Rubber-sheeting of historical maps in GIS and its application to landscape visualization of old-time cities: focusing on Tokyo of the past

Abstract: Historical maps are precious materials, which show spatial distribution of land use, streets and so on at the time the maps were produced. However, the imprecision, in the geometrical sense, of the historical maps makes the task of comparison very difficult. This drawback brings us to the idea of incorporating the historical maps into GIS after rubber-sheet transformation, i.e. geometric correction, of them. It makes possible comparing and overlaying multiple maps from different time periods. Furthermore, it gives map-scales to the historical maps, and it will make possible overlaying of present contour lines on the historical maps. As a result, we can bring the viewpoints of quantitative consideration and three-dimensional visualization into analys is of historical maps. This paper shows the outline of our procedures and some applications, e.g., overlaying different maps from Edo period to present, quantitative analysis of land use in Edo, and visualization of landscape of Edo