Tasks and challenges of the Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography in the area of developing topographic maps in 1:25,000 scale

Abstract. In accordance with the legal regulations in force in Poland in the field of cartography, i.e. the Geodetic and Cartographic Law, one of the tasks of the Chief National Surveyor is to create and provide access to topographic, general geographic, thematic and special maps. Moreover, the topographic maps are developed in close cooperation with the Minister of National Defense. The basis for the development of topographic maps is, in particular, the Topographic Objects Database BDOT10k with the topographic objects’ level of details corresponding to 1:10,000 scale, the National Register of Geographic Names and the Digital Terrain Model.

Considering the above, in 2022, the Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography, as part of its own work, launched a pilot project aimed at developing tools to automatically generate topographic maps in 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 scale. At a current stage, as part of the II iteration, the maps do not yet constitute full-fledged topographic maps, but we are striving for such a goal. The tools are constantly developed and corrections are made to eliminate errors that still occur. The maps in 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 scales, developed so far under this project in a fully automatic manner, are available free of charge to all interested users on the www.geoportal.gov.pl website.

In the article, the results of the developed tools and generated topographic maps 1:25,000 will be presented, as well as the problems faced both in the context of the methodology and the limitations resulting from the software used.