This study investigates effective design for paper maps. Maps are powerful navigation support tools, but applying effective map design to improve usability during navigation is difficult. Recent developments in digital mapping technology have dynamically altered the relationship between maps and users. Previous studies have found that the frequent use of pedestrian navigation systems that incorporate the Global Positioning System can sometimes have a negative effect on the ability to navigate abilities. For this reason, paper maps are due for a re-examination as navigation support tools today. A survey on university campus maps and a comparative navigation test incorporating involving maps with different vantage points were performed to examine how the differences in vantage points of maps affect the results of navigational tasks.

Before the navigation test, we overviewed the features of the map design employed in current Japanese university campus maps. The perspectives, orientations, and symbols used in the maps from 664 university campus maps in Japan were surveyed. Of these 664, 447 had a bird’s-eye view orientation, while 223 universities had planimetric ones.

Then, tests were conducted to explore the relationship between the perspectives and navigation performance. The tests were designed in reference to the study by Murakoshi, which suggested that human navigation considers three subtasks: grasping one's position, panning, and keeping track. The 318 examinees were 166 university students and 152 junior high school students. Of these, 158 participants completed tasks using bird’s-eye view prototype campus maps (BPMs), while other 160 used planimetric prototype campus maps (PPMs).

The results were as follows. Subjects using BPMs showed superior performance to that of subjects using PPMs, especially with respect to grasping one’s own position and keeping track. For example, 85 subjects using the BPMs performed two tasks of grasping their position completely, while only 48 students did the same tasks completely with PPMs. Regarding the task of keeping track, 73 subjects using BPMs answered correctly, and 31 students with PPMs did so. These results suggest that the depiction of the color of buildings on BPMs can aid examinees in performing tasks. We consider it to be appropriate that more than 70% of Japanese campus maps are portrayed using a bird's-eye perspective, as we mentioned below.

In contrast, the results of the test for the planning task suggest a complex relationship between navigational tasks and map reading. More subjects that used using the BPMs could plan over short distances, but, at the same time, they made mistakes in planning than those using the PPMs. Furthermore, the performance differed between university students and junior high school ones. We assume that university students performed better than junior high students due to differences in navigational experience.

These tests showed that both planimetric maps and bird's-eye view maps had their own distinct advantages as navigational aids. Hence, in creating a navigation map, we must carefully consider which map designs are suitable for this purpose and users and the areas that the maps draw. We must also keep in mind that maps have various functions, including expressing spatial knowledge and presenting images and impressions. Effective map designs suited to these various purposes, in addition to navigational ones, should be explored.

In Ino map of 1：216000 in scale, several direction lines are drawn which concentrate a mountain top. But this cannot be true in method of forward intersection. Therefore, coordinate values of intersection points were newly calculated by using direction values written as postscripts in kanji characters in the maps. Two-dimensional distribution of the intersect points in the map have become clear, but data processing by Ino Tadataka still is unknown in details because he left no documents on this problem.

In this paper, a method for making a surplus map for interpreting landform changes and a field application example of the map are shown, and the characteristics of the map were discussed. The surplus map is a layer tinting map in which surplus obtained by dividing the elevation change value by the denominator of a certain integer is classed by different colors. In this map, the degree and direction of the elevation change can be identified by the striped pattern, so that the unique landform change is easy to interpret. The surplus from the small denominator can indicate the landform change with a small amplitude, and it from the large denominator can indicate the landform change with a large amplitude. Since the ratio of the area where the striped pattern is recognized in the map changes depending on the denominator, it is necessary to select an appropriate denominator that makes it easy to interpret interesting landform change.

In the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake, small landform changes related to fault displacement occurred in many places in Mashiki Town. Elevation changes due to this earthquake could be calculated using lidar data. Small landform changes could not be recognized in the elevation change map, but they were easy to interpreted in the surplus map with a denominator of 18.

The surplus map can realistically indicate the extent and change values for the area where elevation change is smaller than the height accuracy of the laser measurement. This characteristic is based on the condition that the digital terrain model matches the actual landform well and that the elevation change indicated by the surplus map is relative. Therefore, the surplus map can indicate the distribution of elevation and elevation change according to the landform scale by the striped pattern, and makes it easy to interpret the landform and landform changes. It is important that this research has clarified various characteristics of the surplus map and discussed their inducing backgrounds from the viewpoint of geomorphology and cartography.

In following to our previous study that was inspired by the fine historical text; “Diary of Masakiyo Mishima, Shogun’s Vassal”, one certain particular urban block area, where Mishima main manor used to locate in Ishihara district, Honjo, Tokyo (Edo), is carefully explored so as to draw a historical perspective of how urban block alteration has taken place for hundreds years from Edo-Era up to now, Reiwa-era.

One interesting finding is that, at the moment of Meiji Revolution, which demolished Tokugawa-House; Shogun’s Government and newly established the modern government of Imperial Japan, although Mishima Family lost the ownership of the main manor, another high-class vassal sharing the same district, more precisely; one of the neighbors of Mishima, Negoro Family was able to keep the ownership of their main manor that was much larger than that of Mishima.

In terms of statistical values; average site area and its standard deviation, the focal district did not significantly change until the early time of 20th century even after Meiji Revolution. Yet, Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 impacted the district to alter very much. It is because the land relocation project (LRP) after the earthquake was introduced by the central government as well as the Tokyo Metropolitan government, which put wider block roads (which was requisite form the urban planning viewpoint) and consequently divided the focal block into many smaller sites. Approximately speaking before the LRP, such average site area over the focal district was around 1000 m², whereas after the LRP it declined down to around 100 m². Therefore, we would guess that the quality, as a residential area, of the focal district was kept at a higher level until that time, since the district was originated from the residential district of Shogun’s vassals; upper class people (upper class Samurai) at the time. However, impacted by a great fire brought by the earthquake, triggered by the LRP, the focal district was thoroughly segmentalized.

The focal district unfortunately encountered another great fire, which was brought by Great Tokyo Air Raid, took place on March 10th, 1945, which did completely burn-out most of residential buildings in Honjo Ward, mainly wooden construction, and killed more than 100,000 citizens that was almost equivalent to the death toll of Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. But, the fundamental configuration of the focal district did not change before and after WW2. In fact, the average site area over the focal district has been keeping around 100 m² from the time right after WW2 until now.

To the end of such historical discussion, we successfully drew one impressive visual figure suggesting the average area of a single-site in the focal urban block as well as the standard deviation, abovementioned, for last hundreds years. Interestingly, in the two periods before and after the LRP after Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, respective average areas of a single-site do not change significantly. It might be quite unexpected when we observed the current situation of the focal district, which is featured with a quite high density of buildings, although we know our study’s limitation; that is just based on one certain focal urban district suggesting one single example story.