Russian Maps 1:500.000 Set - www.madmappers.com - Making African GIS accessible to all

Russian Maps of Africa
Topomaps scale 1:500.000

The African set of Soviet military topographic map mosaic on DVD

Soviet military maps were regularly updated until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and remain still among the best available maps for Africa. The Military Topographic Directorate (V.T.U. - Voyenno Topograficheskogo Upravleniya) was probably the most comprehensive mapping organization in the world. It is estimated that 35,000 to 40,000 cartographers worked for the Russian mapping program in 1996 - a time when the program was hardly at its zenith. The program extended to a number of African countries including Angola, Mozambique, Somalia and Libya.

Accuracy? When compared against real GPS tracklogs map compliance is surprising:

Standerton - sheet 2627-G35GS Johannesburg (1985)

Map accuracy at Standerton (South Afrrica):
the blue GPS tracklogs (courtesy of www.tracks4africa.com) is
remarkably compliant with sheet 2627-G35GS Johannesburg (1985).

It is this remarkable maps accuracy which lead Henry Dodds (editor of Jane’s Soviet Intelligence during 1988-92) to ask the intriguing question: was there a Soviet attack plan of which the maps were an important component, or were the cartographers just making maps anyway?
The accuracy and level of detail is even more astonishing when considering they were compiled under great secrecy during the Cold War.

The major drawback of these maps is that names are in Cyrillic characters. However Soviet maps generally display transliterations of the 'official' pronunciation of place names. The practical implication is that place names can generally be converted from Cyrillic characters to the English phonetic equivalent using a simple chart (Cyrillic alphabet). A list of Russian mapping terms was also complied by the US Department of the Army (Russian map terms).

In the quest for "African GIS data accessible to all" MadMappers have released for free download the topographic 1:500 000 scale map collection covering the whole African continent. The 515 maps have been re-projected to geographic (lat/lon) WGS84 and collar clipped so that a continental mosaic could be compiled. Files are geo-referenced and in the compact ER Mapper ecw format characterized by wavelet compression and indexed zoom levels which result in fast loading and low random memory requirements.

How good can it be? ... we were curious and we ran an extreme test on an old Pentium II (as in 2) with 64Mb (as in Megabite) RAM and a mere 727Mb hard disk space. No other option but to use the DVD rom, the 4,5Gb hard drive was just big enough for OS and our >3Gb African mosaic ...
We loaded the mosaic with Globalmapper and we timed it at ... 6,2 seconds! What about zooming in at 1:1? 7,7 seconds !!!
NO COMMENT (it's still a great machine .....)

Free plug-ins are available for most graphic and GIS software packages (free ECW and JPEG 2000 Plug-ins).

Russian Maps 1:500.000 DVD South: Southern Africa

• Coverage:
Show coverage mosaic
Complete coverage of the African Southern hemisphere: i.e. south of the Equator;

• DVD Content: 181 individual maps collar cropped and reprojected to lat/lon WGS84
PLUS Mosaic of Africa's Southern Hemisphere

• Format: ECW
free plug-ins available from ER Mapper

• Calibration:
Oziexplorer and world file included

• GIS software compatibility:
Oziexplorer and Global Mapper compatible

check screen shot

MADMAPPERS PRICE:
R 200,00 / US$ 30,00
plus postage

Russian Maps 1:500.000 DVD North: Northern Africa

• Coverage:
Show coverage mosaic
Complete coverage of the African Northern hemisphere: i.e. north of the Equator;

• DVD Content: 334 individual maps collar cropped
and reprojected to lat/lon WGS84
PLUS Mosaic of Africa's Northern Hemisphere

• Format: ECW
free plug-ins available from ER Mapper

• Calibration:
Oziexplorer and world file included

• GIS software compatibility:
Oziexplorer and Global Mapper compatible

check screen shot

MADMAPPERS PRICE:
R 300,00 / US$ 42,50
plus postage

The Russian Maps of Africa DVD collection - 3 DVDs

• Coverage:
Show coverage mosaic
Complete coverage of the African continent

• DVDs Content: The 3 DVDs collection consists of

1) DVD "Russian Maps 1:500.000 DVD South",
2) DVD "Russian Maps 1:500.000 DVD North" and
3) DVD "Russian Maps 1:500.000 DVD Africa's Mosaic
(containing: the continental mosaic in a 3Gb file)

In total: 515 individual maps collar cropped
and reprojected to lat/lon WGS84
PLUS
Mosaic of Africa's Northern hemisphere
PLUS
Mosaic of Africa's Southern hemisphere
PLUS
Mosaic of African continent

• Format: ECW
free plug-ins available from ER Mapper

• Calibration:
Oziexplorer and world file included

• GIS software compatibility:
Oziexplorer and Global Mapper compatible

check screen shot

MADMAPPERS PRICE:
R 500,00 / US$ 72,50
plus postage