U.S. Survey Foot: Resources

General Information

• A Tale of Two Feet - This article explains how NOAA and NIST are preparing to drop U.S. survey foot and adopt the international survey foot in a move towards more precise positioning.
• U.S. survey foot webinars. Fate of the U.S. Survey Foot after 2022: A Conversation with NGS (4/25/2019) and Putting the Best “Foot” Forward: Ending the Era of the U.S. Survey Foot Putting the Best “Foot” Forward: Ending the Era of the U.S. Survey Foot (12/12/2019). These NGS webinar describe the background on the measurement unit change and the plans to retire the U.S. survey foot.  Video and slides are available for download.
• State Plane webinars. Be a Part of the Change: A Guide to Customizing State Plane for 2022 (10/10/2019) and State Plane 2022: The Shape of Things to Come (6/11/2020). These webinars are mainly about the State Plane Coordinate System, but they include information about the foot definition and state legislation at the end.
• Extension on issuing a final determination. A Federal Register Notice (FRN) was published on July 10, 2020 announcing a delay in issuing the final determination FRN on deprecating the U.S. survey foot, which will be will be published by September 28, 2020.

National Geodetic Survey resources on modernization of the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS), including the State Plane Coordinate System of 2022 (SPCS2022)

• National Geodetic Survey “New Datums” information for modernization of the NSRS
• State legislation for the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS). A legislation template is available near the bottom of this page.  Also available are examples of actual state legislation and a map showing the status of legislation for the existing and previous State Plane Coordinate Systems.
• General information on the State Plane Coordinate System (SPCS)
• Current Policy for SPCS2022
• 2018 Federal Register Notice soliciting input on the draft SPCS2022 policy and procedures. The official SPCS2022 policy and procedures have been updated to reflect the change in the foot definition.
• NGS map of the State Plane Coordinate System of 1983 legislation and U.S. survey foot adoption by jurisdiction
• Two Right Feet? U.S. Survey Feet vs. International Survey Feet (video)

For Fun

• xkcd: US Survey Foot comic.

Credit: xkcd.com