Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk
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- Senior Lecturer
- Dept of Civil, Environ &Geomatic Eng
- Faculty of Engineering Science
Prior to coming to UCL, Jonathan Iliffe studied for his PhD at Nottingham University and then worked at CERN in Geneva for two years on the survey software used in the construction of the Large Electron-Positron Collider.
He has a continuing involvement with the rail industry on developing coordinate systems for major infrastructure projects, and is often called on to act as a consultant for industry and governments around the world. The type of work that he has been involved in include:
- Advising national government survey organisations on the provision of geodetic control for modern mapping. In recent years this has involved visiting countries in the Caribbean and the Middle East.
- Consultancies on international boundaries. This generally involves the determination of maritime boundaries through geodetic computations, but has also encompassed land boundaries in Africa visiting the countries to provide geodetic advice and attending international tribunal hearings.
- Organising workshops and training sessions for exploration companies.
- Scoping studies on future developments for national organisations such as the Ordnance Survey and the UK Hydrographic Office.
- Miscellaneous consultancies on geodetic and coordinate issues for industry, from air traffic control to the railways.
He is the author with Roget Lott of the book Datums and Map Projections for Remote Sensing, GIS and Surveying.


Jonathan Iliffe's expertise lies in the area of geodesy, and specifically those issues that relate to coordinate reference systems - national or local, on land or at sea.
Current or very recent research projects include determining the height corrector surfaces for use in the British Isles (transforming GPS data to the local height system in each country); the UKHO-sponsored VORF project (transforming GPS data to the different vertical coordinate reference systems used on land and at sea) and the subsequent development of this to the global domain under the patronage of the Royal Navy; and the development of the Snake projection (which gives near-unity scale factor along very large linear engineering projects such as railways). The latter concept has developed into the SnakeGrid system, now the de facto standard on Britain's rail network and incorporated into a variety of software and hardware platforms.
Jonathan set up the MSc in Hydrographic Surveying in collaboration with the Port of London Authority in 1999, and continues to be the programme director for this and for the MSc in Surveying.
He teaches on the MSc modules in Data Analysis, Mapping Science, Management/Group Project, Hydrographic Applications, and Ocean and Coastal Zone Management.
At undergraduate level he is a first year tutor and coordinates the second year scenario on design and construction of roads.
1983 | Doctor of Philosophy | University of Nottingham | |
1976 | Bachelor of Science (Honours) | University of Nottingham |