The DOMES Numbering System

Historically, the DOMES numbering system was designed at the start of the MERIT campaign in the early 80s in order to give an unambiguous identifier to all instrument reference points and markers involved in this MERIT campaign. This information was first published in a catalogue by the Bureau International de l'Heure (BIH) and entitled "Directory of MERIT Sites", hence DOMES. The BIH, together with the IGN group, was acting as a MERIT coordinating center.

Since the official start of IERS in 1988, the TRF section of the IERS/CB continued this task for all ITRF contributing stations.

The description of the DOMES numbering can be found in MERIT/COTES JOINT WORKING GROUPS, MERIT CAMPAIGN : CONNECTION OF REFERENCE FRAMES, IMPLEMENTATION PLAN, 1983.

The DOMES numbers are assigned by the IERS ITRS Product Center, hosted by the Geodesy Research Laboratory (LAREG), IGN France. Neighboring points are clustered into a site. The current rule is that all points which could be linked by a co-location survey (up to 30 km) should be included into a single site of the IERS network having a single DOMES site number.

Exemple

Looking at the 10002M006 DOMES number:

• the first 3 digits indicate the area, usually the country (100=France)
• the next 2 digits designate the site number within the country (02=Grasse)
• the next letter indicates the tracking point ("M" is a monument point such as pillar, pole, brass mark... ; "S" indicates the reference point of an instrument such as the intersection of axes of an SLR telescope, reference point of a VLBI antenna, DORIS or GPS Antenna Reference Point)
• the last 3 digits represent a sequential point number (here 006=GPS Pillar/brass mark)