Geometric Correction of Measured Historical Maps with a Pixel- Oriented and Geobrowser-friendly Framework

This paper discusses the geometric correction of measured historical maps and the evaluation of accuracy with case studies on Silk Road maps, “Innermost Asia” and “Serindia,” made by Aurel Stein about 100 years ago, and Beijing maps, “Complete map of Peking, Qianlong period,” made about 250 years ago. The former case study deals with maps that cover thousand kilometers, and we delivered the error table for each major oasis in Tarim Basin so that historical maps can be interpreted under information on errors. The latter case study deals with maps of a city, and we proposed a new geometric correction method “line-preserving distance weighting method” that focuses on the problem of linear features which are relevant in the map of cities. Based on these experiences, we summarize this paper with a few points of discussion about how to deal with historical maps, and show the potential of historical maps from the viewpoint of spatial visual sources and linkage across multiple databases.