Map Projections

Commonly Used Projections in Victoria

In our work, we constantly need to look up the EPSG codes based on a projection description, or vice versa. Here’s a list of the ones we commonly encounter in our work across Victoria.

  • EPSG:3857 – GlobalMercator (also known as EPSG:900913) (previously known as EPSG:3785) for Google, Bing and OpenStreetMap compatible tiles
  • EPSG:4326 – WGS84 / Long/Lat -  GlobalGeodetic for OpenLayers Base Map and Google Earth compatible tiles
  • EPSG:4283 – GDA94 / Long/Lat
  • EPSG:28354 – GDA94 / MGA Zone 54
  • EPSG:28355 – GDA94 / MGA Zone 55
  • EPSG:3111 – GDA94 / Vicgrid94
  • EPSG:32754 – WGS84 / UTM Zone 54
  • EPSG:32755 – WGS84 / UTM Zone 55
What is the difference between WGS84 and GDA94?

Projection strings used by MapInfo

  • MGA Zone 54 (GDA94) [EPSG:28354]: CoordSys Earth Projection 8, 116, “m”, 141, 0, 0.9996, 500000, 10000000
  • MGA Zone 55 (GDA94) [EPSG:28355]: CoordSys Earth Projection 8, 116, “m”, 147, 0, 0.9996, 500000, 10000000
  • UTM Zone 54 (WGS84) [EPSG:32754]: CoordSys Earth Projection 8, 104, “m”, 141, 0, 0.9996, 500000, 10000000
  • UTM Zone 55 (WGS84) [EPSG:32755]: CoordSys Earth Projection 8, 104, “m”, 147, 0, 0.9996, 500000, 10000000
  • Longitude / Latitude (WGS84) [EPSG:4326]: CoordSys Earth Projection 1, 104
  • Longitude / Latitude (Australia GDA94) [EPSG:4283]: CoordSys Earth Projection 1, 116
  • GlobalMercator [EPSG:3857]: CoordSys Earth Projection 10, 157, 7, 0

Map Tile Scales

Thanks to http://indicatrix.wordpress.com for sourcing this handy reference for map tile scales used by Google Maps, Bing Maps, etc.

Zoom level Scale denominator
0 559,082,264
1 279,541,132
2 139,770,566
3 69,885,283
4 34,942,642
5 17,471,321
6 8,735,660
7 4,367,830
8 2,183,915
9 1,091,958
10 545,979
11 272,989
12 136,495
13 68,247
14 34,124
15 17,062
16 8,531
17 4,265
18 2,133
19 1,066
20 533