Georeferencing of historical maps using back propagation artificial neural network

Historical maps as cartographic heritage contain a great deal of information about the period they were produced in. Therefore, it is quite important first to conserve historical maps very carefully and then to transmit the information they contain to posterity in order to protect cultural heritage. In this study, an example of a historical map, a map of the Cyprus Island produced by Piri Reis in the 1500s, was transformed into the cartographic features of the present-day map of modern Cyprus Island. Certain transformation models such as affine transformation are used for georeferencing of historical maps, in particular. In this study, it was concluded that artificial neural network methods can be used to transform the coordinates of historical maps into the coordinate systems of modern maps as an alternative, offering better graphic performance.