THE STATUS OF TOPOGRAPHIC MAPPING IN THE WORLD

..................................................................................................................................... 1 1 Origins of the Project ......................................................................................................... 1 2 The UNGGIM-ISPRS Project ............................................................................................ 6 3 The Questionnaire .............................................................................................................. 6 4 Content of the Database ..................................................................................................... 7 5 Mapping Contributions by Private Industry ..................................................................... 29 5.1 Google .................................................................................................................... 29 5.1.1 Google Earth ...................................................................................................... 30 5.1.2 Google Maps ...................................................................................................... 30 5.1.3 Google Street Map ............................................................................................. 30 5.1.4 Google Ground Truth ......................................................................................... 31 5.2 Microsoft Bingmaps ............................................................................................... 32 5.3 Yandex ................................................................................................................... 33 5.4 HERE ..................................................................................................................... 33 5.5 TomTom ................................................................................................................ 34 6 Mapping by Military Organizations ................................................................................. 34 7 Other Mapping Efforts ..................................................................................................... 34 8 Summary of Results ......................................................................................................... 35 9 Future Activities ............................................................................................................... 35 10 References ........................................................................................................................ 35 Appendix I Original Questionnaire ................................................................................... 36 Appendix II Maps from Reports ......................................................................................... 39 Appendix III Maps from the Internet ................................................................................... 49 Appendix IV Maps from Staatsbibliothek Berlin ................................................................. 54


Origins of the Project
In 1986 the Department of Technical Cooperation for Development of the United Nations Secretariat has completed the last survey on the "Status of World Topographic and Cadastral Mapping". The results of the survey were published by the United Nations, New York 1990 in World Cartography, Vol. XIX. The text was submitted by the UN Secretariat as document E/CONF 78/BP7 in 1986 prepared by A.J. Brandenberger and S.K. Ghosh of the Faculty of Forestry and Geodesy at Laval University, Quebec, Canada. It referred to previous surveys submitted by the Department of Technical Cooperation for Development of the United Nations Secretariat in 1968 published in World Cartography XIV andin 1974 and1980 published in World Cartography XVII. 2 The paper published in World Cartography XIX in 1990 summarized the progress made in topographic mapping across the globe between 1968 and 1980 in 4 scale categories: range I; scales between 1:1000 and 1: 31 680 range II; scales between 1:40 000 and 1:75 000 range III; scales between 1:100 000 and 1:126 720 range IV; scales between 1:140 000 and 1:253 440 These ranges represent the more recently standardized scales: range I; scale 1:25 000 range II; scale 1:50 000 range III; scale 1:100 000 range IV; scale 1:250 000 While scale in the age of digital cartography has changed the meaning, the scale ranges nevertheless maintain their significance with respect to the resolution of mappable details.
The 1986 survey covered the following number of countries or territories: Other aspects of the surveys conducted in 1980 were directed toward the existence of geodetic networks and their density. In 1980 there existed 3.67 M horizontal and 3.16 M vertical control monuments on the globe, but again their density varied from 2.66 km 2 per horizontal control monument and 3.61 km 2 per vertical control monument in Europe to 232 km 2 in Africa with an average of 42.5 km 2 per horizontal control monument to 46.4 km 2 per vertical control monument.
Today the GNSS technology makes control point densities irrelevant, except for the case, when old map data need to be referenced to a global datum.
In 1980 the national mapping agencies possessed 12 120 theodolites, 5790 precise leveling instruments and 1914 EDM devices, 162 airplanes for aerial photography, 267 aerial survey cameras and 3120 photogrammetric stereo plotting instruments. Disregarded in that survey are instruments owned by companies mapping for governments under contract.
Again, the availability of geodetic instrumentation is not of essence to judge progress any more. The attempts of 1980 to determine the existing manpower of the national mapping agencies for each region were based on few countries only (e.g. Algeria and Nigeria for Africa, the USGS in the USA, the Surveys and Mapping Branch in Canada, the IGN France in Europe). These data were used to extrapolate the requirements in other countries with the attempt to develop a budget of global expenditures, yielding a global sum of US$ 868 million, at that time 0.010% of the gross national product, while the global surveying and mapping activities at that time were estimated to be between 8 to 9 billion US$ per year. A program for  increasing the expenditures to 0.02% of the GNP was recommended in the report to meet the need for lacking mapping coverage and lacking map updates.
The financing of geospatial information is a very complex issue. To track progress these tasks should now be transferred to another UNGGIM Working Group The rather inaccurate and inconclusive results of 1986 may have discouraged the UN Secretariat in continuing the past surveys due to lack of a budget for this purpose.

