Cartographic generalization of topographic maps - examples from Svalbard

Abstract

One important aspect of the geographical information technology is the possibility to derive new products from digital maps. A lot of effort has been put into automating the tedious process of cartographic generalization, but major problems are still not completely solved. The complex nature of this task and lack of formalism have led to the application of knowledge-based techniques, which have explored some of the formalization problems. Full automation of the cartographic generalization processes is still ahead though (Buttenfield & McMaster 1991).