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Topographic maps of Russia represent the basis of the state cartographic fund of the country. However, the understanding of the natural resource potential of the territory, the preservation of natural and cultural heritage, and solving navigation tasks has led to the use of topographic maps, the content of which goes beyond multi-purpose universal maps. Environmental problems are currently a priority. These reasons led to the division of topographic maps into universal and specialized, focused on certain groups of consumers. What is a specialized topographic map? The authors define them as maps created on the basis of universal topographic maps within their accuracy and in a single technological cycle with them, with the addition of content or its directed unloading for a specific area of use (while maintaining the image of a complex of basic topographic objects). The fundamental condition for the creation of specialized maps is not to violate the historically established type of universal topographic maps, which is determined by the display of external visible elements of the landscape. It revealed a demand for specialized maps after analyzing domestic and foreign mapping experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National atlases provide synthesised spatial knowledge of a particular country in the form of maps and textual descriptions. The three East African Countries gained independence at around the same time and most of their topographic mapping programmes were supported by the Directorate of Overseas Surveys (DOS). Similarly, the first editions of their national atlases were created and published around the same time. However, for various reasons, the national atlases have not been updated for quite some time. The same reasons advanced for the delayed revisions of the topographical are also applicable to the national atlases. The development of web mapping technology, Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and the Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) paradigms have changed how national atlases are prepared and used. SDI and VGI provide a great opportunity for the East African Countries to revive the National Atlas - although the SDI development in East African Countries remains low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to describe a proposal for mapping Brazilian protected areas at scales larger than 1:50.000 with a fast and practical solution using open data, software, and services. The lack of up-to-date topographic mapping at different scales is a serious problem for environmental protection in Brazil. In 2018 the official mapping agencies had mapped only 24% of Brazilian territory at 1:50.000. However, just 39% of those maps were published after 2008 (Sluter et al. 2018). Today the Brazilian territory is completely mapped at 1:250.000 and 1:1.000.000. Most maps are out-of-date because Brazilian official mapping agencies have never had a map revision program. Besides the problem of map revision, mapping agencies have never produced topographic maps by map generalization. Only 5% of Brazilian territory has been mapped at a 1:25.000 scale, the basic scale for topographic mapping, showing no map generalization work. Considering the level of detail (map scale) and completeness, most topographic maps are unsuitable for environmental protection management. When the government does not provide topographic maps for society, private enterprises hire companies to map their properties, such as mineral companies, reforestation companies, pools of agriculture farmers, etc. This situation leads to some consequences: the private enterprises own their mapping products, and therefore those maps are not available to any citizen. Some Brazilian states or municipalities produce topographic maps of their territories; those are sporadic initiatives. Consequently, it is common for some local governments and businesses to use collaborative platforms such as Google Maps (https://www.google.com.br/maps/) or OpenStreetMap (OSM) (https://openstreetmap.org) when they need up-to-date and large-scale maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The availability and maintenance of accurate and up-to-date geospatial information are critical for effectively planning and implementing public policies, particularly in infrastructure, health, education, security, environmental governance, and social promotion. Also, it is essential to support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This need is intensified in developing countries due to several particularly challenging circumstances, where resources for official cartography may be scarce. For example, in Brazil, the country lacks comprehensive coverage of reference mapping at larger scales, and much of the currently available national mapping was produced decades ago. this problem, the authors propose investigating alternative data sources, such as voluntary geographic information, which can be a low-cost alternative for updating national cartographic reference mapping. They focus on using data from the OpenStreetMap platform, which is rich in the amount of information available correspondences with the Brazilian official conceptual model. However, several operational issues integrate this data by official data producers effectively. For example, despite the existence of numerous international descriptions of utilizing such data (Sarretta and Minghini, 2021; Brovelli and Zamboni, 2018; Mahabir et al occasionally, these are more focused on theoretical aspects and do not address operational aspects effective for integration by official data producers. Thus, this study brings an innovative application to the geospatial community no similar approaches have been found in the literature. Furthermore, such issues involve legal, computational andmethodological questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, aerial laser scanning data has become one of the most important and useful basic topographic data for surface description and has become the basis for many applications and tasks, such as terrain analyses, source data for map production, recognising traces of ancient buildings and infrastructure, river network analyses, abyss detection etc. In many countries, a systematic laser scanning of the entire territory has been carried out in the past years from airplanes or manned helicopters, and in many countries a system of cyclical recording is also being established at intervals of several years. Despite that, the data quality of system laser scanning is not sufficient for individual special cases of use and small areas. For non-urban, unpopulated areas, the scanning density is often too low. In steep mountainous terrain, erosion and creep due to increasingly frequent extreme weather events cause significant frequent terrain changes, which the frequency of system laser scans is not sufficient to detect. In all these cases, the utility value of a mobile aerial system (Figure 1), consisting of a remotely piloted aerial vehicle (UAV) and a laser scanner, often with the addition of a camera in the visible spectrum, is beneficed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A map produced today is immediately outdated due to continued development and changing suburban landscape patterns in cities, as such it is necessary to find ways of undertaking continuous updates of city topographical line maps. The city of Gaborone is largely recognized to be among the fast-growing cities of the world as it experiences yearly changes to its topographical formation. Ways to monitor these changes need to be ascertained to ensure that planners, surveyors and the rest of stakeholders have topographical line maps with sufficient and accurate details to aid decision-making on socioeconomic and environmental interests. In case of Botswana, topographical line mapping has been updated using aerial photogrammetric methods. The method of using aerial photographs though considered to be highly accurate has its own disadvantages in that, it is expensive to perform in short term periods e.g., every six months or yearly for medium income countries like Botswana. This method is often associated with limited ranges of coverage. For these reasons, it is not surprising that the last major topographical map updates by Botswana National Mapping Agency was done in 2015. In today’s fast paced development drives, this style of topographical line map updating is faced with serious temporal limitations. Another challenge when updating topographical line maps is that there is large amount of field work necessary to collect the names of features and check if the features in the map correspond to those on the ground. The motivation of this study was to advance alternatives that can be used to update topographical lines maps continuously in terms of geospatial data and place names. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mapping, visualisation and representation of the Earth’s topography is an important problem confronting cartographers, and open-access global Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are increasingly being used for these purposes. Moreover, the limited availability of high-resolution DEMs means that open-access DEMs are relevant for updating topographic maps, particularly in data-sparse regions. Nonetheless, such open-access DEMs are known to suffer from vertical accuracy defects caused by a myriad of problems. Hence, techniques for enhancing or improving their vertical accuracies are an active area of research (e.g., Bagheri et al., 2018). The aim of this study is to assess the capability of tree-based supervised machine learning algorithms for enhancing the vertical accuracy of the 30m Copernicus DEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guidelines on minimum dimensions for cartographic symbology are often specified in cartographic publications and textbooks, and seem to have been commonly discussed in European schools of topographic cartography (Arnberger & Kretschmer, 1975; Neudeck, 2001; Hake et al., 2002; Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Kartografie, 2002). Such guidelines usually specify an absolute minimum value for the dimension of a class of symbols, such as the diameter of point symbols or the distance of separation between two parallel lines. With the increased ability of high-resolution displays to accurately reproduce fine graphical detail near the limit of human visual capabilities, guidance on the minimum size of cartographic symbology has recently become more relevant also in the context of digital cartography, which was previously limited by low-resolution screens (Ledermann, 2023). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topographic maps are visually complex, as they contain numerous types of features that need to be purposefully and harmoniously shown on one canvas. For instance, the dominant background color and stylization of traffic networks affect the readability of other feature types on the map. In order to fully and objectively assess the perception of new cartographic designs by map readers, user testing is essential in map production. Initially, a public survey was conducted by the National Land Survey of Finland to collect feedback on the new map information and cartographic presentation styles of topographic maps. The survey aimed to test how users perceive new map colors and how well key terrain patterns work. For example, it explored the use of green to depict forests in contrast to the traditionally used white color in Finland, and whether the presentation of transport networks is appropriate, such as visualizing cycling and/or pedestrian routes and motorized traffic differently (see Figure 1). Measuring the usability of map designs qualitatively through questionnaires, but also via quantitative methods, will help gain more objective and holistic user insights before launching them. Therefore, we aim to complement a public survey with an eye-tracking user study by extending the two mentioned examples: Use case 1. New green background vs. traditional white background RQ1. What differences occur in map exploration between white and green background? How does the dominant background color affect the perception of green areas and forests? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maps are a common and respected reference source for located information. A historical inventory of the objects designated by the term map shows the diversity of their media, shapes, sizes, orientations, information portrayed, symbols used, etc. Contemporary maps, in particular topographical maps from national mapping agencies or road maps, show that some of their characteristics such as orientation, categories of information displayed, mapping conventions have stabilized while demonstrating their ability to represent an immense variety of landscapes. An almost unlimited and also standardized cartographic offer exists. However, proposals and applications for alternative mapping have being developed. They are based on varied uses of the location and of display of information, which are different from that usually mapped. These approaches claim to be based on perceptive and sensitive mapping, or if they do not use this term, they rely on concepts and methods that connote this approach. The objective of this article is to analyze the contexts in which perceptive and sensitive mapping approaches can be used in a profitable way and then to characterize their use. The analysis is based on experiences in teaching and research settings involving urban planning students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vast cartographic output of the Soviet Union during the Cold War represents the largest cartographic project of the twentieth century. Varying greatly in scope, the maps produced cover the globe at multiple scales from 1:1,000,000 to 1:10,000, including both thematic maps for public use and detailed military topographic mapping produced by the General Staff in secrecy. The coverage of these maps in relation to particular countries and territories has been the focus of a growing body of research in recent years, including Poland (Kent et al., 2019), Malta (Kent and Davies, 2020), Denmark (Svenningsen and Perner, 2020), China (Aylmer, 2021) and Laos (Whyte, 2022). Such work provides valuable insight into the scope, coverage and content of Soviet mapping in different parts of the world. However, the extent of the project’s coverage means that Soviet maps of many parts of the world remain relatively unstudied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of this research is motivated by the scarcity of scientific research on the map symbol design that represents the built cultural heritage in Maputo, Mozambique. Maputo has an area of approximately 347 km² and a population of 1,088,449 inhabitants, according to the 2017 Census. The National Directorate of Cultural Heritage (NDCH) is the government body responsible for cultural policies that preserve the national identity. Its mission is to coordinate the activities related to the identification, inventory, registration, preservation, and maintenance of cultural heritage (Resolution #15 of June 9 th, 2015). Therefore, the NDCH needs geoinformation to achieve its mission. The primary source of geoinformation is the topographic mapping of Mozambique. Although topographic mapping should be built with standardized map symbols, different public and private institutions in Mozambique have verified discrepancies in the symbols representing the cultural heritage buildings on maps. Besides the lack of standards for topographic map symbols, there are not enough thematic maps at suitable scales for managing and preserving cultural heritage buildings. Therefore, this study aims to design and generate geoinformation products according to the cartography theory for managing cultural heritage buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shaded relief terrain representations are often used by map makers to produce a depiction of terrain that the map reader can understand intuitively. Such representations use modelled shadows cast by a light source that is positioned at a particular orientation with respect to the terrain, typically an azimuth in the northwestern quadrant. While this method often produces a depiction of the terrain that helps map readers develop an accurate understanding of the terrain features, it is affected by a perceptual illusion. This illusion can make terrain features appear to sink into the landscape rather than protrude from it and vice versa. It occurs when the modelled light source that produces shadows is oriented at angles other than those from which the human visual system assumes they will come. Previous research on this inversion phenomenon has documented its occurrence in shaded relief maps (Imhof, 1967; Bernabé-Poveda and Çöltekin, 2015; Biland and Çöltekin, 2017) as well as satellite imagery (Saraf et al., 1996; Bernabé-Poveda et al., 2005; Çöltekin and Biland, 2019). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic extraction of building footprints, the outer surface of building rooftops, on high-resolution orthophoto is one of the most challenging and essential tasks. Processing footprints is a follow-up of building topographical data extraction methodology. Production of digital topographic maps requires data extraction from different sources, guided by an established work methodology within the framework of strict cartographic rules. The classic restitution approach is time and labor-consuming. Therefore, the need to develop an advanced methodology for automatic building data extraction is justified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landforms are difficult to delineate in the field or on maps because of inherently indeterminate and fiat boundaries (Smith and Mark, 2003). Research and applications of landform delineation have progressed along two paths in the geosciences. General geomorphometry is a continuous field-rooted approach that focuses on computing localized parametric values for mapping land surface shape patterns and deriving land segments or elements that can be considered homogeneous at the chosen scale of analysis for a particular application. Specific geomorphometry is an object-oriented approach that applies the geomorphometric parameters to identify, delimit, characterize, and classify individual landform objects. There is no standard list of landform types or methods for mapping individual landforms because landform cognition is influenced substantially by people's cultural, linguistic, and individual backgrounds. Thus, delimiting and classifying individual landforms requires a multidisciplinary approach by incorporating geomorphometry, geomorphology, cognitive science, cartography, remote sensing, and geographic information science knowledge. Cartography plays a unique dual role in named landform representation by providing contextual information as input to the demarcation problem while providing a medium for expressing the human cognization of landforms. Hence, this research aims to improve the automated mapping of named landforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of scientific and technical developments the map became geometrically and semantically more precise and accurate, but its socio-economic role changed definitively around 1800: the needs of the industrial revolution required the development of spatial inventories and led with new reproduction techniques – esp. colour lithographic printing – to the development of new types of thematic maps. The 19th century is therefore characterised by cartographic inventories, not only topographic but also geological, hydrographical, ..., although also maps used for the representation of sociological and economic phenomena. We can thus note new themes addressed in cartography, such as indigence (Quetelet, 1843) or road, rail and telegraph networks or maps dealing with river or maritime links. This also led to the development of the first land management maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Department of Lands and Surveys" (DLS), as the National Mapping and Cadastral Agency of Cyprus, through the Cartography Branch acts as the official Cartographic Organisation of the Republic of Cyprus, representing Cyprus