Kartographie#

Cartography (mapping), the science and technique of designing, producing, and using maps and charts in either analogue or digital form.

Cartography has a long tradition in Austria. The Klosterneuburg/Vienna cartographic school produced excellent maps as early as the 15th  century, e.g. the Fridericuskarte around 1421. At the initiative of the rural nobility, other maps followed, with Tyrol, represented primarily by M. Burgklechner and later P. Anich, taking a leading role. After bad experiences with inadequate maps encountered during the Seven Years' War, systematic cartographical documentation was undertaken by engineering officers of the topographical unit of the imperial armed forces ( Josephinian or Franzian Cartographical Register). Austrian military cartography was particularly stimulated by the integration of the Military Geographical Institute of Milan in 1816 as well as an amalgamation with the Austrian Institute of Topography and Lithography in 1839 to form the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Institute of Military Geography (k. k. Militaergeographisches Institut) in Vienna. Particular achievements of this institute were the production of a special register of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, drawn to a scale of 1 : 75,000, in only 18 years ( Francisco-Josephinian Cartographical Register) and (in cooperation with the Imperial War Surveying Office) a total of 71 million maps during the First World War. In 1862, Austria joined the first international collaboration in geodesy, the Central European Arc Measurement ("Mitteleuropaeische Gradmessung", later called "Internationale Erdmessung", the International Association of Geodesy). In order to supply the economic, administrative, and scientific needs for precise maps, the Fourth Cartographical Register was begun in 1896. In 1921 the Institute of Military Geography became the Bundesvermessungsamt (Federal Surveying Office) and in 1923 was given the name Bundesamt fuer Eich- und Vermessungswesen (BEV), which it has held up to the present day.

Today all official maps and their derivatives are produced by the Gruppe Landesaufnahme (cartography department) of the BEV. Since the 1950s these maps have been based on the Oesterreich-Karte ("Austrian Register"), drawn on a scale of 1 : 50,000 (OeK50), which comprises 213 maps and, with more extensive information in the margins as well as on the maps (reinforced grids, medical corps information), is also used as the Austrian Military Register (Oesterreichische Militaerkarte, OeMK50) for national defence purposes. Registers derived from the Oesterreich-Karte 1 : 50,000 are the Oesterreich-Karte 1 : 200,000 (OeK200) with 23 maps and a one-page map of Austria on a scale of 1 : 500,000 (OeK500), a reprographic enlargement of the OeK50 to 1 : 25,000 (OeK25V), and one of the OeK500 to 1 : 300,000 (OeK300V).

In addition to these traditional registers, the BEV also has the following: the orthogonally revised, distortion-free aerial photograph map 1 : 10,000 (OeLK10); the Oesterreich Basiskarte (Austrian basis map) 1 : 5,000 (consisting of an orthophotograph, contour map, and cadastral map reduction; a digital ground level model in a 50-m-grid of all of Austria; a topographic model with selected digital vector information; and a cartographic model with the complete digital grid information of the OeK50 with a resolution of 200 lines/cm.

Cartography in Austria is institutionally anchored at the University of Vienna (Institute of Geography, Cartography Department) and at the Vienna University of Technology (Institute of Cartography and Reproduction Technology), as well as at the Joanneum in Graz. Private cartography is done in particular by the two large cartographical publishers Freytag-Berndt (G. Freytag) and Edition Hoelzel, as well as by the cartographic division of the Austrian Alpine Association. The company GEOSPACE in Salzburg specialises in the production of satellite photograph maps. There are also a number of cartographic companies that produce maps for everyday use.

Cartographic research in Austria is concerned, among other areas, with the development of computer-aided geographical information systems (GIS) for the preparation, processing, and visualisation of spacial conditions as well as - using digital picture processing - for the preparation of orthophotographs, satellite photographs, and radar pictures and also, using ground level information, for the production of pseudo-three-dimensional pictures and animations.