Canada-wide topographic basemap updates
The topographic basemap has been updated for the entire country for the four scales between 1:1M and 1:288K.
It has been a painfully slow process but the next step in moving the topographic basemap for all of Canada to the new design has taken place. Four scales of map cache covering the entire country were published on ArcGIS Online. Canada is now available in the new map design down to 1:288,895. This is a substantial improvement in design over the older version of the map which had been available since 2011.
Out with the old . . .
. . . and in with the new.
The data used in the production of these four maps scales came mostly from the federal government. These are freely available online. These data sources include the Atlas of Canada 1:1,000,000 National Frameworks Data, the 1:250,000 National Topographic Data Base and the 1:50,000 CanVec data. As well, commercial data provider HERE (Navteq) was used for the road network at these scales.
Improvements to the map aside from the changes in design include:
- Usage of more scale-appropriate data layers
- Improved hillshading
- Better naming of features
- Bilingual naming as per federal government guidelines
As with any map, especially one of this size, we anticipate that you'll notice errors and omissions. If you see any, let us know using the Topographic Map Feedback tool so improvements can be made for the next release.
Stay tuned for updates to the larger scales. We'll be posting about them here.