in international and European organisations such as: ICA, EuroGeographics, EuroStat/GISCO etc. The continuous effort to upgrade the cartographic products following international standards, as well as the absence of a modern updated National Topographic Series of maps (the only complete medium scale topographic map series for Cyprus was produced by the Defense Geographic Centre-DGC-of the UK Ministry of Defense, back in 1999. This is a 50k map series, including 24 sheets) led the Department in the creation of a newly structured cartographic /topographic database and additionally the production of a new topographic map series, at scale 1:25k. It is noted that the Department's major GIS cadastral application is running for more than 25 years on esri platform. Currently, a major upgrade of the GIS sub-system (cadastre) is on development, again on esri (ArcGIS Pro platform). Since the cartography was not a part of this tender and no inhouse development team is available, as well as the lack of human and technical resources and also funding, the Department proceeded in building its cartographic database with a predefined solution under the esri platform. Thus, the Topographic Data Store Entity Catalogue (TDS EC) was selected as the database schema. The esri platform also provides a complete set of core tools to streamline the cartographic process, without any vital customization needed in the fields of topology rules, validation rules, map templates and representation styles. Therefore, data from all single feature classes were migrated to TDS V6.0 early in 2018 using a cross reference process. Up to 1 million rows of data were transferred to the new single database through a cross - reference process as illustrated below: Unfortunately, for some of the data only geometry was able to be transferred, thus users are still restoring compatibility in classification and attribution to the new data model. Later in 2018, during an ESRI's visit to DLS, the ArcGIS Production / Defense Mapping Lead Product Manager kindly upgraded TDS from V6.0 to TDS V7.0. In order to proceed with a new topographic map series, a new grid was built, based on international standards. This resulted in a new separation system of 31 sheets of scale 1:50k and 89 sheets of scale 1:25k as presented in figure 1. The new sheets are uniform in size and orientation. They have encoded name (per sheet), at a national level, and a template widely accepted by various countries and cartographic organizations (e.g., Hellenic Military Geographical Service). The cartographic workflow is basically organised in 7 major steps as presented below: 1. COMPLETION OF DATA IN TDS: users collecting and updating data per map sheet 2. DATA PREPARATION: extract AOI, Map sheet Information, add boundary 3. CREATE RAPID GRAPHIC: select product type and version using mxd template 4. FIRST OUTPUT: map document, production pdf 5. MAP EVALUATION 6. ENHANCE CARTOGRAPHY: annotation, notes, map information (M.J.Kraak & F.J.Ormeling, 1996) 7. PUBLISH MAP At the moment, only 3 sheets out of 89 are completed and 2 others are one step before publishing. During this project the following issues have been identified: * The time frame is not that promising. The existing map production process is not efficient (no batch processing). Significant data required for the map compilation (e.g., land cover) are still uncompleted. The team working in this project is very small (7 persons in total) and not fully dedicated due to other responsibilities. * Significant automations that would help speed up the process of data collection and update in data themes like land cover (feature extraction & change detection) are missing. All data capture and classification processes are done in house. * Migration to ArcGIS Pro (e.g., representation rules vs symbology, annotations). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the case of state topographic maps, it is almost self-evident that the current political and economic conditions have a serious impact on the survey itself. This is even more true for a politically highly determined period like the Cold War. In the Austro--Hungarian Monarchy, topographic mapping was strictly controlled by the emperor, and mostly only classified military topographic maps were produced. Hungary was allowed to produce its cadastral maps after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Hungary, as an independent country after World War I, had to produce its own civilian topographic maps. Hungary formed its national topographic map service in the Hungarian Military Mapping Institute, which apparently operated as a civilian institution until 1938. Hungary started its civilian topographic survey using the stereographic projection to conform to the cadastral maps. The institute was already openly a military facility after 1938, when Hungary no longer considered the peace treaty restrictions mandatory. The topographic maps were still made in stereographic projection, although the 1:50 000 war survey in 1940-44 returned to the Third Military Survey projection system. As Soviet troops approached Budapest in World War II, a significant part of the institute moved to Western Hungary and then to Austria in the fall of 1944, but was later trapped and largely destroyed by allied forces. The temporary Hungarian government enjoying Soviet support only moved to Budapest in February 1945. In this turbulent times, the Allied Control Commission first authorized and then banned the operation of the Hungarian Military Mapping Institute. The institute reopened in February 1946; in the first years, they had to reconstruct the war damage and replace professionals who disappeared in the war, while the Soviet army took control of the country and began to rapidly transform the political system into a Soviet model. The country was essentially Sovietized by end 1949. The complete transition of the economy to the Soviet system began in 1950, when Soviet-type five-year plans were introduced (Soviet-style 3-year plan was partly completed between 1947 and 1949). This plan has already determined the activities of the Hungarian Military Mapping Institute. They started a 1:25 000 scale military survey of the country in Gauss--Krüger projection, which had to be completed within 3 years. Producing more than 1000 sheets in 3 years (including field survey, compiling, drawing, offset printing) was an impossible mission, but nobody asked if the plan was realistic at all. Soviet consultants did not even inform Hungarian cartographers that they had changed the ellipsoid and orientation of the Gauss--Krüger projection. Presumably, military cartography under Soviet command could not undertake to supply the civilian sectors with topographic maps. The civilian cartographers had knowledge on topographic mapping, but they only practiced cadastral mapping. It took few years to establish the right institutes and train the professionals -- this was a main reason to form the Cartographic Department at my university in 1953. The survey for the purpose of the national economy was conducted between 1950 and 1980. When it started, the aim was to survey the whole country at 1:5000 scale. The work started using stereographic projection, but soon (1954--55) they had to change to the Soviet system (Gauss--Krüger projection, Soviet datum [Baltic Sea]). Due to the initial slow progress and increased ministerial demands, the scale was changed to 1:10 000. Military cartographers provided increasingly serious assistance to the civilian area, especially concerning stereophotogrammetry. By the early 1960s, the socialist countries had fully harmonized their civilian topographic mapping with unified symbology. After all it seems surprising that another important change in the history of the survey came in 1964. Contemporary articles do not even mention the change: the projection of the survey become again stereographic and the sheet system also changed. It was only after the change of regime when we learned the reason: the Soviets considered the Gauss--Krüger projection and map sheets to be too accurate, from which the geographical coordinates could be read. Although even the civilian topographic maps were classified, they had to be modified and the map sheets could not have references to geographical coordinates. The Hungarian civilian mapping organisations learned the lesson, and when it began developing a new civilian mapping system in 1976 (EOTR, the Unified National Map System), they chose a projection and sheet system that the Soviets would probably not object to. The Hungarian civilian cartography is still using this mapping system, the EOTR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of VGI and OpenGeodata in the production of topographic base maps can often lead to problems of depiction due to inferior or heterogeneous data quality (see Goodchild et. al. 2012, Heipke 2010, Hajek et. al. 2019). But not only vector data such as the OpenStreetMap database but also raster data in the form of digital elevation models (DEM) are affected. Freely available DEMs with (almost) worldwide coverage such as SRTM play a major role in the production of topographic maps as they are easily obtainable and have relatively homogeneous data quality. However, for the application of large scale maps (> 1:50,000) the low resolution of these DEMs (SRTM = approx. 30m) becomes a problem, since the accuracy is no longer sufficient for the production of scale-adequate generalized contour lines. As a solution, state-specific Open Governmental Data can be obtained. These DEMs often cover only one national territory, but in most cases provide higher resolutions. In cross-border topographic representations, different DEMs would thus have to be merged in order to seamlessly display contour lines and generated relief shading, for example. However, this process often leads to depiction problems in the transition area. The boundaries between different elevation models lead to incorrect representation of calculated contour lines. Edged contour lines occur due to different resolutions and general accuracy of the DEMs. The merging of two different contour line datasets without preparation of the base data can lead to a large manual effort. This paper describes a method to semi-automatically seamlessly merge DEMs of different sources and quality. Calculated contour lines as well as relief shading can be generated error-free in sequence. The method thus allows the use of best available quality elevation models in the production of large scale topographic maps covering border areas. The method presented in this paper is based on the further development of the process described in the article "Large Scaled Topographic Mapping and Issues in Depicting VGI and Open Data" (Hajek et. al. 2021). In this previous paper, parts of the method were presented that are used to create smooth transitions of elevation information for slopedependent generalization of contour lines. A modification of the process to generate a transition raster is also applied in this following paper. The process is mainly based on raster manipulation using tools from the open source library GDAL. The command lines required for the method are combined in a PHP script and can thus be run (partially) automated. A transition band is placed over the boundary region of the elevation models to be connected. This is calculated by a weighted average of the overlapping raster pixels based on a transition factor. Irregularities can thus be smoothed and the two DEMs are interwoven. However, when merging data sets of different resolutions, it should be noted that this leads to generally inhomogeneous representations of elements generated from the DEM. For example, contour lines based on high resolution elevation models are more accurate and give better information about the terrain than contour lines calculated from low resolution DEMs. The latter can appear "over-smoothed", especially in comparison, and there is a risk of conveying a falsely flat and smooth impression of the terrain. These disadvantages of this method must therefore be weighed against the advantages of using homogeneous global elevation models. The method is not only used when combining high-resolution with low-resolution DEMs. Even DEMs of the same or similar resolution can cause problems when merging at the boundary due to different sources. This paper also tests whether merging two "equivalent" elevation models of different origins with the indicated method can avoid visible depiction problems in the border region. "Transitional DEM Merging" is a tool for handling different qualities and/or sources of raster data which are to be expected when using Open Geodata. The method can be used for the creation of worldwide topographic web maps due to its (semi-) automatic approach. The tool thus serves to increase the depiction quality of large-scaled topographic maps based on Open Data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Map load is a term used in map evaluation process to quantify the amount of map content in a map. This map property is therefore used to assume about map complexity which is otherwise difficult to be measured (Ciolkosz-Styk et al., 2011). Aim of this study was to compare various topographic maps to explore trends in map complexity and its balance both in time and various biome types. For this aim, maps of Estonia were chosen to be evaluated, as this country experienced variety of topographic map styles from Soviet style through maps combining ortophoto up to currently used new-design maps. Also, a huge set of topographic maps designed in past 100 years is offered online by Estonian Land Board for the study area of Estonia. This web map portal contains Estonian digital and scanned basemaps, old topographic, historic, cadastral and ortophoto maps from various epoques becaming the primary source of evaluated map samples. To fulfill both comparing maps of similar scale and having several different maps in each set, two scale categories were defined. The first category contains five maps scaled 1:20000 and three maps scaled 1:25000 containing eight maps in total listed in Table 1. The second category contains maps scaled 1:50000 which is also the scale used commonly for topographic mapping including past Estonian maps. Moreover, two foreign maps for each scale category were examined in this case study -- Czech base maps scaled 1:25000 and 1:50000 with symbology containing typical features of Soviet and German cartography, and Finnish base map 1:20000 and topographic map 1:50000 representing Nordic style of topography mapping. The Czech maps were obtained at geoportal of the Czech State Administration of Land Surveying and Cadastre while the Finnish maps were obtained from the portal of old maps run by National Land Survey of Finland. In total, 12 map sections were aimed to be obtained for all map types grouped into three landscape categories: a) Coastal -- with significant coverage of water bodies, b) Natural or forested -- countryside and natural areas with no large urban nor large water areas, c) Urban -- with significant coverage of urban areas of largest cities and towns. This classification resulted into four map sections in each combination of scale-map-landscape categories. As not all the map types are were covering whole Estonia, an effort was put into selecting areas which are captured on all selected map types. Graphic Map Load Measuring Tool (GMLMT) in version 1.3 was used to evaluate graphic map load of map images. GMLMT is an open-source and easy-to-use plugin for GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) software. This tool is a Python user extension applying Sobel operator for edge detection to estimate the level of map load in maps. Development of this tool was based on user experiment comparing various image processing techniques with userperceived map load assessment (Barvir et al., 2020a). GMLMT also provides a visualisation grid (Figure 1) showing the distribution of graphic map load across evaluated map image or its selected part. GMLMT was already used in multiple case studies, e.g. for map load comparisons of school atlases (Barvir et al., 2020b) and for evaluation of various hypsometry visualisation methods (Jilkova et al., 2021). Similar studies aiming for graphic map load evaluation of either sample map samples or complex real maps were examined by Ciolkosz-Styk et al. (2021) and others within last decades. GMLMT is able to evaluate maps represented by raster images in RGB (Red Green Blue) colour space. Each map image was loaded into GMLMT and overall graphic map load levels were stored in a database for further processing. Furthermore, a map load distribution grid for each of the evaluated map images was stored to be investigated when seeking reasons for low and high values of graphic map load. Measured values of map load (Ω) were also captured in a database for all evaluated map images. Besides average values of graphic map load, a distribution of map load across the map window was investigated. Visualisation grids provided by GMLMT present the less loaded parts of map images by dark shades while the overloaded parts tend to become highlighted by very light colour. In Figure 4 representing one of the coastal areas, a huge disproportion of map load between sea (left) and land (right) areas. Map load stays 0 on the homogenous area of water land barely raising to several percents due to labels or neighbourhood of more loaded areas. However, in the areas of people settlement it increases up to around 40 %. Other natural areas on the monochrome version of Estonian Basic map fluctuate between 20 and 30 %. According to expectations, category of urban areas became the most graphically loaded across evaluated map products ranging from 27.1--72 % with average value 46.9 %. In contrary, coastal areas suffered from the lowest values of map load ranging from 5.7-48.3 % with the average value of 22.2 %. The category of natural/forested areas captured on evaluated map samples reached graphic map load 8.2-58.2 % with 34.4 % in average. However, map load of natural/forested landscape category differed a lot among maps. While in case of the modern 1 : 20 000 Estonian and bothscale Czech maps graphic load of natural/forested map sections was more similar to coastal regions, for other older Estonian, especially the Soviet style, and Finnish maps, map load of natural/forested regions was closer to the urban areas. This also supports the finding that Soviet maps are more balanced in the terms of graphic map load. The category of Soviet maps was also found to be the most graphically loaded reaching 41.6 % in average followed by Finnish (39.3 %), old Estonian topographic maps (38.9 %), Czech (32.2 %) and finally modern Estonian maps (25.9 %). Unfortunately, it is not possible to strictly compare Czech and Finnish maps with the rest Estonian categories as different regions were captured by those maps. However, the monochrome black&white modification of Estonian Basic Map 2021 had the highest values in the urban areas category reaching up to 72 % in a map representing the city centre of Tallinn. The results show a decrease of graphic map load in time, which can be linked with the trend of simplification in design generally, with the most significant change during the transfer between Soviet-style maps. The larger differences in graphic map load distribution also reveals the processes of cartographic generalisation, currently attempted to be done automatically or semi-automatically, is not done as precisely as it happened before, when it was done manually. This issue can be related to current trends of automation and making cartographic visualisation efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since about the 18th century, the use of topographic maps has been mainly in support of military activities. Therefore, their content was usually adapted to the way of conducting combat activities so that they provide adequate information for direct activities of soldiers in the field, as well as for planning combat operations and coordinating the movement of units before and during combat actions. In the history of military topographic mapping, examples can be found of how the content of military topographic maps has changed depending on selected factors that reflected and still reflect military strategy and tactics, as