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Errors in GIS due to scanning of paper maps

Lt Col R Siva Kumar
Director Military
Survey, Plot No 108 (WS), Church Road, New Delhi-110001
E-mail: milsvy@del2.vsnl.net.in

Dr MD Joshi
Department of Civil Engineering,
Sultan Quaboos University, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman.

Uncertainty is a significant problem in GIS because spatial data tend to be used for the purposes for which they were never intended, and because the accuracy problem in GIS requires consideration of both object oriented and field oriented views of geographic variation. Map accuracy is relatively a minor issue in cartography. Cartographers feel little need to communicate information on accuracy, except indirectly through map quality statements or in detailed legends. But when the same map is digitised and input to a GIS, the mode of use changes. The new uses extend well beyond the domain for which the original map was intended and designed. A detailed study was carried out to ascertain the magnitude of error which can caused due to digitisation of paper maps of different type and time. Generally digitisation of paper maps is practiced in making a database for GIS in most of developing countries.