Dominik Kauferle
Project Manager
New National Map Series
Federal Office of Topography swisstopo
Switzerland

Biography
Dominik Käuferle is deputy head of cartography at swisstopo, the national mapping agency of Switzerland. He is project manager of the project OPTINA-LK, which aims to build the new national map series based on digital cartographic models (DCM’s). He works since 2006 for swisstopo. Before swisstopo he was project manager for Kanton Luzern to build a central geospatial database and had positions in IT management and environmental consulting. He has a Masters degree in environmental sciences of the ETH Zürich (Switzerland) and a postgraduate UNIGIS Masters in Geographical Information Sciences of the university of Salzburg (Austria).

Abstract
Swiss Digital Cartographic Models

The Federal Office of Topography swisstopo is the geoinformation centre of Switzerland and is producer of the well-known Swiss National Map series. About 10 years ago swisstopo decided to renew its base data on the basis of GIS technologies and a seamless database management. Two projects were launched. One to establish a topographic 3D vector database (the topographic landscape model TLM), and a second, to deviate digital cartographic models (DCM’s) for the production of the national map series from TLM. TLM production was started in 2008, the production of the 1:25’000 scale of the national map in March 2013. DCM’s are seamless GIS datasets covering the whole territory of Switzerland. The main part of the data in a DCM is vector data. This vector data has unique identifiers, several attributes and object relationships to TLM. This allows digital applications to flexibly find and select objects and to intelligently and dynamically relate them to other data. A part of the data is raster, e.g. the shaded relief or the traditional swiss rock drawing. swisstopo will produce one DCM per map scale. The construction of all DCM’s is quite a challenge regarding contents, technologies or organisational changes. Mastering these challenges requires automation, many innovations and the capability of specialists to ‘think outside the box’, to redefine and relearn cartographic work.