GSPP a general surface representation module designed for geodesy

GSPP is a computer program system which has been developed for the purposes of automatically determining and representing gravity field surfaces like the geoid, the field of gravity anomalies or deviations of the vertical at prescribed altitude, etc. The system processes gravity field information given by a heterogeneous set of linear functionals of the anomalous potential superimposed by noise, and provides automatically gravity field surfaces in terms of profiles, contour maps and/or 3-dimensional representations. The solution is generally based on least-squares collocation; for a homogeneous data set, a simple weighted average interpolation is available as well. Based on the given data, surface function values at the grid points of a regular rectangular grid are predicted. The representation of the surfaces is smooth using bicubic spline functions. GSPP has a control unit which performs all necessary decision processes and such reduces the user's decision making to a minimum. The system has been designed for geodetic purposes only; however, because of its versatility and flexibility it presents itself also for applications in other geosciences.