Brown bag seminar

Date: Wednesday, April, 9, 2014:  12:30 – 13:30

Place: Techno-Z, GI-lecture room: SC30OG1.107  (Schillerstraße 30, building 14)

Presenter: Gáspár Albert (Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Informatics – Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics)

Reworking map-data – an introduction to map-based models and analyses

Maps are not only the representation of spatial information, but they can be considered as a database. This is evident in a GIS, but it is also true for static (paper) maps. A well constructed map of any age can be used to extract the “frozen” information in space and time. This is obvious if we look at a topographic map of the early 19th century: one can reconstruct the geography, which has changed long before our time. Similarly to a database, where executing different queries one can find new laws and trends, maps may also contain “hidden” links. If we look at a map (or a series of maps) in details we may find information, which was not deliberately mapped. For example we may calculate the average biomass of an area from an old cadastral map based on the coverage, or we may reconstruct the melting speed of a glacier if we compare two topographic maps. This is also true for more specific maps. In this seminar, two case studies will be presented on different scale: a volumetric model of a cave from cave maps, and a reconstruction of the recent stress-field of the Carpathian Region based on tectonic maps. Both studies are aimed to work out methods for scientific purposes. The results of cave map-modeling can be used to estimate the karst porosity of the rock around the cave. This parameter is useful for hydrogeologist and karstologists. The stress-field model is aimed to provide a method to reconstruct the geodynamics of old structural lines. It can be useful for geologists, and geophysicist.