The present disclosure is directed to methods and systems for generating a geodetic datum. The geodetic datum can establish a coordinate system and/or a set of reference points that describe the respective locations of a portion or all of Earth and/or objects located thereon. In general, a computing system can generate the geodetic datum using various sensor data from one or more sources including: satellite imagery, aerial imagery, aerial light detection and ranging data (LIDAR), ground-level imagery, ground-level LIDAR, and/or other forms of sensor data. This data can be used as a reference dataset that can be combined with additional sensor data (e.g., a second dataset) to determine correspondences between overlapping areas represented in the datasets. Continuing this process for regions that collectively cover the Earth can be used to create a geodetic datum of the entire Earth, without using a mathematic abstraction of the Earth surface.