Preface

The territory is the interaction place of different kind of systems, namely the social and natural systems. The use and perception of the territory are essential components of the organization and development of modern society. The understanding of the territory allows a multidisciplinary view of the world. The territory interpretation and analysis can be developed with the support of the cartography, unavoidable tool for modern world. The growing needs for using the cartography has experienced a wide and important impulse nowadays.

The increase of the modern processes to acquirer information with a particular evolution on remote sensing represents a great impulse to the evolution of the modern cartography. This development requires an impressive demand of mathematical procedures and informatics means. The process of acquiring information is a software and hardware exigent task that has been subject to important evolution. Larger amount of data in a shorter period of time can be processed due to scientific advances. The technological evolution gives us the possibility to acquire information on objects far away of the users, otherwise impossible to obtain. The information available to build the cartography is wider and more accurate.

Dealing with space and territory the importance of the cartography affects almost all areas of human activity and knowledge. This may be the main reason why a wide range of activities in the modern society uses the cartography. It can be used on areas such as the autonomous-land-vehicles, historical and archeological research, geopolitical analysis, natural and environmental issues, landscape assessment, modeling natural processes. Almost all areas of the knowledge need various contributions of the cartography, both in the analytical process or in the representation of data.

This growing need of cartography implies an accurate process of validation of the information at our disposal and that represents nowadays a crucial issue. Regarding the wide spectrum of the areas using cartography, the relationship producer/user must be analysed and monitored. Technics of monitoring the relationship producer/user have been developed in order to increase the efficiency of the cartography and achieve the main objectives of the cartographer. More over the efficiency of the access to data can be improved monitoring the frequency of public assessment.

#### XII Preface

The texts presented in the book are referred to a wide range of issues related with cartography. The SAR radar images, the GPS positioning and the analysis of remote sensors are examples of the modern processes of data acquisition allowing the acquisition of data without direct contact with the study object. This is the main stream of modern cartography supported on an important evolution of the mathematic processing and an effective integration in Geographical Information Systems. The application of cartography to the systems for autonomous land vehicles reveals the importance of the cartography in modern technologies.

Five of the chapters are related with Historical/Cultural issues revealing the crucial importance of cartography as a tool to support research, inventory, databases or simply allows to understand the past by the study of the techniques associated to the cartographic building process.

Two chapters are related with the studies of natural processes and their relationship with the social dynamics. The modelling of natural dynamics can be directly related with de susceptibility analysis of the territory to natural processes and to the building of the cartography of the most affected areas.

Finally, two texts are related with the evaluation of the relationship producer/user of the cartography. An objective analysis of the main areas of interest of a map are assessed using eye tracking and the frequency of use of specified areas gives important indicators to establish an priority of the information to be processed.

The book provides contributions to very different areas related with cartography: building of cartography, acquisition of information, environmental issues, natural hazards, cultural aspects, historical research and the perception on cartography use. The cartography has an important role on the systemic approach to the territory analysis. More over represents a transversal tool in a world with a multitude ways of looking to the reality.

> **Prof. Carlos Bateira**  Department of Geography Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto Portugal

**Chapter 1** 
