The Automated Map. Public innovation for the generation of the National Topographic Map of Spain

Several reasons have prompted the National Geographic Institute of Spain (IGN-Spain) to implement an automatic process to generate the National Topographic Map 1:25,000 (MTN) instead trough the traditional manual way, pointing out the growing lack of human resources, in addition to the search for a quick response to the increasing demand of updated geoinformation by the society.This new automated process provides an annual production of all the map sheets composing the MTN25 (4.019 files), what is an unprecedented time record, so that the users can quickly both download them from the Download Centre Website and visualize the maps through the visualization web services WMS and WMTS. This methodology is also applied to the creation of sheets for printed publication, whose final output requires a simplified manual editing process.

The new National Atlas of Hungary – volume Society

The current volume, National Atlas of Hungary – Society, is Part 3 of the series. It presents the special world of Hungarian society and, according to the availability of data, also that of the Carpatho–Pannonian Area. By combining the tools of statistics, geography and cartography, the maps present the spatial structure accompanied by numerous graphs, photos, texts and infographics.The present volume of the National Atlas, Society, contributes to a much deeper understanding of processes and a better understanding of the relationships between phenomena through the presentation of the spatial diversity of demographic and social processes in historical perspective. This is a significant record of the period also showing the challenges that Hungarian society faces at the end of the second decade of the 21st century. This addition to the National Atlas of Hungary – with its extensive body of knowledge presented in this work – is an important document of great benefit not only togeographers but also to historians, economists, politicians, and all other interested parties.

Making progress in determining quality: positional accuracy of the new 1:25,000 scale digital cartography

The digital cartographic coverage at 1:25,000 that the Military Geographic Institute is creating has been worked on using international standards, so that it constitutes a standardized and interoperable tool, for the various areas of activity in Chile. In this context, the ISO TC 211 standards and the TDS (Topographic Data Store) data model developed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) are being used.Apart from using these standards, efforts have been aimed, from an early stage, at the determination of the quality of this product, starting this process with the study for a methodology to measure Positional Accuracy. The method defined conforms to the NSSDA test; for this, points measured in the terrain especially for this control are used, also the elimination of points that are out of range under the Chauvenet Criteria. Finally, the positional accuracy is declared in the metadata.

Representing the War. Early Twentieth Century Maps and Models in the Fonds of the Italian War History Museum in Rovereto

The representation of the areas in which some of the most significant events of the First World War took place has produced a wide range of materials, such as cartography, aerial and terrestrial photos, textual descriptions and field surveys. In addition, war events were also represented through three-dimensional models. Topographic maps and models constitute composite figurations, which are rich in informative data useful for the preservation of the memory of places and for increasing the knowledge of cultural heritage. Hence, these sources need to be studied, described, interpreted and used for future enhancement. The focus of this paper are archival materials from the collections kept at the Italian War History Museum of Rovereto (Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra), in the Trentino-Alto Adige region. Firstly, we will investigate the cartographic fond in order to assess the composition and origin of its materials. Secondly, we will present the Museum’s collection of Early-Twentieth Century models. Such precious heritage is not yet part of an exhibition, and is kept in the Museum’s warehouses. The paper constitutes the occasion to present the initial results of a still ongoing project by the Geo-Cartographic Centre for Study and Documentation (GeCo) of the University of Trento on the study and analysis of two archival complexes preserved in the abovementioned Museum. In particular, the paper focuses on the heuristic value of such representational devices, which enable an analysis of the different methods and languages through which space is planned and designed, emphasizing the complementarity between different types of visualization.

Data heterogeneity and oldness, two difficulties to overcome for the world seabed sediment mapping

A global seabed sediment map has been developed since 1995 to provide a necessary tool for different needs. This project is not completely original since it had already been done in 1912 when the French hydrographic Office and the University of Nancy produced sedimentary maps of the European and North American coasts. Seabed sediments is one of the last geographical domains which can’t benefit of satellite data. Without this contribution, sediment maps need to use very old data mixed with the new ones to be able to reach the goal of a global map. In general, sediment maps are made with the latest available techniques and are replaced after a few decades, thus generating new cartographic works as if all the previous efforts had become useless. Such approach underestimates the quality of past works and prevents to have maps covering large areas. The present work suggests to standardize all kind of sedimentary data from different periods and from very different acquisition systems and integrate them into a single product. This process has already been done for bathymetric data of marine charts, we discuss in this article of the application of this method at a global scale for sediment data.

Bivariate representation of population density using public and private drinking and wastewater infrastructure

Drinking and wastewater infrastructure consists of both public and private usage. On each property parcel, drinking water can be privately provided by a well or publicly provided through a municipality. Wastewater can be a private septic tank or a public sewer. Property parcels can use all private, all public, or a combination of public and private solutions. It is important for planners and city officials to have knowledge of these systems, and it is also important to know the number of people using each type of infrastructure to prioritize resources and plan for future expansions. Visualizing the complexity of these data using separate univariate maps is aesthetically inferior involving back and forth comparisons. Further, the univariate maps represent land parcels only and do not capture the population that is using each type of water infrastructure. Our research develops a single bivariate map that facilitates the visualization of population using both public and private drinking and wastewater solutions simultaneously. The bivariate map is tended for use by planners, city officials, environmentalists, and others interested in the visualization of the spatial patterns of water infrastructure within one complete map.

