By Michael Ahinsah
Maxwell Lukutor, a licensed surveyor and member of the Ghana Institution of Surveyors (GhIS) has called on the government to assist in the transition from production of traditional maps to digital maps to support geo-information delivery.
Speaking to GBC’s Uniiq Drive, Maxwel Lukutor, disclosed that Ghana’s last modern map was the paper map created in 1974.
According to him, the digital map is necessary because different organisations refer to the standard maps produced by the survey and mapping division of the Lands Commission modern map to create theirs.
“You realize that maps are very important for every thematic area. You realise that people continue to do their own maps, so if it is the communication sector, you see them doing their own survey to do their own map, if it is the oil sector, they do their own oil map and so it is very necessary; meanwhile, it is only one body which is the survey and mapping division of the Lands Commission, that is mandated to produce maps for usage of all”, he said.
He explained that paper maps present a lot of challenges with regard to the process of updating.
“The reason why we are calling for the digital one is because the paper maps are difficult to update and when you want to update, you have to go through all the processes and so we feel that with digital we can give ourselves sometime and when we need to add something, we do the update, and it makes it easier for everyone to use”, he emphasized.
He added that the transition from traditional maps to digital maps is prohibitively expensive, hence, the request for government support.
“The reason why we call for government involvement is because of the cost overlay. We need to fly the whole country with our aircraft that are airborne with cameras to take the pictures in very low altitude so that those can be made into a mozaic and pitched together to get the result we want”, he added.
“We see the resemblance in Google Maps, which we use in our navigation processes, but those are not the extents to which a proper map should go. We need a gis together with a GPS equipment we use in data capturing and these things are very expensive ventures that is why we think that if government comes and helps we will be able to produce these things and it will be usable to all”.
