A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EUROPEAN TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS AT SCALE
1:250.000
A. Hopfstock
Federal Government
anja.hopfstock@bkg.bund.de
Titel: A
Comparative Study of European Topographic Maps at Scale 1:250.000
Author:
Anja Hopfstock
Email:
anja.hopfstock@bkg.bund.de
Company:
Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy, Germany
Themes:
-
Map
Design and Production
-
Digital
Cartography and GIS for Sustainable Development of Territories
-Abstract-
Good governance across Europe
similar to the national level requires relevant, harmonised and quality
geographic information for the management and decision making at the European level. The Infrastructure for Spatial Information
in Europe (INSPIRE) initiative was launched to handle the fragmented situation
on spatial information in Europe to build a European Spatial Data
Infrastructure (ESDI). One of the principles of INSPIRE is that geographical
information should be presented in an understandable visual form. Another European initiative is the Global Monitoring for Environment and
Security (GMES) aiming
at the provision of core land cover data that may stimulate the production of
European topographic maps. EuroSpec, a major programme within EuroGeographics,
is addressing the issue of interoperability of the reference information
provided and distributed by the National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies (NMCAs)
as European topographic reference data builds an essential part of an ESDI.
Whereas spatial data infrastructures provide an easy and reliable access
to geographical information GIS applications provide the tools for spatial
analysis and visualisation. In the domain of GIS and cartography it is common
sense that graphical presentation of spatial information plays a key role in
communication of geographical reality. Within a GIS the topographic reference
data enables thematic and other GIS analysis, as well as high-quality
cartographic output. Although available topographic reference datasets, e.g.
EuroRegionalMap and EuroGlobalMap from EuroGeographics, promote its usage as a
geographic backdrop for visualisation and presentation of other thematic data
in cross-border applications, concepts for presenting the collected harmonised
data in an effective and understandable way are missing.
The paper presents the results of a comparative study of national and
commercial maps at scale range 1:100.000 – 1:300.000. This study was carried
out to get an overview of the regional differences as well as to identify
similarities and inconsistencies in map content and portrayal of geographical
features throughout Europe. Therefore the map legends of 10 national
topographic maps and 12 commercial maps from different publishers were analysed
based on the semantics in combination with the graphical presentation of
elements in the map legends. Starting from this design guidelines were
developed for a harmonised European symbol catalogue. To assess the feasibility
of the proposed guidelines, experimental investigations in visualisation of
EuroRegionalMap, a harmonised European topographic reference dataset at scale
1:250.000, were accomplished. Finally the pros and cons of a harmonised
European symbol catalogue are weighed against each other.