During the first thirty years of Atlas Florae Europaeae (AFE), the basic technology for the collection of distribution data and publication of distribution maps has remained practically unchanged. Manual map production as such is rather tedious. Furthermore, distribution data available only on printed maps are not suitable for further (computerized) analyses. The construction of the Atlas Florae Europaeae database was started in 1992. The primary goal was to make the distribution data available in digital format, and the additional goal was the computerization of the editorial process of AFE. The printed AFE distribution maps were processed this way: - the maps were scanned at 300 dpi resolution / - locations of the grid cells (4419) were calculated on the scanned bitmap images / - arrays of black pixels were searched from the bitmaps using custom software / - the map originals and and their interpretation were compared using custom software. So far all printed AFE volumes (1 to 12) have been processed this way. ... [Information of the supplier]
