Many of the features and assets we capture in our GIS databases are located in the field using GPS or other satellite navigation systems. GPS is the United States satellite navigation system. There are others, including Glonass, Galileo, and BeiDou. Collectively, these are known as Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs). For the sake of simplicity, we will focus on GPS for this recipe.

Not all GPS data is created equal. GPS comes in different grades, which can impact the accuracy of the data collected. For example, a normal smartphone has GPS capability but is only accurate on average to within 15 to 20 feet horizontally. A dedicated survey-grade unit can be as accurate as 1 cm horizontally. There are also sources of error such as overall locations of the satellites, atmospheric conditions, and others. So, how can we know the overall quality of the data in our GIS database that was collected with GPS?

Geodatabases allow you to automatically capture...