The Automated Map. Public innovation for the generation of the National Topographic Map of Spain

Abstract. Several reasons have prompted the National Geographic Institute of Spain (IGN-Spain) to implement an automatic process to generate the National Topographic Map 1:25,000 (MTN) instead trough the traditional manual way, pointing out the growing lack of human resources, in addition to the search for a quick response to the increasing demand of updated geoinformation by the society.

This new automated process provides an annual production of all the map sheets composing the MTN25 (4.019 files), what is an unprecedented time record, so that the users can quickly both download them from the Download Centre Website and visualize the maps through the visualization web services WMS and WMTS. This methodology is also applied to the creation of sheets for printed publication, whose final output requires a simplified manual editing process.