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Extraction of elevations for your 3D mapping workflows
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Stereo Mapping for Accurate Digital Feature Extraction
Deriving 3D coordinates of the earth’s surface using aerial imagery
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A topographical map shows the location of physical and man-made features. Apart from these features, topographical maps include legends and marginalia required for interpretation. A unique feature of topographical maps is relief portraying, enabling to follow the height variations in an area on a 2D map. Additionally, topographical maps include geographical names of settlements, natural features and administrative areas. Generating topographical maps involves specialized photogrammetric and cartographic workflows, combined with knowledge of local and national standards to be able to meet these, while guaranteeing that the information displayed on a topographical map is current, accurate and reliable.
In the past, topographic maps were based solely on topographic surveys. Today, topographic surveying and mapping companies generate topographical maps following a basic workflow starting from acquiring the spatial data products that form the basis of a topographical map, such as aerial imagery and LiDAR. After processing the imagery data and applying photogrammetric techniques to generate spatially correct imagery products, spatial raster data is converted to topographic vector layers where man-made and natural features are digitized into different feature layers. Ultimately, the topographic map contains height information that serves to create Digital Elevation Models and derivatives.
An important feature of a topographical map is the map scale, usually going from a large-scale of 1:50,000 to medium scale of 1:50,000-1:500,000 and a small-scale of 1:500,000 and smaller. While large-scale maps are collected from data at a similarly large scale, smaller scale maps are generalized to fit the requirements of the end product’s scale.
Topographic maps need to be spatially accurate, reliable and up-to-date, meeting local and national standards. Because topographic maps are used in many different industries and business processes, underpinning important decision making processes, it’s most important that your topographical maps can pass every accuracy and other quality checks, leaving no doubt about possible interpretation of the information contained on the map.
Magnasoft has 20+ years of experience supporting national and local mapping agencies producing up-to-date, accurate and reliable topographical maps for various scales. Magnasoft’s professional topographic mapping services include collection, processing and visualization of the latest topographical map features in order to produce industry-level topographical maps. Magnasoft specializes in creating richly attributed geodatabases populated with TINs, rasters and vector data with topological rules, ensuring data integrity by performing numerous complex analyses, producing outputs that help solve diverse geospatial queries. Topographical mapping projects can be delivered in a variety of different formats too, from AutoCAD (DWG) to the latest version of Civil3D and specialized GIS formats.
Topographic mapping is the creation of a topographic map showing the location of physical and man-made features on earth. Natural features include hydrography, vegetation and natural land cover, while man-made features include settlements, communication networks, administrative boundaries and more. Apart from map features, topographic maps include marginalia and legends required for interpreting the information displayed on the map. A key component of topographic mapping is relief portraying, which is created through a combination of methods including hillshading and contours. A second important feature from topographic maps is the use of geographical names such as place names of settlements, administrative areas and natural features.
In the past, topographic maps were based solely on topographic surveys. Modern topographic surveying and mapping companies create topographic maps using aerial photography, LiDAR and other remote sensing techniques. The general steps involved in topographic mapping and 3D topographic mapping project include raster to vector conversion of 3D topographic maps, capturing of 3D topographic map features such as contour lines, boundary lines, transportation, water areas, vegetation, habitations, forest areas, digitizing of the features in different layers to generate a topographic map in vector format, creating a 3D topographic mapping by assigning the Z-values to the contours and generating the 3D terrain model of the topography. Finally, digital terrain models (DTM), digital elevation models (DEM) and triangulated irregular networks (TINs) are created based on 3D topographic maps.
It’s important that topographic maps show the most up-to-date information, corresponding with reality. This means that the location and naming of features needs to be correct. This can be a challenge when a country produces multiple topographical maps covering different areas, or uses different scale levels affecting the detail level of the end results. To be able to meet specific topographical mapping challenges, Magnasoft’s professional mapping and surveying techniques guarantee collection, processing and visualization of the latest topographical map features in order to produce industry-level topographical maps. Magnasoft specializes in creating richly attributed geodatabases populated with TINs, rasters and vector data with topological rules, ensuring data integrity by performing numerous complex analyses, producing outputs that help solve diverse geospatial queries. Topographical mapping projects can be delivered in a variety of different formats too, from AutoCAD (DWG) to the latest version of Civil3D and specialized GIS formats.
A topographic map is a reference map showing the features on the earth’s surface. The location and names of these features provide a form of common sense or reference point which makes it possible to create a mutual understanding between people who are independent of where they are. Because it’s important to know where features are and how they’re named, topographic maps play a vital role in the decision-making processes in many different areas. Not only do topographic maps show where things are, they also show how things change: think of name changes of features, boundary line changes, new infrastructure, or changes in the shape of the terrain itself as a result of natural disasters.
Change detection is one major use case of topographic mapping, showing the arrangement of various changes on land created by land cover, railway tracks and road ways. This is why topographic mapping is used in areas as diverse as transportation, urban planning, as well as many other areas including agriculture, forestry, utilities, telecommunications resource management and health. Other important use cases are disaster management, engineering and architecture, defense and security, infrastructural services, route planning, geographical representation of thematic data and telecom and transport services.