User:Revent/GDACS

GDACS is a project of the Maricopa County Department of Transportation. More information can be found at https://www.maricopa.gov/590/Survey. Many of the monuments found by GDACS are located inside handholes, surrounded by ~4 ft white concrete disks, on the centerlines of major streets, often at intersections. These streets are mostly paved in black asphalt, and the locations of the monuments are often visible on satellite imagery. This allows the calibration of this imagery, on an approximate 1 mile grid, over the majority of Maricopa County.

Read this before using this data

These coordinate tables are not in the correct coordinate system for OSM. The exact coordinate system meta data is stated on each document. The positions and elevations MUST be converted to WGS 84 before use on OSM. One tool to do so is located at http://gisweb.azdeq.gov/arcgis/coordinates/. Please use the northing and easting state plane coordinates, in international feet, when converting.

Comments regarding copyright in geodetic survey data cited here

The purpose of the GDACS survey was "to determine and preserve United States Public Land Survey (USPLS) corners." The coordinates given are the locations of physical features on the surface of the Earth, as determined by the exact process described in the Surveyor's Notes. This was a mechanical process that involved no human creativity, by design, as the goal of the project is to determine the "fact" of the exact location of the monument. Per the US Copyright Compendium, 313.3(C):

Facts are not copyrightable and cannot be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. “No one may claim originality as to facts … because facts do not owe their origin to an act of authorship.” Feist, 499 U.S. at 347 (internal citation omitted). A person who finds and records a particular fact does not create that fact; he or she merely discovers its existence. As a result, facts “are never original” and Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act “is universally understood to prohibit any copyright in facts.” Id. at 356. “[This] is true of all facts—scientific, historical, biographical, and news of the day.” Id. at 348.

I make no assertion that the documents cited are not copyrightable, merely that the coordinates given, based upon the evidence stated in the documents themselves, cannot possibly contain any more than uncopyrightable de minimis authorship. As such, they are clearly in the public domain, as any other competent survey firm (a number were used) would obtain an indistinguishable result.

Maricopa County Geodetic Densification and Cadastral Survey

Township	Range		MCR Book	MCR Page	Recording number	Link
T1N	R1W	Record of Survey	694	38	2004-0801912	[1]
T1N	R3E	Record of Survey	800	21	2005-1917603	[2]
T1N	R6E	Record of Survey	661	17	2003-1616791	[3]
T2N	R5W	Affidavit of Correction			2007-1059837	[4]
T2N	R4W	Record of Survey	579	39	2001-1156601	[5]
T2N	R1W	Affidavit of Correction			2007-1059836	[6]
T2N	R3E	Record of Survey	708	10	2004-1171911	[7]
T2N	R4E	Record of Survey	734	10	2005-0298825	[8]
T3N	R1W	Record of Survey	688	41	2004-0625380	[9]
T3N	R1E	Record of Survey	863	7	2006-1155513	[10]
T3N	R5E	Record of Survey	752	33	2005-0747714	[11]
T4N	R6W	Record of Survey	703	14	2004-1038697	[12]
T4N	R1W	Record of Survey	678	15	2004-0346339	[13]
T4N	R5E	Record of Survey	700	12	2004-0962597	[14]
T5N	R1E	Record of Survey	588	3	2002-0297901	[15]
T5N	R6E	Amended Record of Survey	682	29	2004-0458053	[16]
T5N	R7E	Amended Record of Survey	682	27	2004-0456766	[17]
T6N	R4E	Record of Survey	755	37	2005-0820029	[18]
T1S	R5W	Record of Survey	716	27	2004-1423798	[19]
T1S	R6W	Record of Survey	716	26	2004-1423671	[20]
T1S	R5W	Affidavit of Correction			2007-1059838	[21]
T1S	R4W	Affidavit of Correction			2007-1059839	[22]
T1S	R3E	Record of Survey	673	27	2004-0220249	[23]
T2S	R2W	Record of Survey	759	27	2005-0915361	[24]
T2S	R1W	Record of Survey	752	21	2005-0744087	[25]
T4S	R1E	Monument Inventory	746	8	2005-0586993	[26]
T5S	R6W	Monument Inventory	948	35	2007-1041759	[27]
			673	25	2004-0220003	[28]