Georeferencing of historical maps: Cartagena de Indias in colonial era and Rio de Janeiro in imperial times

Abstract

This paper presents a GIS analysis process used to georeferencing historical maps, in particular the American cities that were ports before 20th century. We applied this process in the cases of Cartagena de Indias in the Colonial Nueva Granada and Rio de Janeiro in the Imperial Brazil. These cities were selected due to the relatively important differences between them in their geography and demography structure and the historical process of spatial transformation. The method that we use of georeferencing is simple: To cut the image of the historical map in several parts, as many as are necessary, georeferencing each one and, after, rearrangement them to get a new image. This new image should be smaller total adjustment error total (Total RMS error) and its residual factor for each point should be smaller than the complete map when rectified by polynomial transformation, additionally, the new image should not be distortion on the surface.