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Title: Information theory of cartography : a framework for entropy-based cartographic communication theory
Authors: Li, Z 
Issue Date: 2020
Source: International archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences, 2020, v. 43, no. B4, p. 11-16
Abstract: Map is an effective communication means. It carries and transmits spatial information about spatial objects and phenomena, from map makers to map users. Therefore, cartography can be regarded as a communication system. Efforts has been made on the application of Shannon Information theory developed in digital communication to cartography to establish an information theory of cartography, or simply cartographic information theory (or map information theory). There was a boom during the period from later 1960s to early 1980s. Since later 1980s, researcher have almost given up the dream of establishing the information theory of cartography because they met a bottleneck problem. That is, Shannon entropy is only able to characterize the statistical information of map symbols but not capable of characterizing the spatial configuration (patterns) of map symbols. Fortunately, break-through has been made, i.e. the building of entropy models for metric and thematic information as well as a feasible computational model for Boltzmann entropy. This paper will review the evolutional processes, examine the bottleneck problems and the solutions, and finally propose a framework for the information theory of cartography. It is expected that such a theory will become the most fundamental theory of cartography in the big data era.
Keywords: Boltzmann entropy
Cartographic communication, cartographic information theory
Generalized shannon entropy
Information theory of cartography
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Journal: International archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences 
ISSN: 1682-1750
EISSN: 2194-9034
DOI: 10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIII-B4-2020-11-2020
Description: 2020 24th ISPRS Congress - Technical Commission IV on Spatial Information Science, 31 August - 2 September 2020
Rights: © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
The following publication Li, Z.: INFORMATION THEORY OF CARTOGRAPHY: A FRAMEWORK FOR ENTROPY-BASED CARTOGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION THEORY, Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., XLIII-B4-2020, 11–16, is available at https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIII-B4-2020-11-2020, 2020
Appears in Collections:Conference Paper

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