MAP may refer to:

• MAP, the ISO 639 alpha-3 for Austronesian languages
• MAP (band), an indie band from Riverside, California
• Maghreb Arab Press, the official Moroccan news agency
• Malawi Against Polio
• Multiple Address and Port feature of CAI Networks products
• Manifold absolute pressure, an important sensor in automobiles
• Markovian arrival processes, a discription of arrivals to a queue
• maximum a posteriori, an estimator in statistics
• Mean Arterial Pressure, the driving force of blood flow
• Medical Aid for Palestinians, a UK charity
• Mediterranean Action Plan, a United Nations Environmental Programme plan
• Membership action plan, a stage for countries that are on their way to joining NATO
• Microtubule-associated protein, a member of proteins that interact with the microtubules of the cellular cytoskeleton
• Microwave Anisotropy Probe, an unmanned NASA space mission, which studies cosmic microwave background radiation. The mission was renamed for the late Dr. Wilkinson of Princeton University following his death and is now called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).
• Minimum advertised price (Resale price maintenance), a way of enforcing pricing structures in retail
• Missed approach point, in aviation
• Missouri Assessment Program
• Mitogen-activated protein, a mediator of intracellular signaling
• Mobile Application Part, a protocol used in GSM networks
• Mobile Assault Platoon, a type of military configuration for US forces in Iraqhttp://www.marines.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/0/62614b2f857b7c7f8525715f005442b8?OpenDocument.
• Monoammonium phosphate, a chemical compound
• Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis, a strain of pathogenic bacteria

See also

• Map, a symbolized depiction of a space that highlights relations between components
• MAPS (disambiguation)
• MAPP gas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) mixed with methylacetylene-propadiene

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A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes.

Many maps are static two-dimensional, geometrically accurate representations of three-dimensional space, while others are dynamic or interactive, even three-dimensional. Although most commonly used to depict geography, maps may represent any space, real or imagined, without regard to context or scale; e.g. Brain mapping, DNA mapping, and extra-terrestrial mapping.

Geographic maps

Cartography, or map-making is the study and, often, practice, of crafting representations of the Earth upon a flat surface (see History of cartography), and one who makes maps is called a cartographer.

While we tend to think of maps today as products of a rationalistic, scientific world-view, maps also have a mythical quality. Pre-modern maps, and mapping traditions outside the Western tradition, often merge geography with non-scientific cosmography, showing the relationship of the viewer to the universe. Medieval "T-O" maps, for example, show Jerusalem at the centre of the and Bruno'' with his mention of a fictional map that had "the scale of a mile to the mile". A character notes some practical difficulties with this map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well". This concept is elaborated in a one-paragraph story by Jorge Luis Borges, generally known in English as "On Exactitude in Science".

Road maps are perhaps the most widely used maps today, and form a subset of navigational maps, which also include aeronautical and nautical charts, railroad network maps, and hiking and bicycling maps. In terms of quantity, the largest number of drawn map sheets is probably made up by local surveys, carried out by municipalities, utilities, tax assessors, emergency services providers, and other local agencies. Many national surveying projects have been carried out by the military, such as the British Ordnance Survey (now a civilian government agency internationally renowned for its comprehensively detailed work).

Orientation of maps

The term orientation refers to the relationship between directions on a map and compass directions. The word orient is derived from oriens, meaning east. In the Middle Ages many maps, including the T and O maps, were drawn with east at the top. Today the most common, but far from universal, cartographic convention is that North is at the top of a map. Examples of maps not orientated to north are:

• Polar maps of the Arctic or Antarctic regions are conventionally centered on the pole, in which case the direction north would be towards or away from the center of the map, respectively.
• Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion maps are based on a projection of the Earth's sphere onto an icosahedron. The resulting triangular pieces may be arranged in any order or orientation.
• Maps from non-Western traditions are oriented a variety of ways. Old maps of Edo show the Japanese imperial palace as the "top," but also at the centre, of the map. Labels on the map are oriented in such a way that you cannot read them properly unless you put the imperial palace above your head.
• Medieval European T and O maps such as the Hereford Mappa Mundi were centred on Jerusalem with east at the top. Indeed, prior to the reintroduction of Ptolemy's Geography to Europe around 1400, there was no single convention in the West. Portolan charts, for example, are oriented to the shores they describe.
• Route and channel maps have traditionally been oriented to the road or waterway they describe.
• Many maps used in the Society for Creative Anachronism show the west at the top, in honor of the Society starting in California.

Scale and accuracy

Many but not all maps are drawn to a scale, allowing the reader to infer the actual sizes of, and distances between, depicted objects. A larger scale shows more detail, thus requiring a larger map to show the same area. For example, maps designed for the hiker are often scaled at the ratio 1:24,000, meaning that 1 of any unit of measurement on the map corresponds to 24,000 of that same unit in reality; while maps designed for the motorist are often scaled at 1:250,000. Maps which use some quality other than physical area to determine relative size are called cartograms.

A famous example of a map without scale is the London Underground map, which best fulfils its purpose by being less physically accurate and more visually communicative to the hurried glance of the commuter. This is not a cartogram (since there is no consistent measure of distance) but a topological map that also depicts approximate bearings. The simple maps shown on some directional road signs are further examples of this kind.

