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xv
The principal growth area for new surveying practices has been at sea,
where the absence of visible marks at the surface, and the need to operate
out of sight of land, has led to the development of a new branch of the
s\xh]tci-marine geodesy. The impetus for this development has of course
been economic; the need is for extremely accurate surveys to locate trial
borings, well-heads, pipelines and drilling rigs required for the com
mercial exploitation of the offshore oilfields. Because some of the most
valuable sites are to be found in places far beyond the conventional and
practical limits of national control surveys, the need to relate such surveys
to properly defined projection systems has become an important aspect
of locating points or boundaries on the sea bed.
Like the first edition, the present book is concerned with principles and
practical methods rather than with the formal description of the 50 or so
individual map projections which have been commonly used. Thus it is
not until Chapter 10 that the derivation of any specific map projection is
described in any detail. Here only three are described, and primarily to
demonstrate the methods of analysis which may be employed to define a
map projection to meet a specific requirement. Far more important than