Monday, November 25, 2013

EPC: Matlab software to estimate Euler pole parameters

Euler Pole Calculator (EPC) is a MATLAB software to estimate the Euler pole parameters of some points located on the Earth's surface within the same rigid tectonic block.
The estimation of Euler pole parameters has always been an important issue in global tectonics and geodynamics studies. In addition, the increasing number of permanent GPS stations and the ease of access to their data, along with advances in computers, promise new methods and tools for the estimation and the quantitative analysis of Euler pole parameters. Therefore, I developed the Euler pole calculator software using a set of mathematical algorithms based on the model of tectonic plate motion on a spherical surface. The software is able to calculate the expected velocities for any points located on the earth’s surface given the relevant Euler pole parameters and to estimate the Euler pole parameters given the observed velocities of a set of sites located on the same tectonic plate.
The EPC main window shows the estimated Euler pole parameters for the North American tectonic plate, based on a sample input data file.
The EPC main window

I developed the software using the MATLAB programming language with a Graphical User Interface. Therefore the software is cross-platform and can be run under the majority of operating systems(Windows, Macintosh and Unix/Linux). It requires the basic MATLAB as well as Statistics and Mapping toolboxes. You can find a complete discussion about mathematical algorithms and functions of the software in this paper.
EPC is available as an open source software program under the BSD license. The source code can be downloaded from the software home page at SourceForge and also at the GPS Toolbox website. The software was developed in the hope that it will be useful. Even though, it was already tested and correct functionality was assured, it is published as it is (WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY).
Please cite the software if you used it in your research and found it useful, as:
Goudarzi, M. A., Cocard, M., and Santerre, R. (2013). EPC: Matlab software to estimate Euler pole parameters. GPS Solutions. doi:10.1007/s10291-013-0354-4.

5 comments:

  1. Dear Mr. Goudarzi,

    My name is Yong and I'm a Phd student from University of Otago.
    I got a question which related to the EPC software and I'm highly appreciate if could hear your reply.
    From my understanding, the EPC is able to provide the information of uncertainties such as the error ellipse (sigma major/lat and sigma minor/long). But can the EPC software also provide the azimuth of error ellipse and sum of squared weighted residuals divided by degrees of freedom (or χ2)?

    Looking for your kindly reply.

    ​Best regards,
    Yong

    Yong Chien Zheng
    PhD Candidate
    University of Otago, New Zealand;
    ​MSc (Satellite Surveying); BEng (Geomatics)
    Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

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    Replies
    1. No, unfortunately the EPC software is not able to provide the azimuth of error ellipse and sum of squared weighted residuals divided by degrees of freedom.

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  2. Hello Mr. Goudarzi

    My name is Putri Pratiwi from the Bandung National Institute of Technology, I want to ask about the EPC tools in Matlab, why when I input data with the appropriate format the tools can't be run in the sense of "the input data has not yet been loaded", when I see there are some wrong function in the epc.m script, then how to fix it, because there is no clue for the error in matlab

    Regards,
    Putri Pratiwi
    student
    Department of Geodetic Engineering
    Bandung National Institute of Technology, Indonesia

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    Replies
    1. My name is Lan Min, I have got the same question with you. Do you solve it yet?

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    2. Hello, this type of errors happen normally when the input data are not in the proper format; it can be anything from a missing data field to a comma and so on. However, since then, I have published two newer versions of the software in which some compatibility issues with newer versions of MATLAB have been fixed. You can try one of those versions. Otherwise, you can post a sample of your input data here for more investigations.

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