Applying DLM and DCM concepts in a multi-scale environment

Although the separation between Digital Landscape Model (DLM) and Digital Cartographic Model (DCM) is considered as state of the art, data producers, like national mapping agencies, still wrestle with the question what to store explicitly in order to efficiently maintain their geographic databases and maps (cf. Stoter et al., 2008). In this paper we will try to show that explicit storage of both models, up to the data instance level, leads to more redundancy in multi-scale data models and makes it more difficult to manage geographic databases. To streamline the process of data production for both analysis and map making purposes, we propose to maintain only the data instances of the DLM, including minor ‘distortions’ to apply visualization rules easier, and to investigate variable scale data storage.