The Ordnance Survey 1:50 000 Map

Abstract

The One Inch to One Mile Map, first published by the Ordnance Survey 175 years ago has been superseded by the new metric 1:50 000 series. This account describes the cartographic production stages of the new series and is a sequel to the paper by J. G. Price—Cartographic Journal, June 1975.     

A Synopsis of Nigeria’s Indigenous Cartographic Heritage

Abstract

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Over the ages, Nigerians have had various indigenous ways of spatial representation, otherwise known as ‘alternative cartographies’. Paradoxically, however, the indigenous cartographic heritage of the Nigerian people has altogether remained unsung despite its immense contributions to societal development. This paper, therefore, is a modest attempt aimed at bringing the forgotten issue of Nigeria’s cartographic legacy to the limelight. The paper takes a bird’s-eye look at Nigeria’s homegrown cartographic heritage. The various local means of representing and communicating geospatial information are discussed. The paper equally highlights the invaluable benefits of indigenous cartographic heritage as well as how to preserve such heritage.     

移动地图可视化表达的设计研究

探讨了移动地图的特点,并以地图感受论、制图综合理论、可用性理论为指导,总结出了移动地图可视化表达的基本原则。最后,分别从移动地图的内容设计、功能设计、符号设计、注记设计和图例设计等五个方面探讨了移动地图的设计方法。     

Map Commentary

"Map Commentary" is a new section being initiated with this issue of The American Cartographer. As readers and cartographic editors are well aware, there are many aspects of cartography that are not easily incorporated into full-length articles nor do they fall into other categories of items currently included in the journal. This new section is intended to fill a part of that gap. It will be devoted to the discussion, critical as well as complimentary, of selected map examples. In this issue we have a commentary on the design of a map, but interpretive and other essays centered on specific maps will also be welcome as potential contributions for this section.     

Arno Peters—The Man,The Map,The Message

Abstract

At the present time, relatively few cartographic staff are directly involved in automation, and we are still in the phase mainly of research and development. Nevertheless, the educational implications of automation are considerable, as major changes in the systems of map production are bound to affect the content and requirements of educational programmes.     

Maps as Knowledge Aggregators: from Renaissance Italy Fra Mauro to Web Search Engines

Abstract

For many years geological students have been graduating from universities with little knowledge of how to use the cartographic language of line, letter, symbol and tone by which the distribution and spatial arrangement of earth science data can be best expressed. The author discusses the development of the teaching of geological cartography in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Leeds. Details of this innovation are set against the background of data obtained from a recent questionnaire on the practice of cartography as a discipline in departments of geology in British universities.     

地图制图综合回顾与前望

地理信息的综合处理是当今空间信息处理中的一个重大科学与技术问题。本文主要评述了地图制图综合的研究进展,包括地图制图综合知识的分类与获取、算子与算法、质量评价、过程建模与控制等方面的主要方法。对大数据背景下制图综合进行了思考,提出制图综合应在研究对象、观念和方法上转变。     

Map Libraries

Colour distortion, which is caused by the unavoidable mismatch between a map’s gamut and a device’s gamut, negatively affects the semiotic quality of maps. Cartographic communication often suffers from undesirable colour inconsistency. This method models cartographic colour reproduction as a constrained transform problem, namely, adapting a map’s gamut to fit a device’s gamut while preserving the semiotic quality. First, the characteristics of the map’s gamut are investigated by considering cartographic principles, and the fundamental concerns of preserving semiotic quality are proposed. Then, the self-organizing map method is introduced to iteratively optimize the cartographic colour reproduction. We implement this method and evaluate it based on a series of thematic maps. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm offers better results than two alternatives in terms of facilitating cartographic colour reproduction.     

