International Surveying Association

The general management of the Association is carried out by the president and vice-president, the current organizational work is supervised by the general secretary. The governing bodies are the Council, the Executive Committee and the Bureau. The Association has created four commissions responsible for the development of large areas:

• commission 1 - reference basis
• commission 2 - gravitational field
• Commission 3 - Earth rotation and geodynamics
• commission 4 - determination of coordinates and applied tasks

In turn, the commissions are divided into 24 subcommissions and form working and research groups in which scientific work is concentrated ^[2] .

IAH regularly holds general and scientific assemblies, conferences and symposia. It publishes the Journal of Geodesy ^[3] , the IAH Bulletin, a surveyor's handbook, special publications and proceedings of symposia.

International geodetic surveys organized and directed by the IAH are conducted at three levels. The first level is the determination of the positions of points on the earth's surface relative to local reference points, which is necessary for compiling topographic maps. The second is terrain-wide surveying of the country, carried out in relation to the global reference network and taking into account the curvature of the earth's surface. The third level - global (highest) geodesy - determining the shape of the Earth and the study of its gravitational field ^[4] .

In Russia, direct interaction and cooperation with the IAH is carried out by the geodesy section of the National Geophysical Committee of the Russian Academy of Sciences ^[5] . Once every four years, it prepares for the MAG “National Report” on the results obtained by Russian surveyors for the reporting period of time ^[6] .

The MAG records its history from 1862. This year, the Prussian surveyor General I. Bayer formulated his “Proposals for Central European Degree Measurements”. The goal of the international cooperation proposed in the document was to connect the numerous Central European observatories with triangulation networks and to determine regional and local anomalies of the Earth's curvature. By the end of 1862, 16 countries, including Russia, expressed their consent to participate in the project.

In October 1864, the first “General Conference of Representatives for Central European Degree Measurements" was held in Berlin. The conference agreed on the organizational structure (Standing Committee, Central Bureau and General Conferences). Almost all European countries soon joined the project, and then a number of countries in Asia and America. In 1886, the organization received the name "International Geodetic Association" ^[7] .

I. Bayer became the first president of the newly created organization in 1864, he held this post unchanged until 1885 ^[8] .

Due to problems arising from the First World War, the Association was restructured and in 1919 became part of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. The organization acquired its modern name in 1946 ^[1] .

The IAH considers the project, implemented on the initiative of I. Bayer, as its predecessor, and perceives 1862 as the year the Association was founded. Accordingly, in 2012, the MAG celebrated its 150th anniversary ^{[7] [9]} , and the Geodesy Section of the National Geophysical Committee of the Russian Federation ^[10] joined in congratulations on the anniversary.

• Madrid Astronomical Observatory

• Official website of the association
• Geodesy Section of the National Geophysical Committee of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• National Geographic Institute of France (French)
• Site of the Laboratory for Research in Geodesy (LAREG) (fr.)