The UNGGIM-ISPRS Project
The United Nations Regional Cartographic Conferences (UNRCC) for the Americas and for Asia and the Pacific nevertheless continued to recommend to the Secretariat to continue the studies on the global status of mapping. One of these resolutions of the UNRRCC for the Americas in 2009 gave the mandate to the Secretariat for a new survey.
This happened at the time, when UNGGIM (United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management) was created as a new structure.
ISPRS approached the director of UNGGIM in 2011 to start a joint project on the survey of the status of topographic geospatial information, • because the issue is of global interest • because new technologies, such as GNSS (GPS, GLONASS), digital aerial mapping, high resolution satellites for mapping, digital photogrammetry and GIS have taken over as new mapping methodologies • because large private organizations such as the navigation industry (HERE, TomTom), Google Earth and Microsoft Bingmaps have entered the mapping effort, which was previously the domain of the national mapping agencies.
The project was approved in December 2011 by Dr. Paul Cheung, director of UNGGIM at that time, who nominated Dr. Amor Laaribi as UNGGIM contact, and by Chen Jun, President of ISPRS, who nominated Prof. Gottfried Konecny of Leibniz University Hannover as ISPRS contact.
In January 2012 a questionnaire to the UN member states was designed, mutually discussed, translated to French, Russian and Spanish and mailed to the contacts of the UNGGIM Secretariat in the UN member states. Ms. Vilma Frani of the UNGGIM Secretariat sent the replies to Leibniz University Hannover, where they were placed in a database designed by Uwe Breitkopf for further analysis.

The Questionnaire
The jointly designed questionnaire consists of five parts including 27 Questions: Until June 2015 altogether 115 responses have been received from 193 UN member states or regions thereof. In addition, there are 51 non-UN member countries and territories, which are also covered by map data. These map data for 244 UN member states and regions were generated in UN member states, but these have in general no direct responsibility for mapping these territories. Answers were almost complete from Europe (with the exception of Belarus), they were satisfactory from the Americas (with the exception of Argentina) and in Oceania. In Asia India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Kazakhstan, some Central Asian countries and Indonesia did not participate in the survey. In Africa about half the countries did not share their information. Nevertheless the response by 115 member states and regions thereof from 193 UN Member States is considered a success by the UN.

Content of the Database
While not all of the 27 questions need to be answered globally, this is, however, important for questions 1 and 2, since they characterize the global data coverage at the different scale ranges and their age of the data.
To assess the global status of map coverage the Eastview database is a fundamental component to answer these questions. Dr. Kent Lee, CEO of Eastview has kindly agreed to make the missing data available from their database. 8 The map sources at Eastview include locally produced (e.g. by national mapping agencies) as well as military map series, see Appendix II-13 and 14 as an example.
Besides Eastview other sources were analyzed to fill the gaps in the study and estimate global coverage. These include UN reports accompanying the questionnaires, internet portals for national mapping data, the cartographic database of the German State library of Berlin based in part on the Geokatalog of the map vendor ILH Stuttgart and others see Appendix II to IV for examples.
Europe, the Russian Federation, Turkey, Japan and the continental USA are well represented in the 1:25 000 scale range, as well as the Western part of China. In the remainder of the world that scale range only covers a small part of the countries.  With only 59% of the UN member states having answered the questionnaire, other sources had to be utilized to assess the global coverage. Chart 4 and Fig. 6 to Fig. 9 give the source of the Meta data information for Fig. 2

Mapping Contributions by Private Industry
As has been demonstrated, official and authoritative mapping by governments provides a reliable geospatial infrastructure, which is used for many public and private applications, but which is costly, difficult and slow to maintain. For that reason private enterprises have succeeded to launch several initiatives to provide faster update solutions in areas, which require fast update solutions. These are based on different cost and accuracy models for specific applications, which require fast updates. These applications do not replace official authoritative cartography, but they supplement it, as all such efforts utilize official cartographic products as a base to start their value added operations.

Google
Google´s prime aim is to provide a location based information system for uses of the public. What the general user wants is quick orientation about how to locate a specific object, such as a landmark, a store, a restaurant or a service provider and how to drive to it.
Geometric accuracy within the context of the neighborhood topography is of lesser importance than the addressability and the access by roads or pathways. In general, business advertising provides for the revenue to establish and to maintain the system. Google Inc. operates by different projects, of which the following are the most important from the cartographic point of view. 30

Google Earth
Existing orthophotography coverage with ground sample distances between 0.1m and 0.5m as well as high resolution satellite imagery coverage with ground sample distances (GSD) between 0.5m to 2m and beyond provide the geometric background image information, which can be interpreted by the user with respect to the searched objects, such as buildings, roads, vegetation, water surfaces. While ortho images have a high geometric accuracy related to ground features commensurate with the GSD, this is not so for building tops and tree tops. Geometric accuracy even deteriorates more for high resolution satellite imagery, since most of these images have been acquired with inclinations with respect to the vertical, unless stereo imaging permitted the generation of ortho imagery. The coverage is global for all land areas.
Nevertheless, despite some of these shortcomings with respect to official cartography, Google Earth can easily satisfy the geolocation demands for the uses Google Earth has been designed for.

Google Maps
Google Maps is a product usually derived, wherever possible, from authoritative cartography. It has been designed to supplement Google Earth with a cartographic output containing place names, road names and building addresses. It serves the ideal function of superimposing images with line graphics. Even though Google Maps may be derived from authoritative cartography, the feature content is much less elaborate and reduced to the intended geolocation function. The 3 models for creating Google Maps are shown in Fig. 40: a) relying on authoritative data in North America, Europe, Australia as "Google Ground Truth", b) Map Maker outsourced, leaving the initiative of mapping using Google Earth to other companies (Africa, Middle East, India) and c) "Video Rental" model offering Google Earth imagery to other countries for mapping use (Russia, China).

