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The end of September last year marked two decades since the permanent TUBO station at the Brno Technical University has joined the extensive network of European GPS stations. The abbreviation TUBO refers to the words Technical University of Brno and this station of the Department of Geodesy of the Faculty of Civil Engineering helps surveyors and other experts to measure not only the movements of the Eurasian continent, but also of other tectonic plates. Therefore, it is partly thanks to the TUBO station we know that Brno is moving about 2.5 centimetres northeast every year.

“Geodesy is one of the oldest fields at BUT. It was established a mere year after the civil engineering field itself, i.e. in 1900, when the first students of this course came to school. The field developed significantly during the first republic, when for example, Bohumil Kladivo worked here, who established the first geodetic (gravitational) reference point in Czechoslovakia in the basement of our building A. Gravitational measurements help especially in precise geodetic works,” says Josef Weigel from the Institute of Geodesy at FCE BUT about the history of the field.

Thanks to the exact position of the TUBO point, determined not only from American GPS satellites, but also from Russian (GLONASS), European (GALILEO) and Asian systems, scientists gain information about the movement of similar “fixed” points on Earth. “Our point within the European continent moves about 25.8 millimetres each year, i.e. about one inch to the northeast. The altitude of this point practically does not change. The permanent points make it possible to monitor not only the movement of the Eurasian lithospheric plate, but also, for example, the gradual movement of the African plate towards Europe,” describes Weigel. Today, TUBO is one of the stations in the European EUREF network, which it has joined as the second permanent station in the Czech Republic and the first one based at a university.

Today, virtually everyone has their own small GPS station, either on their mobile phone or in their car. However, these mobile devices do not normally have sufficiently accurate physical and mathematical corrections for satellite data, so they will target a person or a car with maximum accuracy of several metres. Millimetre-accurate data from permanent stations is still needed. “Surveyors first researched the method itself, increasing the accuracy of the technology, but GPS coordinates are now a common part of almost every phone. Therefore, we are moving towards new uses of localisation, for example in smart agriculture, construction 4.0 or smart production plants. Sensors are now much more accessible, the number of coordinate recipients has increased and data transmission has accelerated. Today, the exact location helps, for example, in the collection of geodata for digital technical maps and drawings in construction, as well as for many other purposes,” said Jiří Bureš, who, together with other colleagues, ensures the smooth operation of the station.

The TUBO point is part of the network used by the State Administration of Land Surveying and Cadastre, so virtually anyone can access data from the BUT station today, not only students or employees. The information is used by surveyors, but also by professionals in the field of machine navigation, smart agriculture or by surveyors acquiring data for cadastre and construction. Users can download real data or accurate corrections continuously in real time. “We created the first-ever satellite network monitoring geodynamics together with the Polish University in Wrocław, where we studied the changes in the Králický sněžník massif. Even today, geodesy students regularly go to the valley below, re-measuring the points in the area and examining the movement of this massif,” Weigel commented on the beginnings of this international cooperation.

You will find geodesy all around us, not only in the mountains, but especially in the Cadastre of Real Estate and on construction sites. Positioning data help, for example, with more accurate drone navigation, in determining the correct shape or axis of elevator shafts in high-rise buildings and much more. “We map caves with the help of scanners in speleology and we prepare materials for information models of buildings. There is also geodetic astronomy, which in turn determines the astronomical coordinates and deviations of the verticals. After all, our astronomical observatory was such the first basis for the establishment of today’s Brno Observatory. So you can apply geodesy from the underground all the way up to the space,” Bureš described the wide range of surveyors.

Among the world-renowned experts from this workplace is, for example, Viliam Vatrt, who helped determine the global height of the zero point, which is ideally used to calculate altitudes across the entire planet. Vatrt even has its own constant W0 ranked next to basic physical constants, such as the speed of light or Newton’s gravitational constant. This zero point helps people all over the Earth to correctly determine the height of mountains, changes in ocean levels or the altitude aircrafts. It is also used to match atomic clock data, because even the most accurate clocks measure time slightly differently at different altitudes.