The documentation and administration of the national boundary – which also includes keeping the archives of the original data – are organized in the process «Geodetic Control Points» of the Geodesy Division at swisstopo.
The goal is to provide distinct data and to perceptibly improve the documentation using a well-conceived model. Ultimately, the course of the national boundary must be unequivocally described in the official reference frame for Switzerland (LV03 or LV95), in the European reference frame ETRF93 and in those of the respective neighboring countries. This applies not only to the coordinates of boundary markers but also to the description of the boundary lines (e.g. water divide, center of the river, etc.).
For modern cartography and surveying these data are managed and administered in geoinformation and/or land information systems (GIS/LIS). These information systems require georeferenced digital data, which means that boundary descriptions in text form must be replaced by coordinates. The national boundary serves as a territorial delimitation for various products (GIS/LIS, cadastral survey, etc.) and since neighboring countries also rely on georeferenced data, it is essential that these territorial boundaries between nations are subject to identical geometric definitions.
Under the auspices of Eurogeographics the European Union is currently collaborating on a comprehensive project for harmonizing and modernizing the data of all national boundaries: State Boundaries of Europe. Switzerland has been actively participating in this project since 2005, the goal of which is to administer all of the georeferenced data in a European GIS.