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I could see that CRS and SRS are referred as different components in this question Is WGS84 itself a Coordinate Reference System?

Could anyone please explain whether CRS and SRS are same or different?

Alex
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Sivaram Koduri
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  • @PolyGeo: Apologies for not adding it. I have updated it now. – Sivaram Koduri Mar 17 '16 at 13:24
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    I think water is mudded on the topic. https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/23690/is-wgs84-itself-a-coordinate-reference-system#:~:text=It%20is%20made%20up%20of,refer%20to%20three%20different%20things! – Tkoma Jan 06 '21 at 18:47

1 Answers1

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As of Wikipedia:

A spatial reference system (SRS) or coordinate reference system (CRS)

They are synonyms.

What you see in the linked article is the difference between the reference-ellipsoid which is part of the spatial reference system. In your case WGS84 is just an ellipsoid, which itself more or less accurately describes the earth. However without any grid there's no way to say where on this sphere a given point is because you don't have any information on where is zero, in which direction is north, how long is a unit. Thus you also need some coordinate system which is the second part of the CRS.

However there exist a bunch of reference-ellipsoids which are almost allways used with only one single coordinate system, like WGS84 is allways used in combination with geographic coordinates having a latitude and a longitude. However you could also express a location based on that ellipsoid in metric coordinates also.

Alfe
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MakePeaceGreatAgain
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    Thanks for the answer and I have seen the Wikipedia article but was confused by this question http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/23690/is-wgs84-itself-a-coordinate-reference-system?rq=1. Please correct me if I'm understanding it wrongly. – Sivaram Koduri Mar 17 '16 at 13:29