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Nation completes new geographic database
By Cao Desheng (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-25 07:26
Imagine locating your residential building from a database of national
geographic information.
That's realistic for urban Chinese as a senior official of surveying and
mapping assured reporters on Friday that a newly completed geographic
information database exists to do so.
The image included in the database covers all the large and medium-sized
cities and developed areas of China, and can be distinguished by 1 metre, Lu
Xinshe, director of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, said at a State
Council Information Office news conference in Beijing.
"That means you can locate your apartment building from the database," Lu
said.
The database also makes travelling and expedition activities easier and more
convenient for the abundant and accurate geographic information it provides, he
added.
The database is the result of an eight-year project, done on the scale of 1
to 50,000 in line with the existing paper-made maps, aerial photography and
field surveying.
The project involved a total investment of more than 700 million yuan (US$86
million) with a participation of more than 10,000 people from central and local
government departments and the military.
It covers the entire land areas of China including Hong Kong, Macao and
Taiwan in seven datasets: Elevation, image, terrain, geographic names, land
coverage, raster maps and metadata.
The volume of the data totals 5.3 terabyte, equal to the storage of more than
8,000 compact discs.
Like the virtual earth simulation software "Google
Earth" that has become hugely popular among Internet users across the world, the
database is expected to have a wide application as people can access the data
via the Internet, Lu said.
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