Geodesy: General theory and methodology 2015-2018

The summary of research activities concerning general theory and methodology performed in Poland in the period of 2015–2018 is presented as a national report for the 27th IUGG (International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics) General Assembly. It contains the results of research on new or improved methods and variants of robust parameter estimation and their application, especially to control network analysis. Reliability analysis of the observation system and an integrated adjustment approach are also given. The identifiability (ID) index as a new measure for minimal detectable bias (MDB) in the observation system of a network, has been introduced. A new method of covariance function parameter estimation in the least squares collocation has been developed. The robustified version of the Shift-Msplit estimation, termed as Shift-M*split estimation, which enables estimation of parameter differences (robustly), without the need of prior estimation of the parameters, has been introduced. Results on the analysis of geodetic time series, particularly Earth orientation parameter time series, geocenter time series, permanent station coordinates and sea level variation time series are also provided in this review paper. The entire bibliography of related works is provided in the references.