MEETING OF THE AUTOMAP DATA BANK STUDY GROUP, 5 MARCH 1969

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-01153A000100010008-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 1, 1999
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: March 6, 1969
• Content Type: MFR

6 March 1969
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
SUBJECT: Meeting of the Automap Data Bank Study
Group, 5 March 1969
25X1A9a 25X1A9a
1. Present at the seventh meeting of the rou on 5 March wer
2 X1A9a The subject of the work session was retrieval strategy.
2. Two broad options exist for structuring Data Banks II and III
for retrieval purposes. They are by geographic division or feature.
They subdivide as follows:
Geographic Options
a. Sheets or blocks (DOD approach)
b. Unstructured (sequential by line segment)
c. Continental (present scheme)
d. Country
e. Other or combinations of above
Feature Options
f. Separated files (Data Bank I)
g. Unseparated files (Data Bank II)
h. Combination of above
3.
An analysis of intended usage of each bank was presented.
a. Data Bank II - designed to produce maps of continents,
regions, and page-size country bases at
scales from 1:2,000,000 to 1:10,000,000.
Using the continental reference scheme currently employed,
it was found that:
(1) The majority of the above maps will fall within a
single continental file.
(2) Some will fall on two continental areas. There are
six zones that are frequently overlapped. They are:
North America-South America
North America-Europe
Europe-Africa
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Europe-Asia
Africa-Asia
,Australasia-Asia
(3) A few maps will overlap three continental areas.
This occurs only in the Near East.
(4) Of 170 NIS political entities, 44 overlap in a
second, continental area. Conversely, three quarters of the
countries could be found wholly in a single continental file.
b. Data Bank III - designed to produce maps of countries
and locales at scales of 1:500,000 to
1:6,000,000.
Item (4) above would be pertinent to this bank.
4. The question of file size was raised. Based on approximately
5% of the world land mass digitized, Data Bank II will have about
1,500,000 points. An OER statistician has recommended correlation
between similar line segments in the two data banks to provide further
25X1A9a estimates. _ proposed a retrieval system based on an atlas grid.
The cartographer would call for retrieval frora specified grid squares
in the area of the map frame. This elicited the fact that some maps
have frames other than rectangular and in cases of countries often no
frames are required at all. From here the discussion went to question
the need for area coding or retrieval based on country. A serious
question of emphasis on planimetry versus country was also raised.
At this point, it was recommended that the CD/BGI staff be consulted.
5. The next meeting will be in Room 2E-08 from 0830-1030 on
19 March 1969. It is hoped to arrive at some testable retrieval
model that will overcome the problems of speed, storage, area over-
lap, and compatibility with the projected CRT system.
25X1A9a
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