Making Better Use of Historical Maps in GIS

Historical maps are precious materials, which show spatial distribution of land use, streets and so on at the time when the maps were produced. In analysis of historical maps, the most practical method is to compare them with the present ones, for instance by overlaying them. However, the low precision, in the geometrical sense, of the historical maps makes the task of comparison very difficult. This drawback brings us the idea to incorporate the historical maps into GIS after rubber-sheet transformation, i.e. geometric correction, of them. It makes comparing and overlaying multiple maps from different time periods. Furthermore, it gives map-scales to the historical maps, which are not in general represented on the old maps, and if we allow ourselves to ignore the changes in terrain from past to present, it will make overlaying of present contour lines on the historical maps. As a result, we can bring the points of view of quantitative consideration and three-dimensional visualization into analyses of historical map. We have addressed incorporating historical maps produced in Edo period (1603-1867) in Japan into our GIS for Tokyo. This article shows the outline of our procedures and some applications, e.g., overlaying different maps from Edo period to present, quantitative analyses of land use in Edo, and visualization of landscape of Edo.