well as how the appearance of maps has changed depending on the technological possibilities of cartography and map printing. Changes can be considered in terms of development, functionality and map features. As basic factors of development influencing the content of military topographic maps were considered: - the general influence of the method of warfare on terrain knowledge requirements, - dynamics of combat operations, - the influence of the mechanisation of combat activity after the World War I, - the development of joint ground and air force operations, - the impact of the spatial extent of operations and the way of the command and control of units, - the influence of military doctrines and the implementation of the strategic plans, - the impact of the accuracy and effectiveness of weapon systems, - the effect of navigation systems and their accuracy. These factors may also be reduced or supplemented and the list is therefore not necessarily final. When considering the influence of individual factors on the content of topographic maps, it is usually necessary to consider them in complexity and not in isolation. The influence of these factors on the content of military topographic maps can be assessed by studying old maps, focusing on military map works of the Austrian Empire, Czechoslovakia between World War I and World War II, Czechoslovakia after World War II, and the Czech Republic since 1993. In the assessment, the basic functions of the map were considered, which according to (Miklošík, 1997) are the following: - information function, i.e. the ability of maps to provide the required information about the landscape in which military activities have taken place and are taking place, - model function to study geometric and other relationships between the objects and phenomena depicted, - the function of the basis for planning and designing spatially oriented activities, - the function of a means for managing the implementation of projected or planned projects, - the function of a basis for illustrating the communication of information relating to the territory depicted, - the function of a basis for deriving other types of maps and digital cartographic products. The functionality of the maps can be assessed based on the success rate of solved tasks over the maps, focusing on typical tasks from the armed forces environment, as well as on guided discussions with the main users. This approach was used in the 1980s and 1990s to provide the basis for map functionality analysis and is currently being applied to the functionality analysis of upcoming NATO-standard military topographic maps. For the old maps, the analysis was based on expert estimation. In terms of map features, the following factors were evaluated: - legibility of the map content, - the amount and character of details, - the way in which the map frame is expressed for reading point coordinates, - method of expressing content elements in relation to military activities in the field and in relation to the planning of combat and non-combat activities, - the extent of the area of responsibility that is shown on the maps. To illustrate the above procedure, the influence of the factor of military doctrines and the implementation of the strategic plans of the powers is briefly described, as well as an outline of the evaluation of changes in the detail of the content expression depending on the way of conducting the battle. In assessing the influence of the factor of military doctrines and implementation of strategic plans of the powers, two basic moments are noticeable in the assessed period - the involvement or non-involvement of a given state in a militarypolitical bloc. The Austrian Empire was not part of any military-political bloc and therefore it secured only its own territory for the needs of its armed forces. The situation was the same in Czechoslovakia between the world wars and after the World War II until the establishment of the Warsaw Pact. During this period, topographic maps were again provided only from its own territory. During the World War II, the German Reich also produced maps for the armed forces outside its own territory, including the occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Similarly, standardized topographic maps were provided in the framework of the Warsaw Pact doctrine for the anticipated military operations on its own territory and westwards across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean. After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the armed forces were again provided topographic maps only from its own territory. After the accession of the Czech Republic to NATO, topographic maps were produced from assigned and agreed areas of responsibility outside the territory of NATO countries in addition to its own territory, and these maps were and are used to support international missions. Changes in the detail of content expression depending on the method of combat can be documented on the example of the depiction of roads and their close surroundings. For the infantry units, which essentially formed the core of armies until World War II, it was important to show the location of roads and their spatial structure. At the same time, it was important to show as many landmarks along these roads as possible - tree lines, religious symbols, isolated houses, etc. After the widespread introduction of motorized and mechanized troops, it was no longer enough to show only details for orientation, but it was also necessary to gradually show the information necessary to assess the characteristics of roads and the critical points on them for the purpose of vehicle movement on roads. At first, information on road widths was displayed, and later on the width of bridges and their load-bearing capacity. This information was initially in the form of added thematic information, but later became part of the standard content of the maps. Currently, there is a shift from expressing the technical characteristics of roads to their performance characteristics (DGIWG, 2020). At the same time, the colours used have changed to ensure better legibility even in low light conditions. The information obtained from the examination of the relationship between the content of topographic maps and their main use will be used in the preparation of the new military topographic maps of the Army of the Czech Republic created according to NATO standards (Talhofer, Bělka, & Dohnal, 2021). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The project Karten von Attika: Antiquities and Topography of Attica in the Era of Digital Humanities aims at the creation of a webGIS platform for the archaeology of Attica by overlaying multiple layers of geospatial data on a unified digital map. The two-decade topographic-archaeological mapping of the Attic land by the German cartographers of 19th century, resulted in a sequence of 26 cartographic sheets of mapping scale 1:25000, that published entitled Karten von Attika. It is the only cartographic work that with fullness and accuracy captures, among other elements, the antiquities that were visible at that time (Livieratos et al., 2013). These maps were never surpassed, neither as a cartographic achievement nor as a thematic depiction of ancient remains and traces (Korres, 2008). They were designed after thorough on-site research of the visible antiquities of that time, offering the vision of a pristine landscape, which has now been obliterated by the dramatic urbanization of Athens and Attica during the 20th century (Livieratos et al., 2013). The 26 cartographic sheets are accompanied by an explanatory text, 263 pages long, entitled Erläuternder Text zu den Karten von Attika, which in the context of this project is presented for the first time translated into Greek. The aim of Dipylon Society is to transfer Karten von Attika into the digital era by designing and implementing an innovative cartographic platform, thus making the maps accessible and interactive. Through digital technologies (GIS and web-mapping), the maps have been rendered onto their contemporary background as the 26 cartographic sheets merged into a seamless mosaic image which has been georeferenced. All the words depicted on the map (cartographic texts), every ancient remain and the majority of 19th-century remains (cartographic signs) have been digitized and registered in a geospatial database developed for recording the cartographic information. From a technical perspective, data are managed and stored using the PostgreSQL open-source database with the PostGIS extension that allows spatial data management. In addition, the project systematizes the cartographic data by type of sign (settlement remains, funerary remains, cult remains, fortifications, quarries, port structures, road networks, etc.). Finally, for each geospatial entity that a reference in the Erläuternder Text exists, a link to the text has been created. In this way, the user of the platform can easily navigate from the map to the text and vice versa. With the reconstruction of the built environment of the 19th century, the one hundred and forty-year-old traces are transferred to a modern cartographic background and reveal the palimpsest of the landscape. The digital platform, which is still a work in progress, was developed using methodology focused on the management and presentation of spatial and non-spatial data. Additionally, in order to have a user-friendly environment a combination of web development tools and libraries were used. Through the categorization of the cartographic data the user can navigate in Attica region of the 19th century and distinguish settlements, buildings, fortifications, archaeological remains visible at that time and even hydraulic and defensive works and geomorphological elements. They can also filter the presented data by date period, spatially isolate some of them and look for names on the map. By activating and reading the linked Erläuternder Text, he can also gain a fuller picture of the places walked and recorded by the German cartographers. The project aspires to significantly contribute to today's world of digital humanities through interdisciplinary research. As it will be bilingual (Greek / English) and freely available on the web, it will attract both the modern researcher and anyone potentially interested in ancient Attica. Upon completion, we hope that the user-friendly digital cartographic platform will give rise to a variety of derivative projects: as a methodological tool for modern teaching approaches in the sciences of Archaeology, History, Cartography and Informatics; as the basis for the creation of thematic routes in most visited places of Attica; and finally, as a model for the creation of corresponding digital cartographic applications of historical content for other areas of Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Road network selection is one of the major issues of map generalisation, as new papers are proposed every year since the first attempts of automation in the 1990's (Thomson & Richardson, 1995). New methods are regularly proposed because selecting roads for maps at smaller scales is a complex problem. Roads are at the same time present in maps to enable car navigation tasks, and because they are structuring elements that reveal the nature of the landscape (urban, rural, mountainous...). So road selection is not only about retaining the most important roads of the network, but the preservation of topology and connectivity is essential, as well as the preservation, or the typification of road patterns (e.g. a ring road), and the preservation of local density differences (between urban and rural areas for instance). It is rare to see comparisons of road selection techniques in the literature, because of the lack of open source in map generalisation, but also because of the lack of a common dataset to benchmark these techniques; new propositions on road selection are most of the time tied to their own dataset and use case. This is why we think that this BasqueRoads dataset could be useful to advance on this topic of road network selection. This dataset (Figure 1) was created for an experiment on multi-scale cartography (Dumont et al., 2017). The target road network was included in a 1:80k scale topographic map. First, the roads were processed with an algorithm that differentiates urban and rural areas (Touya, 2010). In urban areas, blocks or meshes are iteratively aggregated, while rural roads are selected by importance considering strokes (Thomson & Richardson, 1999) and shortest paths. Roundabouts and branching crossroads are also collapsed into simple crossroads (Touya, 2010). Then, the results were manually edited to correct some connections errors and omitted important roads. As the goal was multi-scale cartography, manual edition also checked for inconsistencies between this output scale and other scales (1:50k and 1:100k) that are not included in the first version of this dataset. The shapefiles are projected in Lambert93 (2154). There is a field in both shapefiles, named real_world_id that links road lines that represent the same feature at different scales. The roads also include a nature field with values ranging from "unpaved" to "highway". This field can be used by road selection techniques to assess the importance of the road. An additional field called lanes_nb contains the number of lanes of the road section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'Alpe d'Huez is a ski resort in the French Alps, and it is also famous among cyclists for the number of bends in the road to the ski resort. It is a good location to evaluate the capabilities of map generalisation tools, as the surroundings contain urban, rural and mountainous areas, and it was chosen 15 years ago as one of the four datasets to benchmark map generalisation software (Stoter et al., 2009). The EuroSDR benchmark used data from IGN France, the French National Mapping Agency (NMA). At that time, open science policies were not popular in NMAs, but now they release their dataset with open licenses, so it is a good opportunity to create an open benchmark for topographic map generalisation. Although NMA have been using automated generalisation for some years now to produce their topographic maps (Duchêne et al., 2014), there are still many issues of map generalisation that automated solutions cannot handle. And usually, NMAs decide to lower the cartographic quality of the map, until better generalisation techniques are proposed. This is why we think it is still useful to propose a benchmark for NMA-oriented topographic map generalisation, to foster the development of new techniques. The dataset proposed for the benchmark is not the exact same one used in the EuroSDR project (Stoter et al., 2009), as a few layers have been trimmed (Figure 1). It contains the usual important layers for map generalisation (buildings, roads, rivers), basic topographic layers (contour lines, forests, lakes), and layers that might require specific procedures (ski lifts, tower points, embankment lines). The goal of this benchmark is to generalise the dataset for a 1:50k scale map. The symbols for the target 1:50k scale map are described in a table file, using the same template as the EuroSDR project. The projection used is "NTF Lambert II Etendu", EPSG 9801. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We offer our initial task in automatizing the Czech Republic middle-scale topographic map work for map generalization benchmarking purposes. A terrain slope is defined as a place where the slope of the terrain is changing. The terrain slope is oriented, and there are small lines (hairs) on the right side of the slope (as figure 1 shows). We found that only 5 % of slopes are not in the collision with another feature. After performing our generalization procedures, the largest group of conformal slopes with constraints consists of slopes parallelized or aligned with other line features (mainly roads, paths, rivers, or outlines of land-use boundaries). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most special characteristics of orienteering maps is that the users (the orienteers themselves) make these maps, since cartographers would not be able to produce good orienteering maps without having very good knowledge on the sport itself. Nowadays, orienteering maps are widely used by the athletes, clubs, sport federations, there are established and widely accepted rules and guidelines, specifications describe all aspects of an orienteering event, especially the maps. This was very different when this sport started. Although the International Orienteering Federation was established only in 1961, the early beginnings of the sport goes back even to the very late part of the 19th century. Orienteering is originated from military activities, when cadets were trained to use maps for terrain navigation. To make this education more interesting and more challenging, such competitive events were organised. It was quite difficult to define when these events became open for non-military people. Finally the Scandinavian countries (where these activities started) agreed on that the first civil orienteering event was held in 1897 in Norway. Some journals published reports on this event, presented the results, even mentioned the place of control points, but there were no information on which kind of maps were used by the competitors in the event. Map use, map access at that time was totally different than nowadays. Printed maps were already available at the end of 19th century, but the printing itself was quite expensive (particularly in colour), so there was no chance to use special maps for orienteering events. It was already investigated which kind of existing maps were potentially used for those events (tourist map, topographic map, winter sport map). It was a real surprise to come across an article in an Austrian sport journal one or two years ago which reveals that a bicycle race with map navigation (today we call mountain bike orienteering) was organised in 1893. The 1 October and 15 October 1893 issues of Radfahr-Sport, published in Vienna, reported a new type of competition they called Terrainfahren, which was organised as part of the event of the Bund Deutscher Radfahrer Oesterreichs. The event took place as part of the Gaufest bicycle competitions in the Waldviertel region (Langenlois). It seems that it was an open public event, not a military one. However, there were no information on which maps were used. The large-scale topographic maps of the Third Military Survey or even larger-scale cadastral maps already existed at that time, but they were either classified or not used by civilians or not printed/copied at all (they were only manuscript maps). So it is still unknown which kind of maps were used in this first bicycle orienteering race, although being familiar with the civilian map use of this time we may have some tips. We have slightly better knowledge on the first Swedish orienteering event, which was organised in 1901. It was a 14 km long course with four controls. The 1:100,000 scale topographic map was fieldworked sometime between 1845 and 1866 and it was printed in 1873. The first orienteering event in Hungary was organised in 1925. This fact was not known at all when the Hungarian Orienteering Federation was founded in 1970 or even when the first national championships were organised in 1950 (however, it was a different kind of sport at that time). In 1978, an article on orienteering sport was published in a popular weekly political journal (Magyarország) including the history of Hungarian orienteering. Then we thought that the sport had started in Hungary in 1950. The publisher of the journal got several feedback from the readers and all of them stated that they had already participated in orienteering events between the two world wars. Researching in various libraries revealed that the first orienteering event was organised by a former prisoner of war (who came back to Hungary via Sweden after WWI) in 1925. Several journals published a report on the event, even mentioned the places of the control points, but none of them mentioned the map which was used by the competitors. The independent Hungarian national mapping institute was just formed in 1919, but only few modern, contour lined topographic maps were published. Probably a