This book is addressed to students and professionals, and it is aimed to cover as much as possible the broader region of topographic mapping as it has evolved into a modern field called geospatial information science and technology. More emphasis is placed on using scientific methods and tools materialized in algorithms and software to produce practical results. For this reason, beyond the written material, there are also many educational and professional software programs written by the first author to help comprehend the individual methodologies developed. The Target of this book is to provide the people who work in fields of applications of topographic mapping (environment, geology, geography, cartography, engineering, geotechnical, agriculture, forestry, geointelligence, etc.) a source of knowledge for the broader region so that to help them in facing relevant problems as well as in preparing contracts and specifications for such type of work assigned to professionals and evaluating such contracting results. It also aims to be a reference for theory and practice for professionals in Topographic Mapping. This book applies a didactics method where, with a relatively small effort, someone can digest a large volume of simple or complicated knowledge material at a desirable scientific depth within a relatively short time interval. The objective that educated people must be "smarter than the machine" and not treat the machine as a "black box" being "button pushers" has been achieved through the first author's experience in the USA and Greece, with relative success by adopting this didactics technique. There are 14 chapters, including Reference systems and Projections, Topographic instruments and Geometry of coordinates, Conventional construction of a topographic map, Design and reproduction of a thematic map, Digital Topographic mapping - GIS, Digital Terrain Models (DTM / DEM), GPS/GNSS, methods of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, new technologies LIDAR, IFSAR, Augmented reality, Mapping with UAS/UAV/Drones, the method of Least Squares adjustment, and Description of educational software accompanying the text.

Want to know just how tall Mount Everest is? Or what the city of Denver's elevation is? Then look at a topographic map! These maps use lines to show the height and shape of Earth's surface. But how do you read the lines? And what other features do these maps have? Read on to learn the ins and outs of topographic maps!

A new perspective on topographic map formation and the advantages of information-based learning The study of topographic map formation provides us with important tools for both biological modeling and statistical data modeling. Faithful Representations and Topographic Maps offers a unified, systematic survey of this rapidly evolving field, focusing on current knowledge and available techniques for topographic map formation. The author presents a cutting-edge, information-based learning strategy for developing equiprobabilistic topographic maps--that is, maps in which all neurons have an equal probability to be active--clearly demonstrating how this approach yields faithful representations and how it can be successfully applied in such areas as density estimation, regression, clustering, and feature extraction. The book begins with the standard approach of distortion-based learning, discussing the commonly used Self-Organizing Map (SOM) algorithm and other algorithms, and pointing out their inadequacy for developing equiprobabilistic maps. It then examines the advantages of information-based learning techniques, and finally introduces a new algorithm for equiprobabilistic topographic map formation using neurons with kernel-based response characteristics. The complete learning algorithms and simulation details are given throughout, along with comparative performance analysis tables and extensive references. Faithful Representations and Topographic Maps is an excellent, eye-opening guide for neural network researchers, industrial scientists involved in data mining, and anyone interested in self-organization and topographic maps.