Geomatics Acronyms and Abbreviations

Geomatics has become a pretty common term in Canada lately and includes many different disciplines such as geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, cartography, land surveying, global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), photogrammetry, geography and other related forms of spatial mapping.

Using acronyms and abbreviations is commonly practiced in the Geomatics industry and most of the time people just assume that everybody else knows what every acronyms and abbreviation stands for. Well that is obviously not the case most of the time and over the years I have created myself a little digital cheat-sheet of geomatics acronyms and abbreviations that I use with my work in my writing.

Below is the collection of common geomatics acronyms and abbreviations that you may find in the Canadian Geomatics industry (GIS, GPS, remote sensing, cartography, geography, surveying, Government etc.). If anybody knows of any key ones that missing off of this little Geomatics Acronyms and Abbreviations cheat-sheet then let us know and we will gladly add them to the list.

[page updated May 2016 – The list is now over 300, thanks to many people who continue to send us more Geomatics Acronyms and Abbreviations not on the list.]

Geomatics Acronyms and Abbreviations

3D Three Dimensional

AAA analytical and advisory activity
AASTR Advanced Along Track Scanning Thermal Radiometer
AAG Association of American Geographers
ABGPS Airborne GPS
ABCLS Association of British Columbia Land Surveyors
A/C Aircraft
ACA American Cartographic Association
ACACC Association des cartothèques et archives cartographiques du Canada
ACC Association canadienne de cartographie
ACE Advanced Cartographic Environment
ACG Association canadienne des gèographes
ACLS Association of Canadian Lands Surveyors
ACMLA Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives
ACS Active Control System
ADP Advanced digital processing
ADP Automated data processing
AGRG Applied Geomatics Research Group
ALSA Alberta Land Surveyors Association
Alt. Altitude
ALTM Airborne Laser Terrain Mapper
ALTMS Airborne Laser Topographic Mapping System
AM Automated Mapping
AMLS Association of Manitoba Land Surveyors
ANBLS Ascociation of New Brunswick Land Surveyors
ANSLS Ascociation of Nova Scotia Land Surveyors
AOI Area of Interest
AOLS Association of Ontario Land Surveyors
APBEL Atlantic Provinces Board of Examiners for Land Surveyors
APEILS Ascociation of Prince Edward Island Land Surveyors
ASAR Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar
ASPG American Society for Professional Geographers
ASPRS American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
ASTER Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer
AT Area Triangulation
ATR Automatic Target Recognition
AVHRR Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer
AM/FM Automated Mapping/Facilities Management

BCIT British Columbia Institute of Technology
BLDG Building
BM Bench mark

CACS Canadian Active Control System
CAD Computer Assisted Design
CADMAP Computer-aided drafting, mapping, and photogrammetry
CAG Canadian Association of Geographers
CaGIS Cartography and Geographic Information Society
CanSIS Canadian Soil Information System
CanVec Canadian Vector Data
CARL Canadian Association of Research Libraries
CASI Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute
CBEPS Canadian Board of Examiners for Professional Surveyors
CCA Canadian Cartographic Association
CCG Canadian Coast Guard
CCMEO Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation
CCOG The Canadian Council on Geomatics.
CCRS Canada Centre for Remote Sensing
CGCRT Canadian Geomatics Community Round Table
CGRG Canadian Geomorphology Research Group
CGS Canadian Geodetic Survey
CGS Certified Geomatics Specialist (CIG Certification Program)
CGSN Canadian Gravity Standardization Network
CHA Canadian Hydrographic Association
CHS Canadian Hydrographic Service
CIG Canadian Institute of Geomatics
CIR Color infrared
CIS Canadian Institute of Surveying
CLI Canada Land Inventory
CLS Canada Lands Surveyor
CLSR Canada Lands Surveys Records
COGO Coordinate Geometry
COGS Centre of Geographic Sciences
CORS Continuously operated reference station(s)
CRN Canadian Road Network
CRSS Canadian Remote Sensing Society
CSA Canadian Space Agency
CSPG Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists
CSRS Canadian Spatial Reference System
CWRA Canadian Water Resources Program

DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
DB Data base
DBMS Database management system
DCW Digital Chart of the World
DD Decimal degrees
DEM Digital Elevation Model
DFO Department of Fisheries and Oceans
DGPS Differential Global Positioning System
DIPS Digital Image Processing System
DMTI Desktop Mapping Technologies Inc.
DN Digital Number
DND Department of National Defence
DNR Department of Natural Resources
DO Digital Ortho
DOQ Digital orthophoto quadrangle
DOQQ Digital orthophoto quarter quadrangle
DOT Departmentof Transportation
DPI Dots per inch
DQQ Digital quarter quadrangle
DRF Digital Raster File
DTD Digital Topographic Data
DTED Digital Terrain Elevation Data
DTM Digital Terrain Model
DVD Digital versatile disc
DXF Drawing Interchange File
DXF Digital Exchange Format

EA Environmental assessment
EC Environment Canada
ECRF Earth Centered Reference Frame
EMS electromagnetic spectrum
ENVISAT Environmental Satellite
EO Earth observation
EOF End of File
EOSAT Earth Observation Satellite
EOT End of Text
ERDAS Earth Resources Data Analysis System
ERS Earth Remote Sensing Satellite
ERS European Remote Sensing Satellite
ESA European Space Agency
ESRI (Esri) Environmental Systems Research Institute
ETM Enhanced Thematic Mapper
EVI enhanced vegetation index

FAC Feature analysis code
FACC Feature and Attribute Coding Catalog
FACS Feature Attribute Coding Standard; Feature Attribute Coding System
FCC False color composite
FCGEO Federal Committee on Geomatics and Earth Observation
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency
FGP Federal Geospatial Platform
FNLM First Nations Land Management
FOV Field of view

GANS Geomatics Association of Nova Scotia
GCP Ground control point
GDP GeoConnections Discovery Portal
GEO Group on Earth Observations
Geol. Geology
GeoNB NewBrunswick Online Map Viewer
GEOSAT Geodesy Satellite
GI Geographic information
GI Geospatial information
GIAC Geomatics Industry Association of Canada
GIS Geographic Information System
GIS Geographical Information System
GIS Geographic Information Services
GIS Geographical Information Science
GLONASS Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System (Russia)
GMT Greenwich Mean Time
GN Grid north
GNSS Global Navigation Satellite System
GoC Government of Canada
GOES geostationary operational environmental satellite
GPR Ground Penetrating Radar
GPS Global Positioning System
GRASS Geographic Resource Analysis Support System
GRD Ground Resolved Distance
GRIDS Grid Referenced Information Display System
GRS 80 Geodetic Reference System of 1980
GRS Geodetic Reference System
GSC Geological Survey of Canada
GTA Greater Toronto Area
GUI Graphical User Interface
GVI Green vegetation index

ha Hectare; Hektar
HBM Hydrologic bench mark
HC Hard copy
HDOP Horizontal Dilution of Precision
HF High frequency
HP Hewlett Packard
HPN High Precision Network
HSV Hue Saturation Value
HTML Hyper Text Markup Language

IBC International Boundary Commission
ICA International Cartographic Association
IGS International GNSS Service
ILM Integrated Land Management
ILMF International LiDAR Mapping Forum
ILRIS Intelligent Laser Range Imaging Scanner (Optech)
IM/IT Information Management/Information Technology
IMAGE Integrated Mapping and Geographic Encoding System
INS Inertial Navigation System
InSAR Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar
I/O Input/output
ISO International Organization for Standardization
ITRF International Terrestrial Reference Frame

JP2 JPEG2000
JERS-1 Japanese Earth Resources Satellite 1
JRSS Japanese remote sensing satellite

KB Kilobyte
KBPS Kilobytes per second
KGPS Kinematic GPS
kHz Kilohertz
km Kilometer

LANDSAT Land Satellite
L/C Land cover
LBS Location-Based Services
LCA Land cover analysis
LCC Lambert conformal conic (projection)
LIDAR (LiDAR) Light Detection And Ranging
LIO Land Information Ontario
LMS Large-scale mapping system
LMS Lidar Mapping Suite
LOS Line-of-sight
LRIS Land Registration and Information Service (Maritimes)
LRIS Land Related Information Service (Alberta)
LRS Linear Referencing System
LSI LiDAR Services International