tourist map was used in the event, but we have to take into consideration that whatever kind of map was used, these printed maps sheets was quite expensive at that time. It is important to be familiar with the map use of earlier times to be able to identify which kinds of maps were available for civilian use. Not too much research was made on the history of map use in the early 20th century. Map use in certain times depended on several factors including political, historical, social factors. Orienteering maps are good examples of special map use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the 'Ancient Thoughts and Electric Buildings' project - an experimental, audio-led, virtual reality (VR) documentary that examines the portion of Toronto's downtown core that extends along the city's Gardner Expressway. This site traverses Canada's financial nexus and has been the recent locus of extensive condo and commercial development; simultaneously, it exists as a region that is (and has historically been) occupied by a significant number of homeless people. This project seeks to foreground sound as a key sensory modality distinguishing the conditions of the locale's urban dispossessed from that of the privileged. To this end, spatial and haptic audio dissemination is deployed to emphasize the relentless cacophony within which the homeless remain perpetually exposed, a stark contrast to the acoustically sealed, climate-controlled, humming structures of the financial towers that their habitat is immersed in. Visually, the documentary investigates the homeless population's reinterpretation of their imposed topography - beneath the cathedrals of commerce, highways become roofs and scrap material is reconfigured as walls and furniture in a surreal contemporary echo of feudal dynamics. Further emphasizing the socio-economic disconnect, fragments of local condominium marketing copy have been composited into the 360-degree space in order to highlight the disconcerting paradoxes inherent in the clash of these spatially overlapping, yet antithetical territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specialized topographic maps of land or water areas are maps created on the basis of universal topographic maps within the limits of their accuracy and in a single technological cycle with them, with the addition of content or its directed unloading for a specific area of use (while maintaining an image of a complex of main topographic objects). These maps are targeted at specific consumer groups. Specialized topographic maps have taken a firm place in the cartographic information support of various fields of application as a result of the organizational restructuring of topographic surveys and state topographic mapping. The main arguments for the restructuring and its optimization were, on the one hand, the possibility of producing specialized maps in a single technological cycle with the universal ones (provided that the most expensive work is performed once), as well as the elimination of duplication, fragmentation of work performance by organizations that do not own modern technologies and trained specialists of the required qualification level. On the other hand, the demand for this type of maps is increasing, since the demands of science and practice have determined the needs for topographic maps of land and water areas, which go beyond the content of universal maps for multipurpose purposes and the solution of only navigation problems. Together with universal topographic maps, specialized ones represent the basis of the state cartographic fund of the country, the federal fund of spatial data and its basic component - a unified electronic cartographic basis. Specialized mapping has received great development both in Russia and in foreign countries. An analysis of maps and developments based on them shows that the practical experience and directions of research on the problem in Russia are quite consistent with international trends in mapping. At the initial stage, the provision of requests with specialized maps, both in Russia and abroad, related to the sectors of the economy - land reclamation, agriculture, forestry, geological exploration, mining and oil refining, geophysical research, industrial urban and rural construction, linear construction (railways and highways, trunk pipelines, communication and power lines). With the beginning of topographic surveys of the shelf of the seas and inland water bodies, the need for the creation of specialized maps of water areas was also revealed. In recent years, information support for the environmental safety of various spheres of society, inventory of natural resources, monitoring of natural and anthropogenic processes, prevention of critical and catastrophic situations has been added to the topical areas of using both domestic and foreign maps. Such information contributes to the harmonization of nature-society relations and, ultimately, ensures the sustainable development of territories. The demand for specialized maps as a reliable comprehensive information base is increasing over time. New tasks are being set that oblige to expand and improve this direction. One of the directions is not only the study and satisfaction of object-oriented requirements for maps, but also the development of scientifically based types of specialized topographic maps. Our research is devoted to the development of an ecologically oriented type of maps, where the object of mapping is bogs. Specialization of bog massif maps can be carried out in the following areas: - displaying of individual biosphere functions (hydrological, biological, resource); - displaying the internal structure and specifics of landscapes and microlandscapes of raised and back bogs; - displaying of the consequences of economic activity (irreversible and partial transformations of landscapes); - displaying of the undisturbed natural state of bog ecosystems of various degrees of protection regime (with the allocation of the location of especially valuable areas). Let us point out the priorities for displaying bog landscapes on the created specialized topographic maps, which could ensure the geographical correspondence of the natural pattern of the area and its transformation as a result of economic activity. On the one hand: the degree of permeability, the depth of the peat layer, the internal structure of bogs (lines of drainage of seepage waters, areas of open water, lakes, forms of microrelief (hillocks, hummocks, ridges)); the status and boundaries of specially protected natural areas; observation points (amelioration-bog stations, integrated bog experimental and forest-reclamation stations, hydrometeorological posts). On the other hand: areas of industrial development; drainage channels and ditches; linear communications; areas of pollution (oil, etc.); places where untreated wastewater is discharged; depressed and disturbed vegetation, etc. When developing a map, all topographic objects of the area and their characteristics that do not violate the type of universal topographic maps are displayed on the original of a specialized map, and not included in the current system of notation for topographic maps and contradicting its type are disclosed by compiling a text reference (geographical characteristics). The essence of such reference is to give more detailed information about the objects shown on the author's original map. The reference, in conjunction with the map, provides detailed information about the study area. The main information of the reference is a text with additions in the form of diagrams, tables, photographs, satellite images, inset maps. The problem of studying and protecting bogs for Russia, as well as for a number of other countries, is urgent. In the world, the area of swamps occupies 5 million square kilometers and a third of this territory is located in Russia. Bog massifs are diverse in type, genesis, characteristics, conditions of formation, regional features. The implementation of proposals for mapping bog massifs was carried out on the example of a developed type of specialized topographic map of a unique natural ecosystem, one of the largest in Europe, with an area of about 180 thousand hectares, formed at the beginning of the Holocene. The concept of the map assumes the representation of the bog as an ecosystem, which, along with the natural state, experiences anthropogenic impacts in the form of peat extraction, demographic pressure, the influence of transport, fires and other processes associated with human life. The dynamics of landscapes and the results of anthropogenic impacts over a period of 50 years are traced. The consequences of carrying out reclamation measures after aggressive economic influence are revealed. A map of fires and smoke pollution in the adjacent territories has been compiled. When compiling the maps, methods of remote sensing and geoinformation technologies were used. The map and accompanying geographic information are illustrated in the report. In general, illustrations include: 1. Geographical location of the study area; 2. Author's original of the specialized topographic map of the bog massif; 3. Photo map of the internal structure of bog landscapes; 4. Dynamics of lakes within the protected area and peat extraction lands (period 1968 - 2018); 5. Dynamics of vegetation within the protected area and peat extraction lands (period 1968 - 2018); 6. Crop canopy condition after reclamation; 7. The image of indicators of the dynamics of objects on multitemporal space images and topographic maps of different years of publication; 8. Examples of using the normalized NDVI and NDWI indices for studying the dynamics of water bodies and crop canopy; 9. Map of fires, smoke and areas covered by fires. The temporal coverage of the period of transformation of bog landscapes in several decades made it possible to differentiate the bog massif according to the ecological state after anthropogenic interference and to assess the ability of landscapes to restore. The obtained data can be used to monitor and predict further changes, assess the reversibility of disturbed landscapes, and to develop measures for the protection of wetlands in general. The research was carried out within the state assignments: No.0708 - 2020 - 0001 (Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography) and AAAA - A19 - 119040990079 - 3 No. 0147 - 2019 - 0004 (Water Problem Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences) of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical maps contain valuable information on settlements, land cover, and transportation infrastructure in the past. However, the information contained in such documents needs to be converted into analysis-ready data formats in order to be used for retrospective landscape assessments or to inform long-term land cover / land use models. The recent availability of historical topographic map archives as collections of georeferenced, digital raster data has catalysed the development of methods for information extraction from historical maps using advanced image processing or machinelearning based computer vision methods (Uhl & Duan 2021). Most of these studies, however, focus on relatively small datasets and thus, it remains unknown whether such methods are applicable and scalable for the extraction of historical geographic features across large (e.g., country-level) study areas and massive data volumes. We designed a pipeline to obtain large amounts (N>50,000) of historical topographic maps from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in order to test the extraction of geographic features such as historical forest extents and historical urban areas over large areas. We focused on large-scale maps (i.e., map scales 1:24,000 and 1:62,500). While some of these maps date back to the 1890s, forest cover is typically contained in maps created in the 1950s or later. Based on the available metadata, map sheets with specific characteristics (e.g., containing woodland tint or not), or from specific time periods can be selected. Hence, we were able to select the earliest map sheet per quadrangle that contains woodland tint, for forest extraction, or the earliest available map per quadrangle contained within a given area of interest, for urban area extraction. In order to keep computational costs to a minimum, we use low-level image descriptors (e.g., color moments, Huang et al. 2010) to generalize the map content (i.e., aggregate the spectral data) within grid cells of 100x100 meters, which can then be used as input for the extraction of the features of interest. For example, forest areas are typically represented in green and can be selected through appropriate image processing methods, including RGB-thresholding methods, unsupervised color-space clustering or advanced semantic segmentation methods. This grid-based strategy also facilitates the integration of other gridded data (e.g., remote sensing data or derived layers) into the processing chain. Such data integration facilitates (a) narrowing down search areas for specific geographic features, and (b) quantitatively crosscomparing raw or extracted map content to related gridded datasets for quality checks, accuracy assessments, as well as change detection, consistently and seamlessly across large amounts of individual map sheets. Moreover, the framework is independent from the actual information extraction method that can be incorporated in flexible ways. We are currently testing the performance of different extraction methods with respect to the extraction quality and efficiency. While first results are promising, we find that the variety of map designs, defining both the appearance and content of maps, and high levels of heterogeneity in the temporal reference of the map sheets pose substantial challenges for the seamless extraction of map content across large amounts of map sheets despite the availability of detailed metadata. We find that our approach to extract information from the USGS topographic map archive at a country-level scale overcomes some of these key challenges and produces acceptable results. The contribution of this work is four-fold. 1) We provide a framework for the large-scale extraction of historical map content across large amounts of individual map sheets; 2) We raise awareness about the issues and challenges related to the heterogeneity in map design, map content, and temporal reference when massive volumes of map sheets are processed; 3) We use the extracted historical urban extents in combination with more recent, remote-sensing derived urban extents, allowing for the assessment of long-term urbanization trajectories at the city or metropolitan area level; 4) We provide extraction results to the public, such as forest extents across the conterminous United States dating back to the time period between 1940 and 1970. Such data are extremely valuable for long-term environmental studies which are typically based on remote sensing data and thus, constrained to more recent time periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the arguments to propose a research project whose primary goal is to identify topographic mapping deficiencies in its relationship with the current regulatory framework in the Brazilian legal system. The motivation for proposing this research study is a problematic chronological discrepancy between the territory occupation, legislation, and mapping. We assume this as a problematic discrepancy because some fundamental human rights are impossible to achieve if there are no updated topographic maps at suitable scales. We also assume that there is a historical problem due to political motivation since the Portuguese crown colonization. The Brazilian colonial state policy that held the entire territory's domain defined the first phase of the Brazilian territorial occupation and land legislation evolution. Its purpose was to assign private property to the groups that supported the monarchical government. The history of mapping the Brazilian territory started at the end of this period, with the first astronomical observations in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo from 1781 to 1795. Therefore, the Brazilian territory occupation occurred without being correctly mapped and, thus, be unknown in around 300 years. Consequently, there was a gap in land registration in allocating public lands to private individuals in the Brazilian Empire's territory domain. This fact led the Brazilian agrarian economy to seek an expansion of land properties through the legal status of possession. The next moment coincides with the first attempt of modernization (understanding legal modernity based on individual private property) by establishing public lands to transfer them just to those who had access to the state apparatus (Land Law of 1850). This Law was regulated by decree 1318 of 1854, which determined the land measurement and created the Commissioner Judge of Measurements. However, these processes occurred without having a particular concern with the cartographic aspects related to the precise demarcation of land boundaries, i.e., the concern was only with the boundaries of the Colony and Empire, but not with the boundaries of the domains and possessions of subjects. In 1864, almost 100 years after the first astronomical observations, there was an attempt to map Brazil based on technical and scientific criteria, creating the Commission of the General Map of the Empire. The commission's mission was to establish a geodetic referential using triangulation and produce topographic maps at 1:1.000.000 for the entire Brazilian territory. Unfortunately, because of the accuracy and precision problems of the results of this mapping mission, the only result was a map published at the 1: 3,710,220 scale, called the Map of the Empire of Brazil. The Map of the Empire was presented at the Vienna National Exhibition in 1875 and the 1876 Philadelphia Universal Exhibition. It is more an illustration than the results of a topographic mapping as demanded by the emperor in 1864. The first step towards considering the precise demarcation of properties took place in the republican period. In 1901, the Ministry of Military Defense proposed a project called "General Map of Brazil" in order to produce a topographic map using geodetic, astronomical, topographic, and cartographic operations. This project established survey procedures, map projections, scales, and map formats for the General Map of Brazil. This project's execution began in 1903, with the General Map Commission's settlement in Porto Alegre - Rio Grande do Sul State. The results, however, were far below planned. It was supposed to make 3,000 sheets at the 1:100,000 scale, but the commission could finish just 53. Several problems that occurred since 1922 prevented the last years of activity of the General Map Commission from getting along, and, in 1930, practically all the works were ceased. Although the lack of topographic mapping at large scales, with the Civil Code of 1916, it was possible to acquire a property by transcribing titles in the Land Registration Office. In 1922, the Brazilian territory was completed mapped at a 1:1,000,000 scale. The 1939 Code of Civil Procedure introduced the Torrens land title registration system and enabled the acquisition and loss of land. Despite having the whole Brazilian territory mapped at 1:1.000.000 only, the Federal Constitution of 1946 defined the basis for the new agrarian legislation, establishing the use of the property for social welfare. Years later, the Land Statute (Law 4504/1964) created the Brazilian Institute of Agrarian Reform and the National Institute for Agrarian Development and, in 1966, the National Agrarian Reform Program. In 1967, the decree-law n° 243 set the guidelines and bases for Brazilian reference cartography. In 1972, decree n° 5868 determined the creation of the National System of Rural Cadastre (SNCR), whose main goal was to promote integration and systematization of the collection, search, and processing of data and information about land use and possession. Decree 72106 regulated the SNCR in 1973, and, in the same year, the Law of Public Records (Law 6015) was approved. However, during these decades, there have been a few topographic mapping works. For example, in 1946, the beginning of the São Francisco Valley and the State of