Soft Maps for U.S. Army Electronic Map Background Applications.

Background maps for geographic referencing and situation status have emerged as the U.S. Armys number one requirement for electronic displays in support of operational systems. Analog video, digital raster, and digital vector data all provide viable alternatives for the development of background maps. This paper reviews U.S. Army applications requiring electronic background maps, examines alternative approaches for producing electronic maps, and focuses on the issues associated with soft maps raster scanned images of hardcopy products. Soft maps are proposed as a method of quickly developing a digital background map product with wide area coverage.