Accuracy, veracity, and theological truth in the 16th century atlas <i>Theatrum Terrae Sanctae</i>

The characteristics and appearance of an authentic map (in conformity with reality), together with the convention about how authenticity should be obtained in a map, continued to change since the beginning of modern cartography along the centuries. As Critical Cartography has emphasised, the authenticity of a map was in many cases just a convincing appearance, hiding intricate ideologies. However, the political role of maps is just one aspect of their significance, which does not exclude the existence of genuine beliefs and ideals which were guiding cartographers and map authors in the creation process.With a long tradition of understanding maps as illustration devices, Renaissance geography blended intimately with the assumptions and debates of the artistic domain of painting. Among these, veracity was a much praised ideal, signifying the ability of the art work to make present the absent things or giving a new life to people or events gone long ago, a perspective which allowed for rich metaphysical implications. In his theological atlas Theatrum Terrae Sanctae, Christian Adrichom used a variety of formula through which he expressed his view on the evocative power of maps, deriving from contemporary theories concerning truth, vision and representation. In this article we will employ the textual analysis of Adrichom’s affirmations, approaching them through the filter of the Intellectual History methodology. This method allows us to discover that the author explored the metaphysical implications of painting realism in order to present and use his maps as Christian devices, equating the veracity of the cartographic medium with the authenticity of Christ’s life and with the theological understanding of truth.

Mapping the avalanche risk: from survey to cartographic production. The avalanche bulletin of the Meteomont Service of the Alpine Troops Command

During the last decades, the process of explaining life-threatening natural hazards to the public has become a major public issue from the point of view of effective prevention policies. The avalanche risk and the communication methods aimed at its forecasting and prevention constitute the focus of this paper. Among the strategies for an effective communication of environmental risks, cartography plays a pivotal role. It has proved to be essential not only for communication purposes, but also for the planning of prompt and efficient preventive interventions; in so doing, it contributes to the reduction of avalanche-caused damages and deaths. The paper investigates prevention and forecasting activities of the Meteomont Service of the Alpine Troops Command (COMTA) of Bolzano (capital city of the province of South Tyrol - North Italy), resulting in the daily publication of avalanche bulletins (Bollettini valanghe), which also include hazard maps. Specifically, the phases that contribute to the production of the avalanche bulletin and the embedded avalanche risk maps will be firstly examined; secondly, such maps will be analysed in order to assess their communicative potential for the purpose of a correct interpretation aimed at the effective prevention of snow-related risks in mountain areas. Possible improvement will be proposed on the basis of the experience of several avalanche warning services worldwide.

Geodesign as a support for proposing actions to fulfil the Sustainable Development Goals

This paper discusses the state of the art in Geodesign, as a result from the evolution in the use of geospatial data for shared and co-creative planning. The evolution of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) led to significant advances in geovisualization, the use of cartographic data via the Internet and the construction of SDIs (Spatial Data Infrastructures). These advances fostered the emergence of Geodesign as one of the foundations for territorial planning. The text will also introduce a Brazilian Geodesign platform, GISColab, developed according to the standards set by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The platform introduces layer creation resources via WPS (Web Processing Service), as well as tools for measuring the performance of participatory planning workshops, presently focusing on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We introduce case studies in which SDGs were explored in different ways: in post-workshop analyses conducted by coordinators and participants, as well as its application as a supportive tool for decision-making during the workshop, via WPS. Finally, we also discuss the inclusion of SDGs to raise awareness of its key themes and support opinion building, resulting in transformative learning experiences.

The digital cartographic reconstruction of the 1897 ‘Mátra Guide’ (Hungary)

The Mátra Mts has been one of the most frequented tourist destinations since the second half of the 19th century. This area – the highest mountain range in Hungary – offers a wide variety of free-time activities, geographical and cultural values. Because of these attractions, the tourism importance of the Mátra Mts has been recognised relatively early. The first tourist association was established in 1877 by Kolos Hanák and István Széky. They published the ‘Mátra Guide’ in the same year and reissued it in 1897 with minor revisions. This publication presents the natural-cultural values and the tourism infrastructure of the surrounding area. They also describe interesting hiking routes all around the Mátra. Although the most important sights were illustrated, no cartographic representation was published. In this study we processed the content of the book: every localizable site and tourism facility were visualised applying GIS techniques. A base map of relief, watercourses, road network and settlements were edited using the 2nd military survey topographic maps of Habsburg Empire (to present former conditions), the 1933 ‘Mátra’ hiking map and hillshading (generated from SRTM). The digitized tourism elements from the book were visualised on this ‘historical hiking map’ using Leaflet. As the final online map is available to everybody, the early condition and infrastructure of tourism can be easily examined. This work contributes to the visual heritage preservation of the Mátra Mts: it may strengthen the knowledge on tourism history and digital cartographic solutions.