The method that is proposed in the present paper is a special case of squared M split estimation. It concerns a direct estimation of the shift between the parameters of the functional models of geodetic observations. The shift in question may result from, for example, deformation of a geodetic network or other non-random disturbances that may influence coordinates of the network points. The paper also presents the example where such shift is identified with a phase displacement of a wave. The shift is estimated on the basis of wave observations and without any knowledge where such displacement took place. The estimates of the shift that are proposed in the paper are named Shift- M split estimators.

In deformation analyses, it is important to find a stable reference frame and therefore the stability of the possible reference points must be controlled. There are several methods to test such stability. The paper’s objective is to examine one of such methods, namely the method based on application of R-estimation, for its sensitivity to gross errors. The method in question applies three robust estimators, however, it is not robust itself. The robustness of the method depends on the number of unstable points (the fewer unstable points there are, the more robust is the proposed method). Such property makes it important to know how the estimates applied and the strategy itself respond to a gross error. The empirical influence functions (EIF) can provide necessary information and help to understand the response of the strategy for a gross error. The paper presents examples of EIFs of the estimates, their application in the strategy and describes how important and useful is such knowledge in practice.

In the recent years three-dimensional buildings modelling based on an raw air- borne laser scanning point clouds, became an important issue. A significant step towards 3D modelling is buildings segmentation in laser scanning data. For this purpose an algorithm, based on the multi-resolution analysis in wavelet domain, is proposed in the paper. The proposed method concentrates only on buildings, which have to be segmented. All other objects and terrain surface have to be removed. The algorithm works on gridded data. The wavelet-based segmentation proceeds in the following main steps: wavelet decomposition up to appropriately chosen level, thresholding on the chosen and adjacent levels, removal of all coefficients in the so-called influence pyramid and wavelet reconstruction. If buildings on several scaling spaces have to be segmented, the procedure should be applied iteratively. The wavelet approach makes the procedure very fast. However, the limitation of the proposed procedure is its scale-based distinction between objects to be segmented and the rest.

A new method to transform from Cartesian to geodetic coordinates is presented. It is based on the solution of a system of nonlinear equations with respect to the coordinates of the point projected onto the ellipsoid along the normal. Newton’s method and a modification of Newton’s method were applied to give third-order convergence. The method developed was compared to some well known iterative techniques. All methods were tested on three ellipsoidal height ranges: namely, (-10 – 10 km) (terrestrial), (20 – 1000 km), and (1000 – 36000 km) (satellite). One iteration of the presented method, implemented with the third-order convergence modified Newton’s method, is necessary to obtain a satisfactory level of accuracy for the geodetic latitude ( σ φ < 0.0004”) and height ( σ h < 10 − 6 km, i.e. less than a millimetre) for all the heights tested. The method is slightly slower than the method of Fukushima (2006) and Fukushima’s (1999) fast implementation of Bowring’s (1976) method.

The paper deals with large-scale crustal deformation due to hydrological surface loads and its influence on seasonal variation of GPS estimated heights. The research was concentrated on the area of Poland. The deformation caused by continental water storage has been computed on the basis of WaterGAP Hydrological Model data by applying convolution of water masses with appropriate Green’s function. Obtained site displacements were compared with height changes estimated from GPS observations using the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) method. Long time series of the solutions for 4 stations were used for evaluation of surface loading phenomena. Good agreement both in amplitude and phase was found, however some discrepancies remain which are assigned to single point positioning technique deficiencies. Annual repeatability of water cycle and demanding procedure for computing site displacements for each site, allowed to develop a simple model for Poland which could be applied to remove (or highly reduce) seasonal hydrological signal from time series of GPS solutions.