Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system
lastmod 2019-04-19created 2019-04-192 edits
The UTM coordinate system (Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinate System) is one of the grid coordinate systems for representing the positions of points on the entire Earth in a unified scheme, developed in 1947. In the UTM coordinate system, the Earth is divided into vertical strips 6° of longitude wide and drawn with the transverse Mercator projection, then divided at intervals of 8° of latitude into a total of 60×20 grid cells, and a position is expressed as northing and easting coordinates relative to the origin set for each vertical zone. Whereas in a geographic coordinate system the rectangles shrink greatly toward the poles, the UTM coordinate system keeps the rectangular shape, which has the advantage of being very convenient for representing distance, area, direction, and so on.