Novices struggle to interpret maps that show information about continuous dimensions (typically latitude and longitude) layered with information that is inherently continuous but segmented categorically. An example is a topographic map, used in earth science disciplines as well as by hikers, emergency rescue operations, and other endeavors requiring knowledge of terrain. Successful comprehensio...

Some applications such as the autonomous navigation in natural terrain and the automation of map making process require high-level scene descriptions as well as geometrical representation of the natural terrain environments. In this paper, we present methods for building high level terrain descriptions, referred as topographic maps, by extracting terrain features like "peaks", "pits", "ridges",...

In recent years some electric power companies or gas suppliers have begun to use computerized utility map management systems. And there is a demand to share their utility data with each other. But that is difficult because their topographic maps, which give the base of equipment location, are different. So we developed an automatic transformation method of utility data, which transforms utility...

In many mapping organizations, existing topographic paper maps comprise the most complete source of elevation. data; the objective of this research is to capture the elevation data (which is in contour form) in a GIS. The topographic relief plate which shows no height information can be scanned into a GIS. The remaining task is then to label these isolines. This paper discusses a methodology fo...

Mapping specific landform entities in the past is mainly achieved by manually examining contour lines on topographic maps. Automated delimitation of specific landform from digital elevation data remains difficult in geomorphologic mapping. This paper presents a method to automatically identify five common surface features of karst landscapes: isolated karst hill or sinkhole, clustered karst hil...

3D simulations requested in various applications had led to the development of fast and accurate terrain topography measurement techniques. In this paper, we are presenting a novel framework dedicated to the semiautomatic processing of scanned maps, extracting the contour lines vectors and building a digital elevation model on their basis, fulfilled by a number of stages discussed in detail thr...