AUSTRALIA COMPLIANCE ENGINE

GDA94 vs GDA2020 Risk Validator

Simulate the official 1.8m north-east tectonic shift between GDA94 and GDA2020, model time-dependent plate drift, and classify your engineering risk per ICSM / Geoscience Australia standards.

Selected year: 1994  |  AGD66: 1966  ·  GDA94: 1994  ·  GDA2020: 2020

The 1.8m Problem: Why Australia Has Two National Datums

The Indo-Australian plate moves at approximately 7 centimetres per year — one of the fastest-moving tectonic plates on Earth. GDA94, defined at 1994.0, diverged from global WGS84/ITRF realizations by roughly 1.7–2.0 metres by the 2010s. ICSM officially quantifies the GDA94→GDA2020 shift as approximately 1.8m north-east, and mandates use of the official NTv2 grid transformation for all precision surveys.

Any GIS workflow treating GDA94 and GDA2020 as equivalent without transformation will accrue this error silently, with compounding drift relative to current WGS84 realizations.

→ Read the Full Australia Datum Authority Guide