Digital Cartography 101

An introduction to the art and science of modern cartography

Duration: 5 days

• 5 demo lectures
• 4 explorations
• 2 assignments

Courseware

• Cartography and Visualization - Penn State GEOG 486

Day 1: The Fundamentals

• Psychogeography
• Exploration 1 Create a dérive
• Geography
• History of Cartography
  
• Great Trigonometric Survey of India and the Bangalore connection
  

- Mapping
 - [Geoid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoid) - [Coordinates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_coordinate_system): [latitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latitude) and [longitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude) - Positioning: [trigonometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveying), [remote sensing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_sensing), [GPS](http://fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/es310/GPS/GPS.htm) - [Scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_(map)): 1:250,000 small scale (world map), 1:10,000 large scale (street map) - [Projection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection): cylindrical, conic, azimuthal
 - Types of maps - [Pictoral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictorial_maps) - [Thematic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematic_map) - [Topographic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_map) and [Terrain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrain_cartography) - [Chloropleth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choropleth_map) - [Cartogram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartogram) - [Topological](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_map) - [Animated maps](https://vimeo.com/9182869) - [Interactive maps](http://osm-in.github.io/flood-map/chennai.html#11/13.0000/80.2000) - Map symbology - [Ordanace Survey symbol sheets](https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/resources/maps-and-geographic-resources/map-symbols.html) - Data abstraction - **Exploration 2** Create a map of the Bengaluru Airport Bus Network. Focus: utility, data density, clarity

Reading

• Inside the Secret World of Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers

Day 2: Map design

• Data primitives: points, lines, areas
• Cartographic elements
• frame
• metadata
• layering
• pixels
• symbols
• lines
• fills
• text
• Cartographic styling
• Raster
• Color mapping
• Composting
• DEM
• Vector
• Data series
• Exporting maps
• Create a series of maps for your state(A)
• A political map
• A physical map
• A chloropleth map
• Assignment 1

Reading

• A Rare Interview With Graphic Design Legend Massimo Vignelli

Day 3: Working with Map Data

• GIS Fundamentals
• Coordinate system: WGS 84 Mercator projection and Web Mercator projection
  
• Data Formats: GeoJSON, Shapefile
• Existing data sources
• Natural Earth
• Bhuvan
• OSM
• NASA
• Map scans
• Working with OSM
• Creating data
• Extracting data
• Converting
• Formats
• Projection
• Geometry
• Combining
• Joining
• Geoprocessing
• Spatial analysis
• Exploration 3

Day 4: Publishing a web map

• HTML, CSS and JS
• Jquery
• Callbacks
• AJAX
• JSON
• API
• Jekyll and GitHub Pages
• A simple map
• Creating a map view
• Adding map layers
• Adding data layers
• Customizing map controls
• Using Github pages
• Assignment 2: Create an interactive tourist map of your favourite place

Day 5: Data driven maps

• Turf.js
• Tippecanoe
• Mapbox API
• Exploration 4

Software

• QGIS
• Mapbox Studio
• Mapbox.js