Services - Schools
Geoid Schools
The First International School for the determination and use of the Geoid was organized in Milan in 1994, and since then many other editions of the School followed, held in many countries, with the support of local organizing committes.
The general purpose of the full-week intensive Geoid School is to prepare new graduate students, young scientists, employees of national agencies and services or industry staff, to compute and use gravimetric geoids for scientific and technical applications in geodesy, primarily in transforming ellipsoidal (GPS) heights into orthometric heights. The School provides a good opportunity to familiarize with the latest development in geoid determination, and to improve international contacts and collaborations among scientists dealing with gravity field modeling.
The School is structured in a way to be self-contained for any participant at graduate level with basic knowledge of geodesy. Theoretical lectures are followed by computer exercises based on the available software.
The lectures are given according to the following general scheme:
• introduction to physical geodesy and to collocation theory in geoid computation;
• computation and use of high degree and ultra-high degree geopotential models;
• geoid computation using Stokes’ integral;
• terrain effetcs in geoid estimation;
• FFT techniques in geodesy.
• some seminars on specific topics.
Lecture notes of the courses are distributed to the participants as well as a CD containing software and exercises. The CD containing software and examples on geoid computation, as well as the lecture notes, can be requested through the ISG website, under the same restrictions applied when distributed during the geoid schools: a declaration stating for non commercial use of the software is needed.
ISG educational activities are also developed in order to support foreign institutions and scientists in the field of geoid computation. Foreign Institutions can contact ISG to ask for specific training courses on geoid computation beyond the yearly International Geoid School.
The most recent educational cooperations have been :
• Support to the National Geophysical Research Institute of Hyderabad (India) in computing a gravimetric geoid in South India.
• Fifteen day of dedicated training course on geoid computation procedures, held in June 2011, attended by three researchers of the Center of Geodesy and Geodynamics of Nigeria (National Space Resource and Development Agency).
• Local gravity model estimation over Bangladesh, based on GPS/leveling points locally collected, in cooperation with a researcher of the Survey of Bangladesh hosted at ISG in Milano, in February 2009, with individual training course.