The Department directs production, upgrading,
and maintenance, and offers technical and method support for users
of reference maps. In order to ensure the quality required to promote
coherency between the reference foundation and other data during integration,
the Department must issue and apply highly rigorous standards related
to positioning, acquisition, processing, and quality control.
This requires joint and sequential action by a
multidisciplinary team, backed by powerful geomatics tools. Consequently,
surveyors and specialist in aerial photography, orthophoto, and
remote sensing comprise the main source of base geographic information
for the territory. Geomaticians, geographers, and cartographers
analyze, process, classify, integrate, and structure this mass of
data and carry out mapping synthesis. In this endeavor, the Department
cooperates with many departmental and governmental organizations
that provide complementary official data. These collaborations,
constantly enriched through the contributions of the private sector,
research and development centers, and various technical support
organizations, have significantly helped strengthen Québec's
expertise in geomatics.
Areas of Application
This expertise converges a priori on offering
a range of cartographic products that coherently illustrate the
territory at various scales. Topographic, general, and administrative
mapping therefore illustrate a set of features that serve to locate
resources and characterize the territory. These include:
- Infrastructure;
- Hydrographic network;
- Relief;
- Road, rail, and energy-transportation infrastructure;
- Forest cover;
- Towns, villages, and inhabited areas;
- Main administrative divisions.
The products derived from
the reference foundation are edited to facilitate circulation of
geographic and administrative information. These products are printed,
offered on CD-ROM, or available online on the Internet.
Whether used alone or in combination with orthophotos
or satellite images, the reference foundation yields a local, regional,
or provincial view of the territory. It makes it possible to situate
and relate the many diversified themes. It supports, in particular,
the analyses prior to implementing structures as well as development
and infrastructure projects, and serves in understanding territories
stakes.
Today, in order to respond to user needs
and take advantage of the constant development of technologies,
the Department is developing new expertise in emerging areas such
as:
- Internet mapping;
- Open generalization about multi-scale products;
- Mixing of carto-image databases;
- Extraction of vector data from satellite images;
- Networking data;
- Geolocalization;
- 3D views of the territory;
- Real-time updating, etc.
As a result, the know-how and expertise acquired
by the Department over the last 25 years
in establishing and managing mapping infrastructure, shared project
management, processing multi-source data, and creating
tailored products can be shared with any government interested in
mapping as a knowledge, management, or intervention tool relative
to its landmass.
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