Conversion of high level information from scanned maps into geographic information systems

The paper presents a system for automatic extraction of high level information from land register maps, e.g. parcels, buildings or roads. The system uses explicit knowledge of the map, which is given by the legend of the map, the drawing rules, and the constraints by functionality. The knowledge is represented by frames and semantic networks. The system uses four levels of representation and processing and a mixed strategy by feedback cycles between the levels. Results are presented for extraction of legal information (parcels and boundary stones) and topographic information (buildings, roads, sidewalls, farmland) from land register maps of scale 1:1000 and 1:5000. The precision of the extracted legal information is sufficient for the given task