The Full Form of WGS is World Geodetic System.

The Global Positioning System uses the World Geodetic System (WGS84) as its reference coordinate system.

It’s made up of a reference ellipsoid, a standard coordinate system, altitude data, and a geoid.

Similar to the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83), it uses the Earth’s center mass as the coordinate origin.

Geodesists believe the error is less than 2 centimeters which is better than NAD83.

Pinpoint Your Position Using WGS84

When you need to accurately enter coordinates in a GIS, the first step is to uniquely define all coordinates on Earth.

This means you need a reference frame for your latitude and longitude coordinates because where would you be on Earth without having reference to it?

Because the Earth is curved – and in GIS we deal with flat map projections – we need to accommodate both the curved and flat views of the world. Surveyors and geodesists have accurately defined locations on Earth.