In fact, most commercial navigational maps, such as road maps and town plans, sacrifice an amount of accuracy in scale to deliver a greater visual usefulness to its user, for example by exaggerating the width of roads. With the end-user similarly in mind, cartographers will censor the content of the space depicted by a map in order to provide a useful tool for that user. For example, a road map may or may not show railroads, and if it does, it may show them less clearly than highways.

Some maps such as topographical maps show constant values such as elevation, these are often represented, along with other characteristics, depending on the scale of the map, in the form of Isolines. Isolines on a map or chart indicate a constant value such as temperature, or rainfall.

World maps and projections

Main article: World map

Maps of the world or large areas are often either 'political' or 'physical'. The most important purpose of the political map is to show territorial borders; the purpose of the physical is to show features of geography such as mountains, soil type or land use. Geological maps show not only the physical surface, but characteristics of the underlying rock, fault lines, and subsurface structures.

Maps that depict the surface of the Earth also use a projection, a way of translating the three-dimensional real surface of the geoid to a two-dimensional picture. Perhaps the best-known world-map projection is the Mercator Projection, originally designed as a form of nautical chart.

Airplane pilots use aeronautical charts based on a Lambert conformal conic projection, in which a cone is laid over the section of the earth to be mapped. The cone intersects the sphere (the earth) at one or two parallels which are chosen as standard lines. This allows the pilots to plot a great-circle route approximation on a flat, two-dimensional chart.

• Azimuthal or Gnomonic map projections are often used in planning air routes due to their ability to represent great circles as straight lines.
• Richard Edes Harrison produced a striking series of maps during and after World War II for Fortune magazine. These used "bird's eye" projections to emphasize globally strategic "fronts" in the air age, pointing out proximities and barriers not as apparent on a conventional rectangular projection of the world.

Electronic maps

From the last quarter of the 20th century, the indispensable tool of the cartographer has been the computer. Much of cartography, especially at the data-gathering survey level, has been subsumed by Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The functionality of maps has been greatly advanced by technology allowing, for example, the superimposition of spatially located variables onto existing geographical maps. Having local information such as rainfall level, distribution of wildlife, or demographic data integrated within the map makes for more efficient analysis and better decision making. In the pre-electronic age such superimposition of data led to Dr. John Snow discovering the cause of cholera. Today, it is used by agencies as diverse as wildlife conservationists and militaries around the world.

Even when GIS is not involved, most cartographers now use a variety of computer graphics programs to generate new maps.

Interactive, computerised maps are commercially available, allowing users to zoom in or zoom out (respectively meaning to increase or decrease the scale), sometimes by replacing one map with another of different scale, centred where possible on the same point. In-car satellite navigation systems are computerised maps with route-planning and advice facilities which monitor the user's position with the help of satellites. From the computer scientist's point of view, zooming in entails one or a combination of:

1. replacing the map by a more detailed one
2. enlarging the same map without enlarging the pixels, hence showing more detail by removing less information compared to the less detailed version
3. enlarging the same map with the pixels enlarged (replaced by rectangles of pixels); no additional detail is shown, but, depending on the quality of one's vision, possibly more detail can be seen; if a computer display does not show adjacent pixels really separate, but overlapping instead (this does not apply for an LCD, but may apply for a cathode ray tube), then replacing a pixel by a rectangle of pixels does show more detail. A variation of this method is interpolation.

For example:

• Typically (2) applies to a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The increase in detail is, of course, limited to the information contained in the file: enlargement of a curve may eventually result in a series of standard geometric figures such as straight lines or arcs of circles.
• (2) may apply to text and (3) to the outline of a map feature such as a forest or building.
• (1) may apply to the text (displaying labels for more features), while (2) applies to the rest of the image. Text is not necessarily enlarged when zooming in. Similarly, a road represented by a double line may or may not become wider when one zooms in.
• The map may also have layers which are partly raster graphics and partly vector graphics. For a single raster graphics image (2) applies until the pixels in the image file correspond to the pixels of the display, thereafter (3) applies.

See also Webpage (Graphics), PDF (Layers), Mapquest, Google Maps, Google Earth or Yahoo! Maps.

Labeling

To communicate spatial information effectively, features such as rivers, lakes, cities and so on need to be labeled. Over centuries cartographers perfected the art of placing names on even the densest of maps. Text placement or name placement can get mathematically very complex as the number of labels and map density increases. Therefore, text placement is time-consuming and labor-intensive, which is why automatic label placement makes the life of cartographers and GIS users easier when it comes to labeling maps ^[1], ^[2].

