1 Introduction. - 1. 1 Description of the Discrete Model. - 1. 2 Description of the Continuous Model. - 1. 3 Variance Propagation. - 2 Discrete Approach. - 2. 1 Motivation for the Study. - 2. 2 Basic Matrix of Leveling. - 2. 3 Regular Traverse. - 2. 4 Varying the Boundary Conditions. - 2. 5 Variance Propagation. - 2. 6 Asymptotic Behavior of the Node Variance. - 2. 7 On the Smoothness and Roughness of the Eigenvectors. - 2. 8 Green's Formula for Plane Trigonometric Networks. - 3 Continuous Approach. - 3. 1 Leveling Networks. - 3. 2 Advanced Error Analysis. - 3. 3 Plane Elastic Continuous Networks: A Heuristic Exposition. - 3. 4 Distance Networks. - 3. 5 Estimates of the Weighted Square Sum of Residuals: the Korn Inequality. - 4 Networks with Relative Observations. - 4. 1 Dealing with Relative Observations. - 4. 2 Fundamental Solution. - 4. 3 Solution of the Boundary Value Problem. - 5 Spectrum. - 5. 1 Spectral Density of the Discrete Laplacian. - 5. 2 Spectral Distribution Function N(?). - 5. 3 Additional Remarks on the Spectral Properties of Geodetic Networks. - 6 Simple Applications. - 6. 1 Stiffness Matrix in Practice. - 6. 2 Displacement Functions given a Priori. - 6. 3 Merging of Digitized Maps. - 6. 4 Interpolation of Discrete Vector Field: Cubic Splines. - Author Index. Language: English