#MAPTILER GEOREFERENCE SOFTWARE#
#MAPTILER GEOREFERENCE SERIES#

#MAPTILER GEOREFERENCE SERIES#

Whilst the simplest cropping and transcription of four corner points of a map in a standard projection can take less than a minute, it is often necessary to georeference hundreds or even thousands of maps in a series in this fashion to create a seamless mosaic. Georeferencing has always involved resources of time and/or money. Numerous maps can be overlaid or presented alongside each other, and historical maps overlaid on modern satellite imagery, to compare them to the present day (Rodger, et al., 2010 Koussoulakou, et al., 2011). Georeferencing allows historic maps to be directly compared to other georeferenced maps.Georeferencing introduces new ways of integrating early maps with other spatial information, such as height information (Davie & Frumin, 2007), address data, property ownership information, and landscape features (de Boer, 2010).Cartometric analysis of maps has a long tradition in the history of cartography, and, for example, it can be used to analyse how maps were constructed (Gaspar, 2007 2012) and the provenance / sources for particular maps (Heere, 2011).

#MAPTILER GEOREFERENCE SOFTWARE#

Once georeferenced, map geometry can be analysed, for example, by using the MapAnalyst open-source software (Jenny, 2010).

Georeferencing can allow new ways of understanding the content of early maps.

For example, once georeferenced, numerical geospatial metadata can allow better searching of historical maps, via population of the MARC21 034 field, or DCMI Box of Dublin Core, or related geo-enabled search methods, as well as greater visibility to global geographic search and retrieval services (Oerhli, et al., 2011 Fleet, 2011 Southall & Přidal, 2012).

Georeferencing can lead towards a better means of discovering early maps through improved search and retrieval.

Also, through the digital mosaicking and joining of individual map sheets, georeferencing allows the delivery of seamed versions of separate paper maps into other applications. It is also possible to allow historical maps to be delivered into other websites through using open standards, such as the OGC's Web Map Service (WMS) protocol, or Web Tile Map Service (WMTS) protocol. This takes advantage of the wide familiarity with these search tools and their user interfaces. Georeferenced maps can be easily integrated with Google Maps, Google Earth and related web-mapping APIs.

Through georeferencing, early maps can be visualised through better or more familiar interfaces.

Georeferencing historic maps results in a number of important advantages for libraries: The choice of coordinate system, the type of transformation method, and the method of resampling pixels in the image will all affect the end result. The essential process typically consists of adding control points to an historic map that have a real-world location once there are sufficient control points, the historic map can be transformed so that it correctly aligns with geographic reality.

Georeferencing of historical map images involves assigning spatial information so that they align with real world geography. We then describe future developments and improvements to the Georeferencer technology. The key success factors behind crowdsourcing georeferencing are presented. Following a brief review of other approaches and georeferencing software, we describe Georeferencer through its five separate implementations to date: the Moravian Library (Brno), the Nationaal Archief (The Hague), the National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh), the British Library (London), and the Institut Cartografic de Catalunya (Barcelona). It builds upon a number of related technologies that use existing zoomable images from library web servers. The Georeferencer application is a collaborative online project allowing crowdsourced georeferencing of map images.

Until recently, georeferencing has involved various relatively time-consuming and costly processes using conventional geographic information system software, and has been infrequently employed by map libraries. Georeferencing of historical maps offers a number of important advantages for libraries: improved retrieval and user interfaces, better understanding of maps, and comparison/overlay with other maps and spatial data.

Maptiler georeference