[GIS] Transforming coordinates from WGS84 to Gauss-Krüger 5

coordinate systemcoordinatesgpsrwgs84

GPS coordinates in the format of WGS84 are quite common. I need to transform them into Gauss-Krüger coordinates but I have no idea how to do that. The only things I know are that it is not easy and I have to use the Helmert-transformation.

I usually work with r-project and would therefore prefer to work with a r-package to solve my problem. Is there a package which could handle that?

Is it actually necessary to transform the "GPS coordinates" in order to create a hillshade map with different "landmarks" according to the coordinates? Is there any open source software to create a map and then mark the positions based on the coordinates?

Best Answer

Given that you know R you should have made a small reproducible example, but here you go.

xy <- data.frame(matrix(c(8.58, 10, 11, 10.27, 10.69, 51.52, 52.26, 51.4, 50.9, 49.43), ncol=2))

library(sp)
colnames(xy) <- c('lon', 'lat')
coordinates(xy) <- ~ lon + lat
proj4string(xy) <- CRS("+proj=longlat +datum=WGS84")

p <- spTransform(xy, CRS("+proj=tmerc +lat_0=0 +lon_0=27 +k=1 +x_0=5500000 +y_0=0 +ellps=krass +units=m +no_defs"))
# see http://spatialreference.org/ref/epsg/pulkovo-1942-gauss-kruger-zone-5/

gauss <- coordinates(p)
colnames(gauss) <- c('x', 'y')
gauss