Bahia mapping at 1:250,000 scale. In 1978, the Brazilian government approved the National Mapping Program to perform the systematic mapping at 1:100,000 and 1: 250,000 scales, which should be completed by 1985. Today, the completed coverage of topographic mapping of Brazilian territory is at 1:250.000 and 1:1.000.000 scales only. The 1:50.000 topographic maps only cover 24% of the territory. Nevertheless, 58% of those maps were published before 1998, most in the 1960s and 1970s. According to the 1988 Federal Constitution, the federal government is responsible for organizing and maintaining the national cartographic system. Despite the constitutional obligation, the Cartography Commission (COCAR) was deactivated in 1990 and reactivated in 1994 as National Cartography Commission (CONCAR), with the duties of advising the Minister of State in the National Cartographic System (SCN) and coordinating the execution of the National Cartographic Policy. Today, the website of CONCAR < https://www.concar.gov.br/> is inoperative, and the last official meeting, published on the Ministry of Planning website, occurred on November, 23rd 2018. From the Colony to the Republic, we note the chronological mismatch between the legislation (the occupation of the territory) and mapping (the territory knowledge). It follows that Cartography and Law, as they stand, are products of the same historical time and serve the purposes of colonial conquest and national states. The beginning of the 19th century, given the States' configuration and the concern with territorial control and planning, changed the notion of mapping and territorial rights. With the Napoleonic Cadastre, France changed the size, scale, and map contents simultaneously that the Napoleonic Civil Code established the new property figures of the land, with the emergence of the public-private division and the regime of properties and possessions. Influenced by European models, though in a diverse context and conditions, attempts were made to establish state policies in Brazil, especially in the post-independence period. These policies provided the implementation of cartographic bases and the inauguration of regulations on the disposition of public lands to create private properties, which can be observed initially in the advent of the Land Law in 1850. Given the precarious conditions and the utterly hostile environment to such novelties, we lack concurrence between discourse, practice, and reality. From the Cartography standpoint, illustrative nature's distortions in the "Map of the Empire of Brazil" are in conjunction with the new provision for private property defined in Brazil's first Constitution (1824). This property regime provided the exact definition of territorial units, which constitutes an "institutional untruth." Cartography and Law can identify contradictions and gaps that have increased inequality and territorial injustice by critically reviewing such a process. We understand that knowledge about the territory means power over the definition of the population's life and space structuring. Moreover, advancing the reading of territorial issues also allows contemporary instruments, such as territorial cadastres, to consign the diversity of themes that generate the representation, the analytical understanding of the land, and the plurality of public policies that impact new territorial realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of developing a Historical Atlas of Poland (HAP) in the 16th century dates back to the end of the 19th century and the first General Congress of Polish Historians. However, the actual work on the project began after the Second World War. Since then generations of historians and cartographers have been working together on the Atlas, initially with traditional methods, and from the beginning of the 21st century moving towards methods used in digital humanities and GIS. Therefore, one of the challenges of the 70-year series has been to maintain cartographic consistency when changing mapping methods. It was planned to develop 9 volumes for all 18 palatinates of the Polish Crown, which covered an area of approximately 180,000 square kilometres. The main goal of the initiative was to reconstruct the settlement network, administrative borders, roads depicted on a base map (land cover, hydrography) based on topographic maps from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries (Rutkowski 2018). Each volume of the series consists of text commentary and map series: the main map (scale 1:250,000, Figure 1), overview maps presenting ecclesiastical divisions of land, non-Catholic communities, distribution of landownership and major roads (scale 1:500,000), several city plans (scale 1:10,000). The last volumes of the Historical Atlas of Poland, as well as a volume combining all the previous publications from this series will be published in 2021. We will also make the spatial database of the project available on the Internet, in the hope that it will serve the next generations of Polish history researchers. Nonetheless, the works are continued in the project Historical Atlas of Poland 2.0, which aims at building a stable repository for HAP data in accordance with the FAIR rules, as well as at popularisation of knowledge and research work carried out at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History PAS. The key element of collected data is the reconstruction of the complete (according to current knowledge) 16th century settlement network. Our knowledge is derived from well-preserved 16th century written sources, mainly tax registers. The location of the settlements is determined on the basis of retrogressive methods supplemented by other sources including field research. Tax registers are also a source of relevant knowledge of Ecclesiastical parish affiliation - the lowest administrative divisions at the time - which allowed us to draw parish borders. Data was edited and symbolised consistently throughout decades of the project. The preparation of a common database for the entire project required combining and harmonizing data from different volumes. Data collected in the pre-GIS era required integration and re-edition. It was necessary, inter alia, to correct the location of settlement points from old volumes, adjust roads and forest borders, and improve the hierarchy of ecclesiastical divisions. After that layers and symbolization are exported respectively to .shp and .sld formats. One of the core components of the Historical Atlas of Poland 2.0 project is a geoportal. Our aim is to develop a platform for publishing and sharing HAP data and to build a community of engaged users. Being as open and user-friendly as possible will help us to fulfil the goal of popularizing the data and knowledge gathered in decades of work and research on HAP. The platform that has been chosen for the project is GeoNode (Figure 2) - an open-source framework serving as a base for building geospatial content management systems and spatial data infrastructures (Corti et al. 2019). Its rich features intended for data publishing, organizing them in structures, and presenting on a map supports well our goal of creating a geoportal and data repository implementing FAIR rules. Furthermore, the HAP 2.0 geoportal will contain a robust search tool to explore the resources and a community module letting users create accounts, publish their own datasets and actively work with the repository. In conclusion, in 2021, the project which has started in the 1950s will be finished. Finally, the idea presented by historians at the end of the 19th century will be completed and transferred into the digital world. We believe that the geoportal will contribute to extending access to spatial, historical data for the needs of state administration, cultural institutions, education, and scientific work. Moreover, we hope that the popularization part of the project will improve the social perception of humanities research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructural data analysis is associated with the constant increase in the data complexity in time and space. Forest management and infrastructural forest data in Russia have all these characteristics. The tasks of transport logistics and effective navigation to access the forest fires and forest resources by ground means for the purposes of their protection and use, assessment and forecasting are among the most important ones. An important general practice for the forest industry in Russia is using digitized sheets of topographic maps, satellite imagery and forest management maps and tablets, dealing with the road network data of different quality and sources. Research on transport modeling and forest infrastructure is carried out by Russian specialized educational and scientific, including academic, institutions. Center for Forest Ecology and Productivity of the Russian Academy of Sciences (CEPF RAS) studies ecology and productivity of forests in Russia, their ecosystem functions, resources and environmental potential (http://cepl.rssi.ru/en/about-the-centre/) and has a "Transportation Task" research group (http://cepl.rssi.ru/en/transport-modeling/) within the Laboratory of Forest Ecosystems Monitoring. An "Open"-research direction extends the activities of the "Transportation Task" group by implementing Open Data and Open Source-tools, namely OSM and QGIS with its plugins (Podolskaia, 2020; Podolskaia, 2021). Within the scope of new tasks, we estimate existing transport systems consisting of public roads, forest roads and cleanings used for timber's export (Podolskaia et al., 2020a). Forest roads standards play an important role in the forest management, there is an example for the accessing of forest fires in Turkey (Akay et al., 2021) in our collaborative projects. From the methodological point of view we have moved from the accessibility analysis of forest fires (Podolskaia et al., 2019; Podolskaia et al., 2020b) to the analysis of forest resources' spatial location (Podolskaia et al., 2020c). By analyzing actual forest resources' accessibility, which takes into account types and conditions of roads, time and traffic speed, length of ground routes, as well as location of fire stations and settlements we propose some forest management solutions or scenarios at the regional scale of Russia. Information and GIS technologies, the use of data services, and Open Source developments are the basis of modern forestry transport research like any other applied geoinformation industry. Geodata for the public and forest roads, the volume and quality of the accumulated datasets continue to be essential for the methodological and technological solutions. The role of Open Source tools will only grow and provide more alternatives when comparing functionality to the commercial products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Perthées, who was a leading cartographer of King Stanisław August Poniatowski at the dawn of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, elaborated maps of palatinates (1:225,000, 1783-1804). They form a first map series of the Crown covering this area with the full settlement network, administrative borders, and natural environment. These maps were drawn with almost no field measurements or triangulation but on the basis of textual descriptions prepared by the parsons from 1778 to 1785. The form of the maps is, however, similar to medium-scale topographic maps. Although the planimetric precision is much lower than on Austrian or Prussian maps of these times, Perthées' maps are much in detail (Fig. 1). For 21 years Perthées managed to elaborate 12 maps for 11 palatinates of the Crown after the First Partition. The maps serve as a primary source of information for settlement network reconstruction of the end of the 18th century and are extremely valuable for historians and geographers (Buczek 1966). The aim of the paper is to describe the idea behind their digital edition: digital representation of the maps and their content. Editing of the maps has two objectives: (1) preparing maps and data derived from them for dissemination using FAIR principles including Linked Open Data (2) providing a set of information for the development of a historical map presenting settlements and boundaries of the Crown in the second half of the 18th century. The first objective requires that the map and its content should be represented digitally in the "source-driven" model: as close to the source as possible. The second entails that the data obtained from the maps should be georeferenced and related to the actual historical location of the features they represent. Combining these two objectives required a different approach to the vectorization of historic maps than the classic methodology based on map georeferencing and content vectorization. The methodology, which we call the "source-driven approach", assumes treating maps as images with only a local reference system (XY Cartesian), and the data model is subordinated to the map legend. Therefore, the representation of their content is independent of a particular project. The approach involves three steps. In the first, the map sheets are entered into a GIS application and placed next to each other. Secondly, a database structure has been developed for maps' indexation consisting of five tables designed to represent the structure of the map content: "Maps", "Units", "Features", "Symbols" and "Annotations" (Fig. 2). Ultimately, map content is indexed (vectorized) and the whole process verified. The "Maps" table contains metadata with basic information about the particular map sheet that is indexed. Entities in this table are actually vector frames drawn around each of the sheets. In the "Units" table, data on homogeneous areas that can be distinguished on the map are collected. The areas can be of either geographical (district, palatinate) or graphic character (scale bar, legend, title, etc.). To maintain a "source-driven" model, it was decided to separate map symbols from map annotations and collect them in two different tables: "Symbols" and "Annotations" respectively. Preliminary studies have shown that it is often difficult to clearly link a symbol (e.g. village or mill) to its description (e.g. village name). Symbols and annotations, when indexed, have no relationship with each other. The polygons in the "Features" table, which spatially overlap with specific map symbols and annotations, allow relating them functionally and technically. At this stage, the features are preliminarily identified with external resources, like WikiData. The result of such a procedure allows not only to present and share the map image and its data but also to use the acquired information for the elaboration of the historical maps of the Crown in the second half of the 18th century. Data prepared in the "source-driven" model enables reuse in other projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The representation of a place is becoming one of the most important research issues in the Geographic Information System (GIS) and in the participatory cartography (Hobel, Fogliaroni and Frank, 2016). As well known, in behavioural geography a mental map represents the personal perception of the surrounding geographical space (Lynch, 1960; Gould and White, 1974). Usually, these maps are very simple, so everyone can create them. The recent rise of internet and the advent of Web2.0 may mean, among others, the possibility for everyone to map. This is a sort of "revolution" in the cartography production, so now the geospatial data are often collected by people taking part in the generation of Volunteered Geographic Information, well known also as VGI (Goodchild, 2007). OpenStreetMap (OSM) is probably the most famous of these cartographic projects. Started in the UK in the early 2000s, now it provides free topographic maps at global scale (Ramm et al., 2011). Thus, in just a few decades, we have gone from mental maps to being able to collaborate on participative maps online (Panek, 2016). However, how much could knowledge of our living region affects the results of our online mapping activities? Namely, how much is important the personal perception of surrounding space in participatory cartography? This research focuses on cultural heritage to recognize its important role in both local community identity (as "common identity heritage") and the tourism industry. In a region particularly rich in such unique features such as Campania Region (South Italy), awareness of its own identity heritage is sometimes lacking, leading to its degradation and neglect. The aim of this research is to investigate about the differences between the VGI of OSM and an official cartography of cultural heritage in the historical centre of Caserta, an important urban area of the Campania. This town is best known in Italy and abroad for its Royal Palace, a former royal residence built in the XVIII Century by the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies and now one of the most visited monuments in Italy. Our sources of data are the cultural heritage risk map realized by the "Istituto Centrale per il Restauro del Ministero della cultura" (ICR) (High Institute for Conservation and Restoration, Ministry of Culture) and the PostgreSQL database of OSM. The first is a GIS project about Italian cultural heritage to assess the risk due to their state of preservation and the characteristics of the territory within they are (Bartolomucci, Cacace, 2008). Since the end of 2020, the General Directorate for Security of the Ministry of Culture manages the project. Currently the webGIS of the ICR map is freely available on http://www.cartadelrischio.beniculturali.it The OSM database, instead, is resulting from activities of VGI mapping geoinformation such as points or lines and polygons. The key component of OSM is its main database, which contains tables for each element type, where the attribute information of each object is referred to as a 'tag' (Ramm et al., 2011). Starting from the recent municipal urban plan of Caserta (Bottaro et al., 2017), we defined the border of the historical center of this town. We use this area to automatically extract the georeferenced data from ICR map and from the OMS database. In this last case, we use a QGIS plugin - QuickOSM plugin - to set up queries on the OSM database about buildings, areas, sites, monuments, churches and fountains. Then we compare our results to outline main differences between the official map (ICR map) and the crowdsourcing data of OSM. In detail, we examined the spatial distribution of cultural heritage in the study area and what is mapped by VGI. The results put in evidence a great difference between the two selected sources of data: the ICR identifies 115 points, while OSM detects 22 points and 27 polygons. Considering the type of cultural good, the first map highlights a set very rich and heterogeneous: in the centre of Caserta there are 57 historical buildings, 13 churches, 8 chapels, 6 fountains, 3 theatres, 3 historical houses and other 21 elements. On the other side, the geographical information of OSM is a little more multi-faceted: it reports 7 historical palaces (all polygons), 16 ancient churches (15 polygons and 1 point, classified as chapel), 9 ancient and modern fountains (5 polygons and 4 points) and 17 "monuments" (all points, comprehensive of figures, commemorative plaques, artistic statues, etc.). Regarding their spatial distribution, the ICR map includes items within all the study area, even if their main concentration is close to the Royal Palace (fig. 1A). Concerning the OSM map, some areas of Caserta's historic centre are not even mapped in detail; they are mainly the historical neighbourhoods farthest from the Royal Palace, such as Ercole or Sala. Consequently, also the cultural heritage of OSM map is mostly located close to the Royal Palace or within its park (fig. 1B). As a conclusion, we can shortly report that the cultural heritage mapped by VGI of OSM is overall quite significant (about the 40% of total assets mapped by ICR). However, the results strictly depend on their typology: in our case, for instance, they are better for churches, but worse for historic palaces. Furthermore, the resulting OSM map is strongly influenced by the "bulky" presence in this city of such an important monument as the Royal Palace, as VGI mapped what is directly related or otherwise spatially close. