AN AUTOMATED-METHOD FOR DIGITIZING COLOR THEMATIC MAPS

There is an increasing need for methods of rapidly entering analog dat a into geographic information systems. Traditional methods of hand dig itizing or hand tracing followed by scanning are costly and time consu ming. We have developed a rapid, easy to use method for digitizing col or thematic maps that makes use of standard image processing technique s. The method uses a digital camera followed by supervised spectral cl assification and post-classification smoothing. Although overall accur acy for an extremely challenging test map was 93 percent, our results indicate that for most applications expected accuracy is very high.