MB Megabyte
MCE Mapping and Charting Establishment
MGUG Manitoba GIS Users Group
MLW Mean low water
MRSID multi resolution seamless image database
MSL Mean sea level
MSDI Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure
MTM Maritime Transverse Mercator
MTO Ministry of Transportation

NACCSM National Advisory Committee on Control Surveys and Mapping
NAD North American Datum
NAD27 North American Datum of 1927
NAD83 North American Datum of 1983
NAD83 (CSRS) North American of Datum 1983 (Canadian Spatial Reference System) an adopted modern datum used in Canada
NAPL National Air Photo Library
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NAVD North American Vertical Datum
NAVD 88 North American Vertical Datum 1988
NDVI normalized difference vegetation index
NIF National Information Framework
NIR near infrared
NLS Ascociation of Nova Scotia Land Surveyors
NGVD National Geodetic Vertical Datum
NGVD29 National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929
NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (U.S.)
NMAS National Map Accuracy Standards
NRCan Natural Resources Canada
NTS National Topographic System

OAGQ Ordre des arpenteurs-géomètres du Québec
OARS – Ontario Association for Remote Sensing
OCRS Ontario Centre for Remote Sensing
ODC Open Data Consortium
OGC Open GIS Consortium
OGDE Ontario Geographic Data Exchange
OGS Ontario Geological Survey
OQ Orthophoto quadrangle
ORN Ontario Road Network
ORRI Orthorectified radar imagery
OTF On the fly

PAC Public Archives of Canada
PCA Principal components analysis
PE&RS Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
PID Polygon identification number
PID Property identification number
PIN Parcel identification number
Pixel Picture element
PK Peak
PLN Plan
PLS Provincial Land Surveyor
PLS Public Land Survey
PNG Portable Network Graphic
POES polar-orbiting operational environmental satellite
POS Position and Orientation System
PPP Precise Point Positioning
PQ Province Quebec
PSI Public sector information

QA Quality assurance
QA/QC Quality assurance/quality control
QC Quality control
QGIS Quantum GIS
QS Quadratic splines

RA Rural area
RADAR Radio Detecting and Ranging
RADARSAT RADAR Satellite
RAM Random access memory
R&D Research and development
RCGS Royal Canadian Geographical Society
RDI Resource Data International Inc.
RGB Red-green-blue
RIP Raster Image Processing
RMS Root mean square
RMSE Root mean squared error
RS remote sensing
RTK Real Time Kinematic

SAR Synthetic aperture radar
SDB Spatial data base
SDE Spatial Database Engine
SDI Spatial Data Infrastructure
SDSS Spatial decision support systems
SGB Surveyor General Branch
SLAR Side Looking Airborne Radar
SLP Slope
SLSA Saskatchewan Land Surveyors Association
SMB Surveys and Mapping Branch
SMIRR Shuttle Multispectral Infrared Radiometer
SNB Service New Brunswick
SPC State Plane Coordinate
SPCS State Plane Coordinate System(s)
SPOT Satellite for Earth Observation
SQL Standard Query Language
Sta Station
SSC Shared Services Canada
S-VGA Super Video Graphics Array
SW surface water
SWIR short-wave infrared

TBD To be determined
TC Transport Canada
TGO Trimble Geomatics Office
TIFF Tagged Image File Format
TIGER Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing
TIN Triangular Irregular Network
TIR Thermal infrared
TIRS Thermal Infrared Scanner
TM Thematic Mapper (Landsat); Timber management
TOA top of atmosphere
TPS Thin-plate splines; Topcon Positioning Systems
TQ Topographic quadrangle
TVC Tagged Vector Contours

UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
UBC University of British Columbia
UNB University of New Brunswick
URISA Urban and Regional Information Systems Association
UTC Universal Time Coordinated; Urban Traffic Control System (Siemans)
UTM Universal Transverse Mercator
U of C University of Calgary
U of T University of Toronto

VGI Volunteered Geographic Information

WMF Windows Metafile Format
WWW World Wide Web
W3C World Wide Web Consortium
WYSIWYG What you see is what you get
XML eXtensible Markup Language

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[originally published on March 8, 2010]