Footnotes

References

• David Buisseret, ed., Monarchs, Ministers and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, ISBN 0-226-07987-2
• Freeman, Herbert, Automated Cartographic Text Placement. White paper.
• Ahn, J. and Freeman, H., “A program for automatic name placement,” Proc. AUTO-CARTO 6, Ottawa, 1983. 444-455.
• Freeman, H., “Computer Name Placement,” ch. 29, in Geographical Information Systems, 1, D.J. Maguire, M.F. Goodchild, and D.W. Rhind, John Wiley, New York, 1991, 449-460.
• Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps, ISBN 0-226-53421-9
• O'Connor, J.J. and E.F. Robertson, The History of Cartography. Scotland : St. Andrews University, 2002.
• Denis E. Cosgrove (ed.) Mappings. Reaktion Books, 1999 ISBN 1-86189-021-4

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See also

General

• Atlas
• Ancient world maps
• Automatic label placement
• Cartography
• Geography
• Globe
• History of cartography

Map design and types

• Thematic map
• Cartogram
• Contour map
• Dymaxion map
• Floor plan
• Geologic map
• Map design
• Nautical chart
• Pictorial maps
• Planform
• Plat
• Reversed map
• Road atlas
• Street map
• Topographic map
• World map

Modern maps

• Maps of the UK and Ireland
• Maps of the United States
• Google Maps
• MapQuest
• NASA World Wind
• Japanese map symbols

Map history

• George Bradshaw, including maps of the British railway network, first published in 1839
• Sanborn Maps - detailed American fire insurance maps
• Ordnance Survey

Related Topics

• Aerial photography
• Aerial landscape art
• Orthophoto
• Automatic label placement
• Geography Cup
• Map database management
• Geographic coordinate system

External links

This article has too many unnecessary external links. Please help Wikipedia by organising, removing or transferring them to other articles.

Map discussion and history

• Geography and Maps, an Illustrated Guide, by the staff of the U.S. Library of Congress.
• Antique Maps by Carl Moreland and David Bannister - complete text of the book
• Books discussing maps at ODT Maps
• Map Room, a weblog about maps, with a links Directory
• The Upsidedown Map Page Pictures and info about maps which are oriented without North at the top
• Example of map legends (Cito-Plan city maps)
• , use of maps on Wikipedia
• slashgeo.org - Community-driven and ad-free website for news and discussions about Maps and Geospatial technologies
• Getting There Article on Online Maps from The New Yorker

Map link sites

• Perry-Castañeda Library, Maps on Other Web Sites
• Colorful World maps for free
• British Library links for historic maps and interactive mapping, both their own collections and other sites
• Odden's Bookmarks, The fascinating world of maps and mapping, the world's largest map-related link collection.
• University of Iowa Links, many map-related links
• Online Map Catalogs in North America and Europe
• Geographical data resources online
• Primary sources for the research scholar, links to websites for archives of research material.
• Soil Maps of the world European Digital Archive on the Soil Maps of the world
• Maps and Routes - South America countries
• Mapsarea.com Portal to the top sites for maps, atlases, and related topics.
• 1:25 000 Topographical Maps for NSW, Australia - Index links to detailed maps
• Maps of Cyprus - High quality maps of Cyprus
• Maps of Kola Peninsula (rus)
• online maps,road maps,street maps in California

Modern maps and atlases online

World Maps and Atlases:

• Maps of the Europe
• Maps of the Europe and European union
• National Geographic Map Machine
• Wild Finder-World Wildlife Fund
• Shaded Relief
• Perry-Castañeda Library, University of Texas
• Google Maps
• An interactive Java applet to study deformations (area, distance and angle) of map projections

Country Maps:

• National Atlas of the United States
• National Map, United States Geological Survey
• TerraServer-USA and TopoZone host USGS topographic maps (and aerial photos on TerraServer-USA); Maptech hosts historical USGS topos in the northeast United States.
• Atlas of Canada
• Geography Network
• Geospatial One-Stop - geodata.gov
• Thematic maps of Australia
• Maps of Poland
• Maps of Turkey
• Maps of Czech Republic
• Maps of French territory

Antique and historical maps online

• MAPCO : Map And Plan Collection Online, historic maps of London, the British Isles, and Australia c1560-1929
• Historical map web sites list, Perry-Castañeda Library, University of Texas
• Map history and collections introductory page and list of maps on the web organized by geographical region
• Mapping History - a learning resource from the British Library
• David Rumsey map collection, 12,600 maps online
• Online map collections at the Library of Congress
• Historical Maps from the Hargrett Library Collection (University of Georgia) - browse over 1000 maps from as early as 1544. DjVu format; requires free plugin or JAVA
• Historical Maps from the Portal to Texas History
• Antique maps of Europe and Mediterranean basin
• Collection of maps of early European efforts to document the Southern Hemisphere - State Library of NSW
• The Tasman Map - State Library of NSW
• Historical Maps of Kola Peninsula (rus)

Online map creation tools

• Map.TV A video portal about maps and travel
• MyGuestmap: A free map creation tool for blogs and other personal websites
• GetMapped: Service for pointing out visited cities and countries.
• Online Map Creation: Webinterface to GMT mapping package; new version at Planiglobe Beta
• OpenStreetMap The Free Wiki World Map
• A free Mapping with facility to add information and tools for planning.
• Maptrot.com Easy to use customized Google Maps creator for sharing and embedding

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Atlas • Geography • Topography • Cartography • Map • Map projection History of cartography • List of cartographers • Ancient world maps Topographic map • Geologic map • Nautical chart • Weather map • Thematic map • Linguistic map • Pictorial map • Cartogram