Google Street Map
Google Street Map has been developed as a tool to image buildings and streets with street furniture along urban roadways. This is done by vehicle based cameras, located by GNSS 31 signals. In some communities the imaging of building facades has met resistance by some members of the population, which did not wish to show them to the public on the web. Nevertheless Google has pursued street mapping for the sole reason to update the Google Maps content as an internal operation.
In this manner Google Street Map has proved to be an effective tool to quickly update the Google Maps content for buildings and roads. The update of these features can generally be done much faster than by the regular update intervals for authoritative mapping without a reporting system in operation and without a multitude of fast survey options, rather than by a centralized mapping procedure. For coverage see Fig. 41.

Google Ground Truth
In the attempt not only to update the map content, but also to maintain a high level of geometric accuracy, the Google Ground Truth project has been launched for a number of countries in North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa, in which authoritative cartography has been merged with the results of high tech operations, such as Google Street Map, see Fig. 42. As Google regards the progress of these projects as a confidential matter, it is not possible to make a more detailed account of the progress made.

Microsoft Bingmaps
Microsoft considered Google to be their strongest competitor, while Bingmaps has the same objectives as the Google efforts. Therefore care has been taken to achieve a higher resolution and a more accurate geometry than Google Earth.

Yandex
Another approach has been undertaken by Yandex in the Russian Federation, which was also applied in Turkey by the company Yandex.
Yandex has procured high resolution satellite imagery from Digital Globe for the entire territory of the Russian Federation at 0.5m GSD and at 1m GSD. The objects of interest were building blocks, single buildings, roads, creeks. They could be identified and mapped from the images. The geocoding of the mapped information was done by accuracy augmented GNSS code receivers with 2 to 3m accuracy on the ground. In this way Yandex succeeded to generate digital maps for about 300 urban conglomerations in Russia and Turkey.
Yandex, like international car navigation system suppliers, was also interested in car traffic routing, providing real time traffic congestion options for the agglomeration of Moscow.

HERE
When the Finish company Nokia bought Navteq, the global car navigation system efforts were continued by the subsidiary HERE.
HERE makes car navigation systems based on their own maps for 196 countries of the world, 116 countries of which have voice guided navigation and 44 countries of which with live traffic services.
Of interest are roads and points of interest. This also includes unidirectional restrictions of traffic flows.
In Europe 15% of the map´s content is updated every year, modifying or adding 1.1M km of roads, creating 700 000 new points of interest and adding 600 000 speed cameras.
In the Russian Federation 800 000 km of roads change after 6 months, and so do 120 000 street names, 22 000 turn restrictions, 3400 one way streets, 38 000 speed limits and 8700 directional street signs. See Fig. 44:

TomTom
TomTom has a road navigation coverage for 118 countries extending over North America, Brazil, Argentina, Europe, the Russian Federation, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, West and South Africa (see Fig. 44).

Mapping by Military Organizations
Like it happened during the cold war period, when the US and the USSR military organizations considered it their goal to conduct mapping operations in what they considered to be crisis areas, this practice was recently revived by about 30 nations from Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Rep. of Korea and South Africa, when they launched the Multinational Geospatial Co-Production Program MGCP. The goal of this program is to generate up-to-date 1:50 000 digital maps for potential crisis areas of the globe in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the West Indies and the Pacific Ocean. Benefitting from this activity is the UN cartographic section, which utilizes these maps to create information for crisis mitigation.

Other Mapping Efforts
• Open Street Map is the voluntary Crowd sourcing attempt to update map content by the public. It has been enthusiastically promoted in most parts of the globe but it must be integrated into authoritative mapping to guarantee quality control.
• Scan Map by Eastview is a new commercial venture to integrative authoritative mapping with population statistics.

Summary of Results
• 115 UN Member countries have responded to the 2012-2015 UNGGIM-ISPRS Survey. It has been shown, that nearly all reporting countries have modernized their facilities to adopt modern GNSS, digital imaging and GIS technology in their operations, which are still handicapped by lack of funding and staff shortages.
• While in 1986 the world was basically covered by 1:250 000 maps, progress in technology has now made it possible to state that topographic mapping of the globe at 1:50 000 scale, relevant to sustainable development, has been reached.
• There are still gaps in providing updated information in developing countries. These need to be closed with a goal of no data to be older than 5 years.
• New technologies, such as those used by Google and by Yandex could help to reach this goal in priority areas.

Future Activities
• ISPRS has created working group IV-2 to accompany the UNGGIM-ISPRS project.
• This working group has successfully provided the needed discussion forum for the task.
• It will be the future goal of this group to assure that the data collection and analysis will be sustainable by cooperating with UNGGIM and UN-GEO • A near goal will be the expansion of the work to include global land cover mapping as a task.