Sunday, January 27, 2008

Types of Map

Static map
A static map is the simplest form of digital map. Often it’s a paper map that’s been scanned and turned into a BMP (bitmap) or JPG (graphic) file. Aside from displaying it, printing it, and perhaps making a few edits, what you can do with the map is limited.
Static maps used to be the only type; often, a static map is all you need.

Smart map
Smart digital maps may look like static maps, but data is associated with map locations. The data can be as basic as the latitude and longitude of a point, or as detailed about vegetation, soil type, and slope.
Spatial or geospatial data is associated with a place. The place can be smaller than a meter or as large as a country. Spatial data can be stored two ways:

* Embedded in a map graphic file
* Separate files with references to the locations

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a popular format for storing graphics files. The GeoTIFF extension embeds geographic tags into map images. If you view a GeoTIFF file with a standard graphics program, it looks like an ordinary map. A program that uses the data tags can access the spatial data associated with each pixel in the image.

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