Evaluating the Planimetric Accuracy of a Historical Map (Europe and the Mediterranean Sea by Piri Reis): A New Method and Cartographic Analysis

ABSTRACT

Historical maps are popular reference tools for historical, archaeological and temporal analysis, and there has recently been an increase in their use. However, for various reasons, the planimetric accuracy of maps produced before the nineteenth century is usually considered to be lower than today. In this paper, a new method for assessing maps is proposed, using a series of processes, such as radial-based function artificial neural network, magnetic declination, and also MapAnalyst software. The map used in the current study (of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea) is a small-scale map; therefore, control points were produced by taking reference from large-scale maps drawn by the same cartographer, Piri Reis (c.1465–1553). While developing this method, affine transformation (six parameters) was compared in terms of planimetric accuracy. The results indicate that Piri Reis's Mediterranean map offers us unique information in many areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical maps
• planimetric accuracy
• topological accuracy
• mapanalyst
• RBFANN

Acknowledgements

We thank the reviewers for their positive comments and careful review, which helped improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Omer Gokberk Narin

Omer Gokberk Narin is a researcher in the Department of Geomatics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, at the Afyon Kocatepe University. His main fields of interests and studies are historical maps, remote sensing and land use.