Traverse adjustment.

Abstract

A traverse is a series of consecutive lines whose lengths and directions have been determined from field measurements. It is chiefly used to determine the mutual location of survey lines and station positions. Data reduction procedures have been applied to reduce slope distances to ellipsoidal distances to grid distances. Traverse computations were then performed in Universal Transverse Mercator grid coordinates. The computations included adjustment by the method of approximation and by the method of least squares observation equations. Three resection points adjacent to the traverse line were used to analyse the quality of the results. Adjusted traverse coordinates obtained by various methods were compared. The best results were obtained by the least squares method with selected weights incorporated for each observation.