Subject: publications<br/>
Date: Jan 14, 2003 @ 23:13<br/>
Author: b.whyte@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au (b.whyte@...)<br/>
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<div id="ygrps-yiv-658093143">The latest issue of &quot;Cartography&quot;, the journal of the Mapping Sciences Institute of Australia (v31, #2, Dec 2002) has a couple of articles that may be of interest to boundarypointers:<br/>
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&quot;Fractals and the Cartographic Line&quot; by G.J. Lawford & E.G.Masters (pp61-72) is a review of fractals and their application in cartography, including Mandelbrot and richardson&#39;s work on the length of coastlines and landborders, such that the larger the scale of the map, the longer the coast/boundary appears to get. I think we may have discussed Mandelbrot&#39;s 1967 article in &quot;Science&quot; at some point. Well, theis new article reproduces the graph of coastline lengths vs scale, and reviews all literature to date. Quite interesting.<br/>
<br/>
also, re our discussions of centroids of countries/continents, the issue also contains<br/>
R.E.Deakin, S.C. Bird & R.I. Granfell &quot;The Centroid? Where would you like it to be?&quot;, pp153-167. <br/>
This defines and describes how to calculate the centre of a polygon (and hence country/continent/island), and gives the advantages and disadvantages of different definitionas of centroid, including the centroid functions in Arcview etc. For Victoria, and for the Melbourne Urban area, the various centroids are calculated and mapped to show where they are (lat/longs are given for each as well). The authors conclude that for ease of calculation and intuitiveness, the centre of gravity (ie the balance point if the country was cut out of a piece of cardboard and balanced on a pinhead) is the most sensible definition to use (but it not that used in some GIS packages!!).<br/>
The centere of Victoria and of the Melbourne Urban area have actually been located by govt agencies, and marked, and are low-level tourist attractions. Maybe I&#39;ll find my photos of them and post them sometime...<br/>
<br/>
To purchase this issue of Cartography, email the circulation manager, Vanessa Brock at the interesting email address of:  <br/>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="mailto:katpu@...">katpu@...</a><br/>
or see the MSIA website   <br/>
www.mappingsciences.org.au<br/>
<br/>
BW<br/>
<br/>
-- <br/>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="mailto:b.whyte@...">b.whyte@...</a></div>