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relief is one of the basic elements of every topographic map. Usually, it is presented by a combination of contour lines, rock depictions and additional symbols of exposed relief objects. Contour lines as a basic relief presentation form were traditionally created by topographers. Their method of research was based on a stereoscopic photogrammetric survey. This method enabled a good morphological presentation; however, it was time consuming and strongly depended on the choice of the operator. The automated process of creating contour lines saves time; however, its result is of inferior quality in comparison with the lines created by topographers. In our project we created an algorithm that upgrades contour lines, initially created in selected commercial software packages, with the focus on morphologically complex karts terrain. DMR 1 (LiDAR based Digital Elevation Model with 1 meter spatial density) was used as source relief data. The created algorithm performs three main procedures with the following general functions: improving contour lines, creating point symbols of individual objects of relief (symbols for sinkholes and slope lines) and creating symbols for rock faces (area objects). Figure 1 depicts the algorithms diagram. Calculated contour lines are divided classified into index, intermediate and supplementary contour lines based on their height attribute. The length of supplementary contour lines is optimized. Sinkholes and slope line symbols are calculated based on the length and the height of the lines which define sinkholes. Area symbols are generated based on the distance between contour lines, while hatching was created by neural network. The algorithm was tested in four different areas of karst terrain in Slovenia. The comparison between contour lines created by the commercial software, symbols of landforms presented on national topographic map at a selected scale and the result of the created algorithm gives promising results. The algorithm represents a step towards optimizing the production of relief presentation on topographic maps in the karst area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National mapping authorities aim to increase automation in their mapping processes. Automation increases the rate of updating features in topographic databases (TDBs), improves the quality in terms of regional homogeneity and logical consistency between the mapped features, and lowers costs. Recently, the National Land Survey of Finland (NLS) has achieved countrywide coverage for its digital elevation model with a 2-meter resolution (NLS-DEM2m). During the production of the NLS-DEM2m, the NLS has initiated several pilot projects to find automatic methods for extraction of topographic features from the DEM, including, contour lines (Kettunen, Koski and Oksanen 2017), cliffs, and hydrographic features. While producing encouraging results, these projects have highlighted the inconsistency between automatically generated features from the NLS-DEM2m and manually mapped features in the NLS TDB. For example, this is apparent when overlaying automatically generated contour lines and the current manually mapped hydrographic features of the TDB (Figure 1). Increased computing power, more data, and better models have made machine learning (ML) popular for automation. In May 2021, NLS started piloting automated mapping of hydrographic features from the NLS-DEM2m with the use of ML. Using the NLS-DEM2m to map hydrographic features to the NLS TDB can improve their positional accuracy and completeness and make them consistent with automatically generated contour lines. Previous piloting of automated mapping of hydrographic features with non-ML methods from high-resolution DEMs has not yet achieved a high enough quality for them to be viable options for fully automated production of hydrographic features (Eraña-Beitia 2013, Oksanen 2014). The main challenges have been to correctly identify and map small streams and ditches. Therefore, in this project, we will focus mainly on ML-based extraction of hydrographic features. The objectives of automated mapping of hydrographic features in the project are as follows: 1. To assess the quality of the ditch and stream vectors that are derived from the results of ML models. 2. To identify best practices for producing test and validation data of ML models that detect ditches and streams from the NLS-DEM2m. 3. To identify the most critical areas of the stream and ditch extraction process that need to be improved. 4. To improve the used methods by developing new and innovative solutions for automated mapping of hydrographic features from DEMs. Recently, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been used to identify both streams (Xu et al. 2021) and ditches (Paul, Ågren, and Lidberg 2021) from DEMs. These CNN approaches have displayed promising results using DEMs with resolutions as high as 1 and 0.5 meters as input data. Results of the CNN models have been assessed based on recall and precision on the pixel level. We will apply these CNN approaches and assess results achieved with them, using the NLSDEM2m as input data as this is the highest resolution country-wide DEM that is available. The results will then be used to generate ditch and stream vectors, which will be assessed based on their completeness and positional accuracy. The quality of results produced by CNN models is dependent on high-quality training and validation data, as well as input data. The positional accuracy and completeness of the data are critical for producing high quality results. However, mapping ditches and streams, especially those in forested areas can be difficult, even when done manually from the available source datasets (Figure 2). Apart from the positional accuracy and completeness of the training data, we need to assess how much training data is needed, what types of test areas are needed considering different types of terrain in Finland, and how to produce the most accurate data possible considering available resources and source data. In the final steps of the project, we aim to identify areas that need improvements and develop methods to improve the outcome. Possible areas of improvement include quality of training data, resolution of input DEM, CNN model architecture, and automated vectorization of the CNN results. We will identify the most promising areas of improvement by testing higher resolution DEMs produced from denser point clouds, by assessing the impact of the quality of training and validation data on the results, by testing different CNN models, and by comparing different methods for vectorization of the CNN model results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydromorphology is an umbrella discipline that examines and evaluates the physical, hydrological and morphological properties of water bodies and the processes underlying these properties. European Council (EC) has designed the water framework directive (WFD), one of the centerpiece documents of EC water legislation, to build sustainable water management (European Commission, 2000). Water quality, quantity, and water ecosystems are entirely interconnected. The hydromorphological data recorded to explain the state of the water source reveal the differences between assessment categories. The European Committee has put forward a detailed list of features recorded along the stream, riverbanks, riparian areas, and floodplains for standardization (CEN, 2002). A proper understanding of the hydromorphological alterations in rivers through time is critical for scientists, policymakers, and managers conducting river management activities. The European countries have developed and used several hydromorphological monitoring and assessment methods with notable differences in aims, approaches, indicators, and collected data. Each technique provides descriptive information evaluating deviations from a natural state. Historical data, expert observations, modelling studies, and theoretical researches are used to reveal the natural form known as a reference condition of a water resource (Rinaldi et al., 2013). The reference condition that reflects the completely or rarely disturbed state must be explained to reveal the hydromorphological changes. Where field measurement data representing the reference condition are available, they should be considered first. However, it is difficult to perform field surveys due to their diverse characteristics and sizes in a high number of catchments. Therefore, the field survey is followed by historical topographic data sources, orthophotos and aerial photographs. Topographic maps are effective data sources to investigate river dynamics over a natural fluvial system spatially and temporally. In addition, official topographic maps at medium scale such as 1:24K or 1:25K have been produced and available for many countries for a long time. This study aims to reveal the hydro-morphological role of topographical maps that provide information about river geometry, land use, and artificial/natural features on the river, such as roads, buildings, lakes, or landforms. It was carried out using Turkish standard topographic maps of five different years between 1957 and 2018 at scale 1:25K. The selected study area is the Kocaeli-Gebze region in Turkey, which has been the center of industrialization and urbanization over the years. First, the factors affecting river hydromorphology in the study area were determined. Then, whether each of these factors can be obtained from topographic maps was examined one by one and features recorded along the river corridor were extracted. Approximately 82% of the recorded details and related reference conditions were obtained thanks to the spatial evaluations made for the selected study site using 1:25K topographic maps, which are more advantageous than time-consuming field studies and expensive satellite images. This result has shown that widely available current and old topographic datasets are an effective tool to reduce the number of field surveys conducted during hydromorphological studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) of ESA's Mars Express mission [1, 2] is designed to map and investigate the topography of Mars and its satellites. As a push broom scanning instrument with nine CCD line detectors mounted in parallel, its unique feature is the ability to obtain along-track stereo images and four colors during a single orbital pass (Fig. 1). Thus, panchromatic stereo and color images from single orbits of the HRSC have been used to produce digital terrain models (DTMs) and orthoimages of the Martian surface since 2004. The HRSC is still running nominally and delivering new image strips to fill remaining gaps that lead to a contiguous coverage of the surface at high resolution stereo. The very high degree of nadir image coverage (up to 96%) of the Martian surface is an outstanding characteristic of the Mars Express mission, which no other mission has been achieved so far. The sub-pixel accuracy of derived 3D points results in DTMs with grid sizes of up to 50 m and height accuracy on the order of one pixel on the ground and better [3]. Since 2010 new HRSC multi-orbit data products have been generated, which have been developed into a global mapping program organized into MC-30 half-tiles, since 2014 [4,5]. Based on continuous coverage of an area, regional DTMs and orthomosaics can be produced by combining image data from multiple orbits using specifically adapted techniques for block-adjustment, DTM interpolation and image equalization [6]. The resulting DTMs and color orthomosaics are the baseline for a controlled topographic map series of Mars at a scale of 1:700,000. The extents of the regional products follow the MC-30 (Mars Chart) global mapping scheme of Greeley and Batson (Fig. 2) [7], which subdivides Mars into 30 quadrangles. Ronald Greeley and Raymond Batson were pioneers in planetary cartography and set fundamental standards for e.g., map formats and projections for planetary bodies. For the generation of the DTMs and color mosaics, the MC-30 quadrangles are further divided into East (E) and West (W). In parallel to the completion of the first half-tile DTM and color mosaic (MC-11-E) we developed a concept for a topographic map series of Mars [8,9]. To limit data volumes and map sizes, each quadrangle is subdivided into eight tiles (i.e. each half-tile into four tiles, Fig. 3). The map scale of 1:700,000 is a compromise between the high DTM and orthomosaic resolution of 50 m/pxl and an acceptable hardcopy format of about 1 m in width to 2 m in height. This results in a printing scale of 14 pxl/mm. MC-11 was selected to be produced first because it contained the four final landing site candidates of ESA's ExoMars mission, including Mawrth Vallis and the finally selected site for the Rosalind Franklin rover (launch in 2022), Oxia Planum. Geographically, the region is located on the northern hemisphere within Acidalia Planitia and Arabia Terra. After MC-11, the Global Topography and Mosaics Task Group (GTMTG) of the HRSC Science Team focussed on MC-13, which is also located on the northern hemisphere and covering parts of Arabia Terra. Further, the quadrangle hosts the landing site of the Perseverance rover from NASA's Mars 2020 mission (arrival in 2021), Jezero crater. Scientists found an ancient river delta near the crater rim that most likely was formed in an ancient crater lake - a highly promising place for the search for life. The next HRSC MC quadrangles will also be equatorial ones (i.e. 19 and 20). The topographic maps of our series are dominated by the almost format-filling HRSC orthomosaic. Where available, color orthoimages are used, showing Mars-typical reddish-brown colors. The color comes from a combination of the HRSC color channels following a color standard by processing of the mosaic on ground, but is no true color. The cartographic context is given by a geographic coordinate grid with East longitudes from 0° to 360° and contour lines that depict the topography of the region. The top layer shows the names of the regions, craters and other landforms that have been named so far. On Mars we mostly have, from large to small, regions (planitia, planum, terra), valleys (vallis), linear features (chasma, fossa, rupes), mountains (mons, tholus), and craters. Also typical for Mars are chaotic terrains (chaos). Besides a text with explanations on the maps and the data we used side maps with a) the footprints of the HRSC image stripes and b) a color-coded and shaded DTM of the shown map tile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cartographers tout the merits of relief shading in giving terrain a three-dimensional appearance, while tending to ignore or discourage the use of shadowing for the shadow's tendency to obscure the underlying topographic details. It is possible, however, to discard relief shading and use only shadows from multiple light sources to create shadowing effects that have similar landform details and with the potential for a more dramatic three-dimensional effect when compared to relief shading. We present comparisons of a standard elevation model illuminated by a clear sky with a) relief shading, b) shadows, and c) relief shading plus shadows in Figure 1. We observe that adding relief shading to a shadowed rendering (Figure 1c) does not add much topographic detail to the shadow-based terrain representation (Figure1b). This may seem non-intuitive, as terrain is being represented not by the orientation of the land's surface with respect to a light source which is the basis of relief shading, but rather by the shadows cast by landforms that are aligned with the illumination direction. This result underscores the importance of illumination models that represent numerous point sources throughout the sky to simulate natural lighting conditions and result in soft shadows. Another important comparison between relief shading and representing terrain with shadows is that vertical exaggeration of the elevation model can produce more dramatic effects with the latter, as seen in the top row of Figure 2. This enhanced effect can be attributed to longer shadows with vertically exaggerated terrain. By contrast, vertical exaggeration of terrain for relief shading as seen in the bottom row of Figure 2 may make illuminated areas lighter and non-illuminated areas darker in grayness, but general patterns of lighter and darker areas remain the same while undergoing tonal modulations. These patterns are locked into place by the static nature of landform locations as opposed to the dynamic nature of their shadows' extents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swiss National Map series including its production processes has been completely revised between 2001 and 2020. In the past the "old map", created between 1952 and 1979, was produced using glass engraving techniques and later updated using a CAD system. In contrast, the "new map" was created directly from a high-resolution GIS topographic landscape model, the TLM. The TLM was used to create a number of GIS cartographic models, so-called digital cartographic models (DCM)-one per national map scale - using a variety of automatic generalisation procedures and interactive workflows. The production of the DCMs started in 2013 and the initial creation of each DCM was complete in 2020. Thanks to a high degree of automation, it was possible to decrease the manual work by over 20% compared to the CAD updates. The DCMs are implemented as ArcGIS geodatabases and the cartographic production system Genius-DB is used as a custom ArcMap application for the production. Swisstopo completely updates all map sheets at least every six years, depending on updates in the TLM. Updating the first 1:25 000 map sheets started in early 2021. These updates focus on only the changes in the base data (the TLM) so as to preserve as much of the interactive cartographic work as possible. Hence areas unchanged in TLM stay unchanged in the DCM's, unless necessary for cartographic reasons. These are called "change only updates" or "incremental updates". If an area needs to be updated, this is what is done: 1. Compare the old and the new state of TLM in order to build the increment. The increment can be an addition, a modification, or a deletion. (automatic) 2. Integrate the changes into a copy of the DCM, which is to insert, update or delete the corresponding DCM features (partly automatic, mainly manual) 3. Cartographically correct the area directly surrounding the changed features (manual) In order to offer the cartographers the optimal support, swisstopo has implemented new workflows and has added new tools to the existing production system Genius-DB. As of May 2021, these workflows and tools are in production for updating the first 12 1:25 000 National Map sheets. At the ICC, swisstopo will present the experiences gained, over the course of the last 7 months, in working with this new update methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orienteering is a sport in which the competitor (orienteer) completes a course in the shortest possible time, by navigating to control points aided only by a map and compass. An orienteering map is a topographical map. It assists navigation through the terrain by representing a selection of prominent features. These features are of great importance to show the shape of the ground, and this in turn assists the orienteer with serve route choice by showing variations in runnability (which affects speed) and visibility. For this purpose, orienteering maps provide us valuable information about contour lines, cliffs or vegetation density to name a few. Due to these characteristics, we can discover new places and experience endless adventures through the communication this kind of cartography brings us. Mapant Spain was born from the idea of creating an orienteering map of Spain (505.000km2) generated automatically. The first Mapant produced in Finland back in 2016 has inspired this project (www.mapant.fi). The ambition of covering the whole territory of Spain in a single map would not have been possible without public access to geographic data. The project is a collaboration between the Spanish Orienteering Federation (FEDO) and the Spanish National Geographic