How to find and use Bursa Wolf parameters for accurate coordinate transformation

Many times I had and heard about the problem of missing Bursa Wolf parameters for more accurate re-projections of data. While GRASS deals with them properly, most of the other GIS and also postgis do not. In Italy we have one of these odd problems related to the fact that historically we used to use as the main projection the EPSG:3003, Monte Mario / Italy Zone 1 projection.
Lately, everyone is migrating for standardization to the EPSG:32632, WGS 84 / UTM zone 32N.

What is the problem in all this?
The fact that the epsg 3004 comes like the following:

PROJCS["Monte Mario / Italy zone 1",
GEOGCS["Monte Mario",
DATUM["Monte_Mario",
SPHEROID["International 1924", 6378388.0, 297.0, AUTHORITY["EPSG","7022"]],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","6265"]],
PRIMEM["Greenwich", 0.0, AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],
UNIT["degree", 0.017453292519943295],
AXIS["Lon", EAST],
AXIS["Lat", NORTH],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","4265"]],
PROJECTION["Transverse_Mercator"],
PARAMETER["central_meridian", 9.0],
PARAMETER["latitude_of_origin", 0.0],
PARAMETER["scale_factor", 0.9996],
PARAMETER["false_easting", 1500000.0],
PARAMETER["false_northing", 0.0],
UNIT["m", 1.0],
AXIS["x", EAST],
AXIS["y", NORTH],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","3003"]]

which doesn't contain the Bursa Wolf parameters (to know more about it read here) without which there can be reprojection problems of many meters.

So we need a way to get those Bursa Wolf parameters.
Thank God there is a nice site called: http://www.epsg-registry.org

Jump in there and click on the upper tab called: retrieve by code.
You could also search in the query by filter tab, this will be explained later in the post.

I will insert epsg 1660 and click on retrieve, which supplies me the following:



Select your area and click on Report selected results.



Please note that the domain of validity is described. Italy mainland, which is what I need.

Fill in what is asked and just press play :)


On the lower part you will find the needed Bursa Wolf parameters, often also referred to as the "towgs parameters" :)

What is needed to be done, is to add to the 3003 definition these parameters:

TOWGS84[-104.1, -49.1, -9.9, 0.971, -2.917, 0.714, -11.68],

which will result in having the following definition:

PROJCS["Monte Mario / Italy zone 1",
GEOGCS["Monte Mario",
 DATUM["Monte Mario",
   SPHEROID["International 1924", 6378388.0, 297.0, AUTHORITY["EPSG","7022"]],
   TOWGS84[-104.1, -49.1, -9.9, 0.971, -2.917, 0.714, -11.68],
   AUTHORITY["EPSG","6265"]],
 PRIMEM["Greenwich", 0.0, AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],
 UNIT["degree", 0.017453292519943295],
 AXIS["Geodetic longitude", EAST],
 AXIS["Geodetic latitude", NORTH],
 AUTHORITY["EPSG","4265"]],
PROJECTION["Transverse_Mercator"],
PARAMETER["central_meridian", 9.0],
PARAMETER["latitude_of_origin", 0.0],
PARAMETER["scale_factor", 0.9996],
PARAMETER["false_easting", 1500000.0],
PARAMETER["false_northing", 0.0],
UNIT["m", 1.0],
AXIS["Easting", EAST],
AXIS["Northing", NORTH],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","10003003"]]

Note that I also changed the 3003 to 10003003 to be sure tyo not have conflicts with other crs. I created that in postgis as addionional CRS in order to be able to do proper transformations.

Usually you will not have the proper epsg code to use, right?
Luckily Antonio (thanks man, got a link to share?) supplied us with a better method to find what you are looking for.
Assuming you are still on the epsg-registry site:
1. start by clicking on "query by filter" button;
2. click on "Type" textbox and choose Coordinate Transformation and then Single only;
3. write the name of the area of use (e.g. Italy) in the "Area" textbox and finally click on Search button.
You will get a whole list of possible transformations as a result, which will probably be too many, so if you want to limit them to your area of interest to get the most precisely defined transformation for your region, you have to follow step 1. and 2. the same as before before.
Then:
2. write the name of the transformation of use (e.g. "Monte Mario to WGS 84") in the "Name" textbox
3. click on "Type" textbox and choose Coordinate Transformation, Single only and finally click on Search button.


In JGrass / uDig this is way easier. Click on the button reporting the projection definition. A window will ask to choose the crs from a list. A second tab says: Custom CRS. Select that one and paste your crs definition (in my case the 10003003) into the box and press apply and ok.

Thanks to the GFOSS.it mailinglist for discussing this and to Antonio Falciano for reporting the epsg-registry site.