Problem with Swiss coordinate system overlay in WMS

Question

I have administrative boundaries data for communities in Switzerland from SwissTopo. Original data came in shape files with 'Bessel 1841 Hotine Oblique Mercator Azimuth Natural Origin' projection.

Full info from ArcGIS:

Projection: Hotine_Oblique_Mercator_Azimuth_Natural_Origin
False_Easting: -9419820.590700
False_Northing: 200000.000000
Scale_Factor: 1.000000
Azimuth: 90.000000
Longitude_Of_Center: 7.439583
Latitude_Of_Center: 46.952406
Linear Unit: Meter (1.000000)

Geographic Coordinate System: GCS_Bessel_1841
Angular Unit: Degree (0.017453292519943299)
Prime Meridian: Greenwich (0.000000000000000000)
Datum: D_Bessel_1841
  Spheroid: Bessel_1841
    Semimajor Axis: 6377397.155000000300000000
    Semiminor Axis: 6356078.962818188600000000
    Inverse Flattening: 299.152812799999990000

I tried defining and projecting this data into 'CH1903 LV03' (as described here) in ArcGIS 9.3 and loaded into GIS Cloud service.

When I overlay my data onto Google Maps or Open Street Map, they seem to be shifted ~200/300m NE from correct position. This happens to both original data in CH1903 LV03 and data reprojected to oter CS.

Has anyone of you encountered solution for such problem?

Answer 1

What geographic/datum transformation did you use in ArcGIS? There aren't any for Bessel 1841 because that's an ellipsoid, rather than a geodetic datum. Is it really CH1903? Or CH1903+? The use of Bessel 1841 implies to me that the data originally came from a GRID or coverage. CH1903/CH1903+ wasn't supported in ArcInfo Workstation, so only the ellipsoid could be written to the prj.adf file. Try to define the coordinate system for the original data again as CH1903+ LV95 or CH1903 LV03, then try to project it to WGS 1984.

For the transformation try CH1903_To_WGS_1984_2 or CH1903_Plus_To_WGS_1984_1.

Answer 2

Google Maps doesn't use WGS84. Try re-projecting the original data to EPSG:3857

+proj=merc +a=6378137 +b=6378137 +lat_ts=0.0 +lon_0=0.0 +x_0=0.0 +y_0=0 +k=1.0 +units=m +nadgrids=@null +no_defs

ESRI used to use Web Mercator Auxiliary Sphere (WKID 102100) or Web Mercator projection (WKID 102113). You can download the .PRJ file from spatialreference.org.

Answer 3

Some years ago I had a similar problem which I discussed in the PROJ4 mailing list (discussion thread). Some more material is also found here.

Answer 4

Not a full answer, but you may have luck using MapWarper to experiment w/ different projections, as well as manual warping?

I haven't tried it, so can't fully endorse it, but it sure seems like a neat tool...

Answer 5

What scale was your data collected at? Although, in thinking more about it, the offset seems to be uniform...

Answer 6

Had a similar-ish issue during the summer. Who knows, may inspire a solution in your case.

ArcGIS tile numbering and shift

I was displaying cached (fused) ArcGIS layers in OL. And they were always off. At every zoom level. Turns out it had to do with the tile numbering scheme. ArcGIS tiles are numbered from Top Left while everything else in OL (e.g. WMS) was from bottom left. And this caused a consistent shift in data. Solution is the above link.

Answer 7

This i most likely an issue with DATUM transformation not beeing applied during the coordinate transformation. ArcMap can be a mess with these kind of things..

Have you tried for example first using other tools to first transform the data to WGS84 and then transforming it to EPSG:900913?

I see that swisstopo has some scripts doing this..

You could also use the GDAL library to try transforming into WGS84 first using ogr2ogr. But be aware of the following:

There seems to be an issue with the EPSG definition of those swiss systems, especially regarding the datum transformation. Verify that your EPSG specification for CH1903 / LV03 (epsg:21781) includes TOWGS84[674.374,15.056,405.346,0,0,0,0]