交互式地图绘制与SVG格式文档的生成

针对当前地图网络传输和地图网络制图的发展态势,开展了地图符号系统数据结构方面的研究,描述了绘图系统的类层次结构,建立了简单的交互式地图绘制系统;探讨了地图符号的串行化和反串行化问题,并针对SVG的特性及语法,研究了SVG格式地图文档的生成。     

信息时代地图技术美的研究与实践

通过分析现代地图表现形式及存在的问题，探讨了信息时代地图制图技术美的含义和地图技术美的表现形式。并在技术美创新理念指导下，对利用计算机技术和图形图像处理技术来改进地图符号设计，提高地图表现力进行了一些理论探讨和技术尝试．同时也得到了一些有益的启示。     

How to Enhance Cartographic Visualisations of Natural Hazards Assessment Results

Abstract

Cartographic visualisations are important tools for the communication of hazard related data among stakeholders. Although these representations are essential for various hazard management tasks, an analysis of existing hazard visualisations showed that they often disregard cartographic principles. This leads to confusion on the part of users through poor representations and consequently to an impairment of the information flow. The objective of this research is to offer suggestions for enhanced hazard visualisations to facilitate hazard management tasks and decision making. Existing cartographic shortcomings are identified based on an extensive analysis of hazard visualisations and an expert survey. These shortcomings are discussed and improvements for important cartographic elements are presented.     

Some reflections on cartographic design

Abstract

The author reflects on some of the main influences on map design which occurred during his own working lifetime in cartography. These include the post-World War II developments in graphic arts technology and the impetus these gave to what is now regarded to 'traditional' cartography; the design challenge of the photomap; theory and research in the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties and finally the digital transition.

The use of powerful digital systems to experiment with cartographic design, and the improvements in design standards which expert systems may offer to noncartographers are regarded as important prospects in the immediate future.     

Cartography in the GIS age

Abstract

At the end of the 1980s, the computer experts who had been in the vanguard of cartographic development lost their position due to the fact that computers became democratised. This may be ascribed to the 'Macintosh' effect. This in turn led cartographic companies back to the core of their professional know-how: it is cartographers themselves who now develop the scope of their profession, utilising all the resources provided by the new computer technology. But, if cartographers want to keep playing a major role in the geographic information arena, they have to determine and develop the specific elements of their discipline: if technology mobilizes all forces to the detriment of theory, then the discipline progressively weakens and ends in being swallowed by another discipline.

It is the cartographers' task to transform the spatial information from its verbal, social and numerical form into visual form for visual thinking; this visualisation provides for cognitive functions, communication functions, decision support functions and social functions. In order for maps to perform these functions cartographers should continue, now with digital tools, to safeguard data quality by monitoring the compilation stage during which they have to see to it that the heterogeneous datasets in databases will be made comparable, both from a geometrical, semantical, updatedness and completeness point of view. This main aspect of the cartographer's job can be called its engineering part. The other main aspect will remain the map design part, that leads to proper communication of the spatial information. Both aspects will remain the cartographer's domain if he/she succeeds in providing a theoretical basis for his/her work.     

Maps > Representation

Abstract

Colour is considered a key means of expression for use in cartographic works. This is because colours and the relations among them influence not only the aesthetic impression a map creates but also its overall utility. In addition to Newton’s spectral colour theory, today theories with origins in artistic technique are gaining ground in cartography. This article introduces J. Itten’s colour theory (first published in 1961 in The Art of Colour [Kunst der Farbe]) with special attention given to his concept of seven colour contrasts. The article also discusses the suitability and unsuitability of their application in practical cartography, and it contributes original examples employing thematic maps, a discipline with broad possibilities for the application of these inventive methods by today’s mapmakers.     

Contemporary American cartographic research: a review and prospective

ABSTRACT

We review recent developments in cartographic research in North America, in the context of informing the 29th International Cartographic Conference, and 18th General Assembly in 2019. The titles of papers published since 2015 in four leading cartographic journals yielded a corpus of 245 documents containing 1109 unique terms. These terms were analyzed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation and by visual analytics to produce 14 topic groups that mapped onto five classes. These classes were named as information visualization, cartographic data, spatial analysis and applications, methods and models, and GIScience. The classes were then used as themes to discuss the recent cartographic literature more broadly, first, to review recent trends in the research and to identify research gaps, and second, to examine prospects for new research over the next 20 years. A conclusion draws some broad findings from the review, suggesting that cartographic research in the future will be aimed less at dealing with data, and more at generating insight and knowledge to better inform society about global challenges.     