Institute (IGN). A part from these two organizations, a group of volunteers (all of them from the orienteering field) has participated offering their computes for the processing. Discovering our territory, promoting outdoor activities (including orienteering, rogaine and hiking) as well as providing information that is more accurate to geographers or rescue and emergency staff are some of the main uses of Mapant. The main sources for the generation of the map have been both LiDAR (LAZ) and geographic vector data. The LiDAR used comes from the national LiDAR program of Spain (PNOA-LiDAR), data from both 1st (2009-2015) and 2nd (2015-2020) coverage (point cloud density varies from 0.5 to 4 points/m2) have been used. Vector data comes mainly from the National Topographic Map (BTN25) and also from the Agricultural Geographic Information System (SIGPAC) and Open Street Map (OSM). A collaborative workflow method was used for data processing. The whole of Spain has been divided into 1x1 km tiles and then each user/volunteer processed as many tiles as his/her PC could handle. For an average PC it would have taken approximately 14 years to process the whole territory of Spain. For the point cloud data pre-processing, LAStools from Martin Isenburg (las2las and las2txt tools, under LGPL 2.1 license) has been used. For the generation of contours, cliffs and vegetation, Karttapullautin from Jarkko Ryppo has been used (free software for non-commercial or for navigation sport purposes). The symbology used corresponds to Foot Orienteering ISOM-2017-2 standards. Due to the map being 100% automatically generated, few symbols have been modified to improve legibility. In order to do collaborative processing, a software call MapAnt Client was created. This software allows the user to download and process LiDAR automatically, to render the map with the symbology that corresponds for an orienteering map and to upload the generated map to the server. As was mentioned previously, the users are a group of volunteers offering their computers for processing simultaneously. This collaborative way of working allowed the project to reach a peak of 50 volunteers/PC processing simultaneously up to 2.500 tiles per hour. Once the tile has been rendered through this process, MapAnt Client generates a PNG file (in this case in UTM 28/29/30/31 depending of the area) for each tile. When an area of approximately 30x20 km (this area corresponds to a 1:50.000 section of the National Topographic Map) is completed, the server merges (using GDAL tools) all of those corresponding PNG files in a single GeoTIFF (COG, EPSG:3857), which are the files included in the viewer. Once the project is completed, there will be about 1.000 GeoTIFF files. The user can download a section of the map in PNG format (georeferenced) from the viewer. This downloaded image is formed from the original images in MapAnt Client which allows the final image to maintain a higher resolution (600ppi). Due to the complexity of the generation of the vector data (for example, a complex algorithm is used to avoid duplicity of trails that appear in different sources), downloading a final image must be done through the MapAnt Client. The file generated can be opened with the software Open Orienteering Mapper (OOM). OOM is a collection of tools which help with the creation of orienteering maps and the organization of orienteering events. At the moment of writing this abstract, version 1.0 of Mapant is being finalized. The development and processing of the project has taken about 6 months. The processing time adding up all the computers have been about 80.0000 hours (9 years and 3 months), without taking into account the reprocessing time of some areas. The product will be offered in the viewer, as WMS and in image format through the Download Center of the National Centre for Geographic Information (CNIG). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital depth model (DDM) is the use of limited and discrete depth points to realize the digital expression of the undulations of the seabed terrain surface. According to the different organization methods of depth point data, it is divided into Regular Grid DDM (GRID-DDM) and Triangulated Irregular Network DDM (TIN-DDM). Compared with GRIDDDM, TIN-DDM has not undergone any data interpolation processing, and directly uses the measured depth as its model sampling point. Therefore, TIN-DDM has relatively prominent advantages in reflecting topographical changes. Based on TIN-DDM, the conclusions of seabed topography analysis are more accurate. Different from the traditional TIN-DDM that serves the needs of navigation applications, TIN-DDM (non-navigational TIN-DDM) that serves the analysis and expression of authentic terrain needs to focus on the accurate expression of the seabed terrain, that is to ensure the accuracy of the expression of seabed topographic features and the adequacy of the expression of seabed topography in the process of multi-scale expression (synthesis) of TIN-DDM. Constrained by the traditional navigational TIN-DDM serving the safety and security thinking of ships, there are few researches on automatic synthesis algorithms specifically for non-navigational TIN-DDM application requirements. Inspired by the idea of the terrestrial TIN-DEM multi-scale expression algorithm, most of the existing non-nautical TINDDM automatic synthesis algorithms are improved by the terrestrial TIN-DEM multi-scale expression algorithm. However, it needs to be pointed out that unlike terrestrial TIN-DEM, which already contains complete land topographic control information (generally composed of typical topographic feature points) during data collection, the seabed topography measurement cannot directly obtain the seabed topographic feature points and the related seabed topography range, due to the particularity of the measurement methods. The existing automatic synthesis algorithm is difficult to realize the full mining of the deep-level terrain feature information in the non-navigational TIN-DDM, and the exploration of the correlation between the spatial scale and the terrain shape judgment conclusion is not deep enough. Therefore, this paper proposes a non-navigational TIN-DDM automatic synthesis algorithm that takes into account the accurate determination of terrain features and full expression of topography. First, taking the local Delaunay influence domain as the range constraint of the sampling point terrain feature, analyzing the numerical change law of the critical rolling ball radius in the positive (negative) direction, establishing the TIN-DDM sampling point terrain type judgment criterion for micro-topography, and determining the topographic unevenness of sampling points within the range of local topographic features; Secondly, using the overall TIN-DDM as a reference for the range of topographic features of the sampling point, analyzing the numerical change law of the contact degree between the rolling ball and the TIN-DDM sampling point, establishing the criteria for determining the terrain type of the sampling point for macro-topography, and determining the skeleton and detailed terrain sampling points within the overall terrain feature range; On this basis, with the critical rolling ball radius as the associated link, based on the terrain unevenness of the TIN-DDM sampling points in the local area, analyzing the changing laws of topographic features caused by continuous longitudinal changes in the location of the sampling points, demonstrating the numerical correlation between the skeleton topographic sampling points and the critical rolling ball radius, and exploring the continuous state change trend of the topographic features of the sampling points from micro to macro, constructing TINDDM sampling point terrain feature quantitative evaluation index that takes into account the expression of seabed topography, and designing TIN-DDM automatic synthesis algorithm flow based on TIN-DDM sampling evaluation index; Finally, through experiments, the effectiveness of the algorithm in this paper is proved. The data used in the experiment is the TIN-DDM depth data of a certain sea area in China, which contains 12774 sampling points in total, and the topography is complex and the degree of undulation is large Based on Surfer software to generate the terrain surface of the original seabed terrain and the isobath with a depth of 5 meters, as shown in Figure 1. Based on Surfer to generate the terrain surface and the contour map with a depth of 5 meters after the synthesis of each algorithm, as shown in Figure 2 and 3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Senate Maps are based on a survey launched by Russian topographers in 1870, which continued until Finland's independence in 1917. For the first time, these maps were based on geodetic measurements, which had already begun in 1860. They also utilized the Struve geodetic chain, a large triangulation chain between the Black Sea and the Arctic Ocean, made between 1816-1855. The Finnish Senate (then the government in Finland) funded the survey and Finland was the only country to receive two photocopies of maps made by the Russians. The survey was considered important because it accounted for 2% of the whole revenues to the Senate's budget. It was also exceptional that the Finns led this mapping work in Finland and they also led the mapping work elsewhere in Russia. These officers were Alexander Järnefelt (1883-1896) and Axel Edvard Bonsdorff (1839-1919). Järnefelt participated to Russo-Turkish War in 1877-1878 and led the mapping of Bulgaria with 180 topographers and Bonsdorff mapped Bessarabia (Moldova) in 1882 and established the observatory of Tashkent. Russian topographic mapping has been studied earlier by Ek (1981), Postinikov (1993), Saarentaus (1981), Strang (2014) and Harju (2017) but no general publication has been available before the author published a book on Senate maps in 2020. The mapping work initiated by Russia was extensive and covered the entire Russian border areas of Europe (Figure 1). The printed maps were published in Russian and were secret. However Russian topographers published quite openly the coverage maps in the publication Zapiski voenno-topografičeskago otdela Glavnago upravlenija General'nago štaba. In Finland there are copies of this publication between 1878-1916. Also, geodetic work for the maps were discussed and published. The place names for the Senate maps was changed to Finnish and Swedish. They were colored by the National Board of Survey and supplemented throughout that time with major changes such as the railways. There was a plan to cover most of the Finland, but the work was not completed before the first World War. Just before the revolution in Russia, a rapid mapping effort was made which produced maps in 1:42 000 scale in Åland Islands, the Eastern and Central Finland. The maps of Eastern Finland were printed in scale 1:84 000. The maps concerning Central Finland have not be found so far. Based on Senate maps, "Finnicized" maps were published after the independence, but because they were black and white and extensive surface markings, quite difficult to read. However, these maps were the only accurate maps in many places in Southern Finland until the 1960s, when they were replaced by the new basic map. After the independence, printed maps were also on sale because they had been obtained in large quantities as war booty. For the first time, these maps show the exact shape of the terrain with elevation curves, including buildings (crofts, farmhouses and manors) and the road are accurately described. The Senate maps were nicely hand colored. Two different coloring versions were made; one according to the Russian standard and one according to the Finnish standard. other maps, Senate maps were ceded and some of the maps were cut align the new border. Location of these maps in Russia is not know in Finland. Also, Russian hand-colored originals are still not available in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussion and the questions formulated in this research are related to the need to integrate topographic mapping and cadastre and the diagnosis of the current situation concerning cadastre and its relationship with the topographic mapping. Topographic mapping is the spatial reference for any activity in a society focused on territory planning, use, and occupation. In turn, the territorial cadastre describes the relationship between people and land, serving as a basis for land and land use management, including territorial planning, and supporting sustainable development and environmental protection. Therefore, an efficient cadastre relies on mapping the spatial units' boundaries according to their legal situation, confirming the interdependence between these systems. Brazil has never had a complete, updated topographic mapping on the scales necessary for implementing a territorial cadastre to support land policies and adequately meet the legal standards on territorial issues. Currently, the available mapping corresponds to 5% of the Brazilian territory on the scale of 1:25,000 and 24% on the scale of 1:50,000, which is insufficient to support the territorial cadastre and apply the legislation on territorial planning. The cadastre's function is collecting and making available graphic and descriptive information about the parcels of territory, based on the survey of its limits. In Brazil, the absence of national registration law and an institution whose primary competence is to establish guidelines for its elaboration has meant that it has developed without integration between rural and urban cadastres. Federal law no 5868/72 established the rural cadastre (National Rural Cadastre System) under the federal administrations' responsibility. On the other hand, there is no specific legislation for urban cadastre. Its implementation is done by the municipality, generally for tax purposes. Over time, rural cadastres were based exclusively on descriptive information since there is no systematic mapping on an adequate scale to support it. Also, topographic mapping is not an essential element of a rural cadastre in Brazil. Table 1 summarizes the current constitution of the leading rural cadastres. In addition to these, there are also environmental, indigenous land, and federal land cadastres (which include urban properties). Most municipalities follow the methodology of the CIATA Project for urban cadastre. The Secretariat of Economic and Finance of the Ministry of Treasury of Brazil implemented this project as an experiment around 1973 with resources from the Federal Data Processing Service - SERPRO. In general, the methodology used by the CIATA Project for the urban properties cadastre was composed of two phases: Execution and Implementation. The execution phase consisted of 6 stages: Sectorization of Inspection, Cadastral Survey, Property Valuation, Information Treatment, Launch, and Final Plan, with the first four stages being performed directly by SERPRO and the last two by the municipality. With a methodology consistent with the technology available at the time, the CIATA Project envisaged the development of isolated cadastre plans, whose location in the municipal urban perimeter was identified in a Cadastral Reference Plan. The municipalities could not elaborate on the expected topographic mapping since there are no topographic maps, so many had an exclusively descriptive registration based on information obtained from the cadastral information bulletins. The municipalities with better technical and economic conditions developed cadastres based on the photogrammetric mapping that is not integrated into the official topographic mapping. Also, the current cadastres reflect the social inequalities of a vast territorial country. Few structured cadastres are available to serve multiple purposes. Some municipalities seek to apply new technologies to implement simpler cartographic bases, which meet fiscal objectives, and others do not yet have cadastral plans to improve their cadastral systems. Once again, the lack of topographic mapping on a scale compatible with the urban cadastre makes it challenging, or even impossible, to implement a cadastre that serves as a basis for developing integrated public policies. As planned and performed in France by Colbert and Cassini, the topographic mapping must be carried out with a Geodetic Reference System, such as the Brazilian Geodetic System (BGS) materialized in geodetic benchmarks. The set of geodetic landmarks must be connected to a network. Consequently, the network conformation and the mathematical connection between all geodetic landmarks guarantee the uniformity of the positional quality in the mapped territory. The uniformity and homogeneity of the geodesic network make it possible to map large scales with high accuracy and precision. This fact is one of the significant advances that Cassini's Map of France provided for topographic mappings, allowing the territorial cadastre to be with uniform positional quality throughout the national territory. When the land cadastre is carried out with local surveys, even when linked to the BGS, with independent results particular to each location, there is a set of surveys throughout the country geometrically independent cadastral representations. By allowing colloquial language, one can imagine the various cadastres in different regions as a "patchwork quilt." These "patches" are represented at different levels of detail and positional quality. However, there must be interdependence between the cadastre and topographic mapping. It should be expected that the homogeneity in the land cadastre standards should be achieved throughout the national territory. Colonization created the founding elements of tensions that would lead to an immense territory dispute. The land disputes find deep marks in the colonization period, which still can be noticed in land occupation situations. In effect, knowledge about the land, territories, environments, and peoples is meaningful in the constitution of powers, the construction of policies, interpreting society, and the intervention of reality. In Brazil, the bases for the constitution of systems, often imprecise and unrealistic, were forged into legitimacy. We found that somehow, given the general situation since colonization, it was urgent to establish the general land administration system. Given the need to produce official documents, a registration system was prescribed, featuring topographic mapping and surveying. However, it was only in the 20th century that attempts at territorial planning and the structuring of systems and cadastres took place, along with the legal formulation of territorial ordering that went beyond the mere protection of private territorial interests. Our future research challenges are related to the incorporation of complexities and absences in legal-cartographiccadastral issues, proposing suitable solutions for: (i) What are the consequences of the absence of topographic and cadastral mapping for Brazilian society? (ii) Does the cadastre in Brazil assure the rights, restrictions, and responsibilities towards people and land? (iii) How to make it possible to build a cadastre system that can assure the rights, restrictions, and responsibilities of the relationship between people and land? We published this paper in the Brasilian Journal of Cartography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nautical Charts belong to special marine geographic charts designed primarily to aid navigation. Among the marine charts, they hold a unique position in terms of their practical application - they are used for laying a course and determining its location in the sea. Such charts are issued by the national hydrographic offices of the states as part of the national navy. The paper examines over a century-long evolution of the nautical charts content based on the Tables of Symbols published in 1910, 1937, 1961, 1971, 1985 and 2016. The latest 2016 edition is currently in use. The collection of objects forming the basis of the Charts' content within the period under review remained generally unchanged, with slight fluctuations - with a tendency for increase at the beginning and a tendency for reduction recently. The greatest changes concerned the image of the land part in accordance with the symbols in the topographical