;
• develop a new coordinates system for Brazil and means to include information from older systems;
• help Brazilian institutions move towards the use of modern satellite technology to maintain and provide access to the new unified reference frame;
• enhance Brazil’s capacity to exploit GPS technology to improve positioning accuracy and reduce cost of land surveys; and
• facilitate Canadian industry participation.

Partners

• Earth Sciences Sector (ESS), Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)
• University of New Brunswick (UNB)
• Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)
• Brazil’s Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE)
• tesserNet Systems Inc of Calgary

Duration

Original: September 24, 2004 to August 31, 2008
Amendment: September 24, 2004 to November 30, 2009

Links

Project site maintained by the University of New Brunswick

Background

This project is part of a larger CIDA funded contribution agreement between the UNB, CIDA and Brazil’s IBGE. It is primarily a technology transfer and capacity building project.

The project is important to Brazil due to its extensive land reforms. The process entails referencing geographically over 1.5 million land parcels. The current coordinates systems in Brazil make it difficult to disseminate the information needed for sound and sustainable land management and resources development to decision makers. Additionally, these systems are not always compatible with positioning satellite based technologies, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS). 

As a contractor for UNB, ESS was involved in the realization and evaluation of the new GPS-compatible Brazilian coordinates system, including the transfer of software required to transform coordinates from older systems into the new one. Web-based technology has been transferred and made operational to improve the accuracy of coordinates obtained with GPS. Finally ESS will implement in Brazil a GPS correction service to improve coordinates accuracy in real-time.

Contact

Pierre Tétreault - Program Manager