Recent Maps and Atlases — Map Cabinet

Abstract

There is currently a high demand for spatial data usage within web applications. From a technical viewpoint, web services and geoportals aim to fulfil user requirements; however, the current cartographic methods do not satisfy the needs of the end users. The problem is more challenging when the final map contains data from various sources that have various cartographic characteristics; therefore, the vital information might be located under the base map layer. In this paper, we propose the concept of layer priorities as foreground, middle ground or background, and we propose the two following methods to enhance the symbolisation: polygon overlay and colour saturation methods. The results from two case studies show that these methods can satisfy the requirements of the end users.     

Numerically Controlled Methods of Automatic Plotting and Draughting

Abstract

The equipment available for numerically controlled plotting and draughting is reviewed and certain devices described in some detail. Several systems suited to the digitising of cartographic material exist, while the available plotters may be classified broadly into three categories—those derived from surveying and photogrammetric practice, those associated with computer technology and a group designed substantially for cartographic applications. Finally the various input and output devices associated with cartographic digitising are discussed with special emphasis on their storage capacity, speed of operation and economy.     

Fourier-based multi-scale representation and progressive transmission of cartographic curves on the internet

ABSTRACT

Automatic generation of multi-scale representations from the same spatial data source has been the research focus in map generalization for a long time. Based on the Fourier technique, this paper proposes a continuous, multi-scale representation model for progressive transformation of cartographic curves on the Internet. In our method, all the curves, whether closed or open, are depicted as periodical functions which are further expressed as Fourier series. The convergence degrees of the Fourier series are explored for different kinds of curves, and truncating frequencies are derived based on the similarity between the original and reconstructed curves. Using information theory and the Radical Law in cartography, the relationship between map scales and Fourier frequencies is established. Based on the proposed multi-scale model, we also introduce the principles and implementation of a progressive transmission method. Our method is evaluated using the contours from a topographic map. The results show that our model is a valid approach to multi-scale representation of cartographic curves.     

Eye-tracking Study on Different Perception of 2D and 3D Terrain Visualisation

Abstract

The use of computer-generated perspective views, often named as three-dimensional (3D) maps, is growing. These terrain visualisations should be more understandable for users without cartographic education, which are not familiar with contour lines. Within the study, two eye-tracking experiments and online questionnaire were used for investigating the difference between user cognition of classical two-dimensional (2D) visualisation with contour lines and perspective 3D view. Questionnaire was focused on maps understandability, suitability and aesthetics. Results of the questionnaire shows, that the majority of participants prefer 3D visualisation. First eye-tracking experiment was designed as a pair of maps in one stimulus. One shows 2D visualisation, the other 3D visualisation. No significant differences between user preferences of 2D and 3D visualisation were found, but the results were influenced with the order of the maps in the stimuli. Because of that another experiment was designed. In this case stimuli contained only one of two possible visualisations (2D and 3D). ScanPath comparison of this experiment results confirmed that users have different strategies for cognition of 2D and 3D visualisation, although statistically significant difference between both types of visualisation was found in the ScanPath length metric only.     

Understanding Chorematic Diagrams: Towards a Taxonomy

Abstract

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Chorematic diagrams are prospective candidates for communicating highly generalised geographic information about a given region of interest. Chorematic diagrams were popularized in France as the graphical artefacts of a specific school of geographic thought established by Roger Brunet, with GIP-RECLUS as his institutional backing. Although many maps were created and a lively debate ensued, only few consolidated cartographic findings were generated and even less were made known to the international scientific community. This article presents a contextualizing review and proposes a cartographic taxonomy aimed at being a first step towards efforts for the automated generation of chorematic diagrams.