Biszak Előd – Biszak Sándor – Timár Gábor – Nagy Diána – Molnár Gábor: Historical topographic and cadastral maps of Europe in spotlight – Evolution of the MAPIRE map portal. Conference: 12th International Workshop on Digital Approaches to Cartographic Heritage. Volume: 12. Venice, 2017. 204–208.
International Cartographic Association, Commission on Cartographic Heritage into the Digital Proceedings 12th ICA Conference Digital Approaches to Cartographic Heritage, Venice, 26-28 April 2017 Editor Evangelos Livieratos AUTH CartoGeoLab, 2017, ISSN 2459-3893 Előd Biszak 1 , Sándor Biszak 1 , Gábor Tímár2 , Diána Nagy1 , Gábor Molnár3 1 Arcanum Database Ltd., Budapest 2 Department of Geophysics and Space Science, Eötvös University, Budapest 3 MTA-ELTE Geological, Geophysical and Space Sciences Research Group, Budapest Historical topographic and cadastral maps of Europe in spotlight - Evolution of the MAPIRE map portal Key words: historical maps, web publishing, georeference, database, geodatabase Summary Four years ago, the MAPIRE (name comes from Historical MAPs of the Habsburg EmpIRE) has been launched to provide an exhibition surface of the processed and partially offline published georeferenced map products of the Habsburg cartography. After finishing the scanning, processing and georeference the first, second and third military surveys of the Austrian Empire, the collection and exhibition has been extended to the cadastral products of the same are (the former Habsburg Empire) and to maps compiled by the imperial surveyors about some territories of temporary occupations (South Romania, Italy). Later came the other collection items found in the military map arcives in the Austrian State Archive in Vienna, such as the Cassini map of France, the Ferraris map of the Austrian Netherlands, maps covering the British Isle, the southern Germany, and, as our last publications, Norway and Southern Finland. Besides these products, large-scale city maps are also shown for major European cities. Our last metropolitan database is the orthophoto mosaic of the wartime Budapest from 1944. All of the above maps are shown in a common map coordinate system, as an overlay on the OSM (OpenStreetMap) or the HERE satellite basemap. The georeferenced is usually based on the known or computed geodetic and projection metadata of the old map systems. However, the applied technology can be effective also if no precise metadata is given. Providing a real or virtual image mosaic of the map sheets, and defining ca. 100 ground control points, a correction grid gives a rather acceptable horizontal control, which can be further refined at the most important parts of the region. Introduction The historical maps of Central Europe got the attention of scholars of different science areas, such as history, ecology, hydrology, forestry, climatology etc. for decades. The most important historical cartographic item of the region was the different military surveys of the Habsburg Empire. The first two surveys have impressively large scale (1:28,800 in metric units), albeit they are available only in manuscript form and some copies in a limited number of archives. The first attempt to make them available for larger public was made by the Hungarian firm Arcanum in 2005 in form of a DVD issue. The published electronic database contained the scanned maps of the Second Military Survey (started by the order of Emperor Franz I in 1806 and carried out from the end of the Napoleonic war to the decade of 1860s) of the historical territory of Hungary but still without georeference. Hence the geodetic and cartographic metadata of this map product, as well as its georeferencing algorithm were known that time, it was obvious to make a combination of the scanning and publishing capabilities with the scientific results of georeference. The first result of this cooperation was a new DVD issue containing the same cartographic material but in form of a geo-referred mosaic (Timár et al., 2006). It was followed by further ones, showing the first military survey (ordered by the Empress Maria Theresa but accomplished in Hungary during the reign of his son, Emperor Joseph II, between 1783-86, the combination of the geo-referred mosaics of the first and second military surveys of Transylvania, the third military survey (1863-1880) in two scales: 1:75,000 for the whole Habsburg Monarchy and 1:25,000 mosaic of the historical Hungary with Transylvania and Croatia. Later the focus was moved to historical cadastral maps of Hungary (such maps of 6 of the 19 counties of Hungary were published in DVDs) and larger scale city maps and the territory of Hungary during the WWII. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki [204] Laboratory of Cartography & Geographical Analysis