maps. The content of the marine part of the charts was expanded, as a rule, by means of including new sections and developing the existing sections related to the navigational equipment, services and stations. The examples are provided in the general table summarizing the whole period under research and categorizing the objects taken from different sections of the published guidelines. The analysis of the nautical charts content carried out in this paper allows us to claim that the map symbols are able to provide the necessary informational capacity for the nautical charts designed to aid safe navigation. The informational potential of the charts is ensured by a substantial number of sections containing information about the objects, phenomena, processes which form the features of the marine and land environment as well as the shoreline interacting with waves, swash, high and low tides with different types of foreshores and shore. In general, the tables of symbols issued in different years are the fruition of years of work as they form a corpus of the symbols formed by incremental accumulation and modification within specific objects or groups of objects. Nowadays, the prevailing trend is the alignment of the navigation data to organize an informational database for an automated creation of digital and electronic charts. The following trends in the charts content formation within the period under study may be called the most prominent: - significant changes in the cartographic objects content for the land part in accordance with the topographic symbols - tendency for extension in the first editions and tendency for reduction in the past years. This trend is vividly shown at the coastline representation; - a considerable increase in the objects corpus, including addition of new sections related to the marine part. This tendency is especially conspicuous in the magnetic elements, navigational equipment (radio aids and radar aids, lights and buoy), services and stations (harbor office, customs office, post office, sound signalling, magnetic stations etc.). There has been a major extension in the marine areas and borders section: from 3 objects in the 1937 edition to 33 objects in the current edition; - almost all the sections are directly or indirectly connected with the information on the dangers such as relief features, morphological features of banks and riverbeds, port structures, bottom patches and currents. There is a separate "Dangers" section which contains 35 symbols. Sstructural alignment of symbols in the latest editions of the tables mainly associated with the symbols publication for the international nautical charts and the adoption of the S-101 product specification for Electronic Navigational Charts. A more efficient arrangement of the mapping objects into sections has been an important step forward as compared to the previous S-57 standard, which presents the objects in alphabetical order and therefore makes it difficult to find them in the catalogue. Despite the positive trends, there are still grave disadvantages in the structure and content of the map symbols, which point out the necessity of further improvement in the future editions. It is difficult to analyse the information displayed within a single edition due to the fact that the symbols for one class of objects are placed into different sections of the tables; components of different geographic spheres are included into a single section; one and the same cartographical tool used to characterize different objects (cape elevation benchmark, island elevation benchmark, ground point elevation benchmark, peak elevation benchmark, etc.) is presented in the tables as a number of separate symbols. Such examples (given in the complete text of the article) prove the necessity of further alignment and improvement of the charts content. It is hoped that due to a wider use of electronic maps and database formation, the optimization of the map symbols will be continued with scientific evidence. A retrospective view of the informational potential in the nautical charts and its evolution throughout an extensive period of time allows to formulate the principal directions in the improvement of the nautical charts structure and content: - observance and development of the systemic approach principles and use of scientific evidence in the creation of the symbols and map content in general; - unifying the system of symbols based on the fundamental scientific research in the displayed objects classifications with regard to the current requirements of a versatile use of nautical charts in alignment with the universal topographic maps as well as the international standards for map content; - maintaining tradition in the representation of the objects specific for the Russian charts while aligning the map symbols with the international standards, in which these symbols may be absent; - implementation of the projects on the charts improvement along with their update powered by new technologies. The research was carried out within the state assignment of Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation No 0708-2020-0001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary cartography is increasingly open to the interaction between conventional maps and alternative forms of spatial expressions. A mapping project doesn't have to position itself anymore as either a scientific or an artistic one; it can be both. This rapprochement between what has largely been considered the two ends of the cartographic spectrum, has been encouraged on the one hand by the fascination exercised by maps in the arts and in the humanities as a powerful mean for creative expression and political statements, and on the other by the growing recognition in the social sciences of the potential of art maps to expand our understanding of our relationships to places. This rapprochement has been materialized in a range of geohumanities and deep mapping projects as well as in art map experiments and activist mapping endeavors. In some of these projects, the hierarchy between conventional and alternative forms of mapping has been somehow blurred, opening up new spaces for a real dialog between them. Before engaging in this dialog, let's clarify what we mean by conventional and alternative forms of mapping. Conventional cartography in our books is exemplified by Euclidean or Cartesian maps: maps that are mathematically associated to portions of the earth through geographic coordinates. These maps follow the historical lineage of topographic and thematic maps and include all the maps produced with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as well as with online mapping services such as Google Maps, Openstreetmap and ArcGIS online. Alternative maps can be broadly considered as "coordinate free mapping". Less common, they encompass maps dissociated from the Euclidean space to focus on non-Euclidean connections to places. To do so, they often revisit the cartographic forms as illustrated in art maps (Harmon 2009; Wood 2010), inductive visualization (Knowles, Westerveld, and Strom 2015) or sensibility maps (Olmedo 2015). Some of these alternative maps have moved outside academia to reach a larger audience (Solnit 2010; DeGraff and Harmon 2015). This growing popularity within and beyond academia opens the possibility for a real dialog with conventional cartography; a dialog based on listening, consideration, exchange and openness to learn from one another. In this paper we propose to engage a dialog between one particular type of alternative mapping practice (i.e. "Sensibility mapping") and one form of conventional, online cartography (i.e. "Atlascine mapping"). This dialog has been made necessary by the cartographic challenge we have faced: mapping the life stories of Rwandan exiles. The responsibility that comes with mapping such a complex and sensitive type of stories requires careful attention and an openness to diversity of perspectives. It also requires an ongoing dialog between the Western academic mapmakers and the storytellers of Rwandan origin, between those who represent the stories as part of their professional activities and those for whom these stories are central to their life. Beyond this dialog, it is a conversation between two series of maps made by two academic mapmakers who have different but complementary ways of envisioning spatial representations. A conversation that aims to help each of us reflect on our own mapping practices to constantly improve them individually as well as to explore the potential offered by their association. This dialog and the series of maps produced reveal common ground between these two approaches. Both respect the integrity of the stories, while making the mapping process as transparent as possible. However, they also unveil their differences. Conventional maps designed in this project tend to simplify these stories, they focus on what is explicit in them, on their surface, on their skins to unveil some spatial structures; they perform stories as geographic databases. On the other hand, sensibility maps explore in depth selected fragments of these stories; they look at the inner parts, at their guts. They perform stories as personal and intimate memories. Beyond these differences, it is the complementary of these two approaches that emerge from this dialog: one mapping practice is never enough to reveal both the extent and the depth of complex human experiences of places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vietnam War spanned nearly two decades, beginning in 1954 and ending with the withdrawal of the last U.S. forces in 1973. During the conflict, the U.S. Army Map Service (AMS) compiled, published, and distributed military topographic maps for use by U.S. military forces (NGA, 2021). Established in 1941, the AMS was re-designated the U.S Army Topographic Command Center (USATC) in 1968. It later merged into the Defense Mapping Agency--a heritage organization of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). To support the ground military units during the Vietnam War, the AMS/USATC, with the help of several U.S. Engineer Battalions, produced a series of topographic maps at a map scale of 1:50,000 for Vietnam and its immediately adjacent areas. Smaller scale maps at a scale of 1:250,000 were also produced. Vietnam-era maps compiled to support U.S. military operations formed a "vital source of timely in-country knowledge at a critical time for American defense policy in Asia" (NGA, 2021). Through a cooperative agreement with the newly formed Republic of South Vietnam, American and Vietnamese cartographers and surveyors compiled a considerable knowledge base for the construction of comprehensive maps of the country. The resulting map collection "marked the first time that the American military mapping agencies had completed large- and medium-scale mapping of an area in advance of a major commitment of combat forces" (NGA and nga_geoint, 2021). The 1:50,000-scale and 1:250,000-scale historical topographic maps for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos are now declassified. For this project, they were obtained from the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, scanned at a resolution of 600 dots per inch (DPI), and georeferenced in support of development of The National Map's Historical Topographic Map Collection (Then, 2012). The 1:50,000-scale maps were produced from 1965 through 1971. The maps were in both English and Vietnamese and had a variant name of Series L7014 (for Vietnam) or L7016 (for border maps primarily covering a portion of Cambodia). The maps show relief with contours and spot heights in meters and bathymetric contours and depths in soundings. Vegetation, hydrography, cities and towns, cultural features, geographic place names, transportation networks, and other infrastructure were also noted on the maps. Marginalia includes notes, a glossary, an elevation guide diagram, a metric conversion graph, an administrative boundary diagram, and an index to adjoining sheets (Library of Congress, 2021). Using ArcGIS Pro, two map services--one for the 1:50,000-scale maps (Figure 1, left) and one for the 1:250,000 -scale maps (Figure 1, right)--were shared as hosted tile layers to ArcGIS Online. Hosted tile layers "support fast visualization of large datasets using a collection of pre-drawn map images or tiles" (Esri, 2021). An advantage of hosted tile layers is that they can be created without using ArcGIS Image Server, so users with ArcGIS Pro or Enterprise (or ArcMap) and an ArcGIS Online Organizational account can easily create them. The online map services can be used to: explore the maps in the collection, create online maps and apps, digitize or analyze the map contents in GIS, and download the maps in GeoTIFF format. Each hosted tile layer was generated from a mosaic dataset--an ArcGIS geodatabase data model that allows multiple images (or rasters) to be managed as one catalog of rasters and viewed as a mosaicked image. A mosaic dataset has multiple contents, including, among others, a catalog that references the source of the images and footprints (extents) of each of the rasters and a feature class that defines the boundary around all the rasters. For the 1:50,000 scale Vietnam map collection, a second mosaic dataset was created for the insets that appeared on some of the maps in the collection (Figure 2, right). A third mosaic dataset was created with edited footprints for maps that had overedges (Figure 2, left). These two additional mosaic datasets were also shared as hosted tile layers in ArcGIS Online. This project describes a unique collection of maps that have been shared online for all to access. It also demonstrates an easy and accessible workflow for ArcGIS that does not require the use of more complex parts of the platform--such as Image Server--so that other map collection managers can also put their content on the web and share it in a format that meets the varied needs of their patrons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical topographic maps present a wealth of information that was collected through rigorous, manual processes and compiled, drawn, and edited by hand. During the digital revolution, mapping agencies began searching for ways to automate the production, and particularly the update, of topographic maps at national scales. Whereas the digital capture and representation of some map elements such as contours lines, structures and roads are fairly straightforward, the opposite is true for features with vague, changing, indeterminate or controversial locations and boundaries (Arundel et al. 2020). As a result, many such features have yet to be depicted on modern, digital, topographic maps. Indeed, the location/extent of these features is often determinable only by considering the historical text properties. Optical character recognition (OCR) offers a suite of approaches to achieve text detection and recognition. Whereas some research has addressed recognition of built features (Li et al. 2020), the work reported here extends previous efforts to apply deep learning OCR methods to the capture of spot elevation values and locations from the U.S. Geological Survey's historical topographic map collection (HTMC) (Arundel et al. 2021). This endeavor resulted in a small training dataset created through tedious manual digitizing, limiting the dataset to 350, and encouraging recognition results (~80 overall accuracy), although insufficient for an operational procedure (Figure 1). Even more importantly, it highlighted challenges to potentially target in future work, such as limiting the detection to spot elevation numbers rather than other text, recognizing the correct value when numbers were superimposed on contours or other features, and ignoring random spacing differences between characters in a single 'word.' These problems can all be addressed by the addition of much more training data. As the manual creation of the training data labels - the bounding boxes around words and characters and their corresponding numeric value - was too laborious to justify enlarging the dataset using this process, this research presents the enhancement of spatial training data through augmentation and synthesis. Data augmentation refers to enhancing an existing dataset by image manipulation techniques such as noise reduction, rotation, cropping, flipping, padding, offset, scaling (often referred to as 'cropping') and changes in contrast and brightness. Here we experiment with image rotation, feature offset and scaling (Figure 2). Training images are rotated up to 90 degrees randomly in both directions from center, but no further, as text oriented beyond this is very unlikely to appear on a historical topographic map. Similarly, flipping is not an augmentation option for map text as mirrored text is not equivalent to its original. Feature offset refers to repositioning the target object within the overall image. Always placing the object in the middle of the image frame has been shown to create locational bias in recognition (Li et al. 2021). We experiment with random offsets, which also allow additional non-targeted features to appear in the image and may separately affect the results. Scaling, in this case, refers to varying the map scale at which the image is captured. This technique also varies the appearance of non-target features with corresponding impacts. In data synthesis, images are artificially created rather than being generated by natural phenomena. Synthesis often attempts to digitally (automatically) recreate the original production process. Data synthesis has the advantages of 1) being relatively quick and inexpensive, 2) producing 100% accurate labels, and 3) enabling the use of deep learning approaches to detection in otherwise small training datasets. In this research, we synthesize the images by employing the US Topo (https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/national-geospatial-program/us-topo), which has no spot elevations, as the base image. We then use image science methods to display the corrected GNIS summit point locations and values (Arundel and Sinha 2020) in similar HTMC text font on the base image (Figure *). Some of the challenges to this approach include proper scaling to achieve the desired resolution of the image, determining the best font, color, character size, and resolution to use in order to mimic HTMC text, and automatically creating appropriately sized bounding boxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Besides representation of their place names in public space (in the linguistic landscape) on town signs, road signs, public buildings etc. finding their names also on topographical maps, notably official topographical maps, is very important for linguistic minorities residing in a certain place already for many generations. They regard this as recognizing their presence, their share in the identity of the place. It also means supporting their emotional relation to the place. It is thus also in the interest of the majority since it enforces the minority's loyalty. Based on Ferjan Ormeling's seminal book (Ormeling 1983), later literature and the author's (together with Přemysl Mácha et al.) recent comparative study of southern Carinthia (Austria) and the Těšín/Cieszyn region (Czechia) (Jordan & Mácha et al. 2021) the paper departs from the assumption that the following were essential indicators of an adequate minority place-name representation on topographical maps: a) Relative share of minority names and their spelling according to the orthography of the minority or majority language. b) Consistency across feature categories: Does a certain mode of minority-name rendering only affect certain feature categories or all of them? c) Consistency across map scales: Do minority names only or predominantly occur in the largest scale or are they -- in line with generalization -- also reflected in derived scales? d) Visual representation of minority in relation to majority names: Are both represented in the same font size and type? Are they separated by a slash or is the minority name set in brackets? These indicators will be evaluated and exemplified by some minority situations in Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including scientific field of cartography, topographic cartography and thematic cartography.