USC

Unlocking Old Maps with New Technology

GIS practitioners have long dreaded the process of digitizing older maps or even raster (pixel-based) digital datasets to a vector format where they can be more easily analyzed.  It is time-consuming and, frankly, boring.

Assistant Professor (Research) Yao-Yi Chiang’s research provides a solution.  Like optical character recognition for maps, Chiang’s “Strabo” software extracts meaningful lines from raster maps.  This research, with SSI  Professor (Research) Craig Knoblock, was featured in the most recent Viterbi magazine.

Click through to read more about interdisciplinary research that has been facilitated by the rapid computer-automated digitization of raster maps.

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