Mapping of the very densely populated Portuguese overseas territory of Macau, near to Hong Kong, is the responsibility of Direcção dos Serviços de Cartografia e Cadastro (DSCC). It was established as an independent cartographic mission in 1975, with technical support from Portugal. Portuguese agencies such as Instituto de Investigação Cientifica Tropical (IICT) have continued to play an important role in the establishment of what is now one of the most detailed and current map bases in the world.

DSCC carries out topographic, geodetic and cadastral surveying and completed the large-scale base mapping of the territory in 1984. Hard copy and digital maps are on the UTM projection, International ellipsoid and are regularly revised to cover the peninsula of Macau and the islands of Taipa and Coloane at a number of different scales. Large scale planimetric coverage at 1:1,000 (125 sheets) and 1:2,000 (89 sheets) is a digital product maintained and regularly updated on an Intergraph system. Cadastral data relating to land parcels are held in one database, a second layered graphical database holds topo-cartographic data. Smaller scales are derived from this database, and updated from recently flown aerial coverage, including three-sheet 1:5,000 and 1:10,000 scale coverage, and single-sheet maps and data at 1:20,000 and 1:50,000 scales. 1:10,000 scale administrative coverage is also available. Hard copy map sheets are available as black and white plots on paper, as colour electrostatic plots or on transparencies. Digital mapping is available on CD-ROM in DWG or DGN format.

Soviet military topographic mapping of Macau exists at the following scales: 1:1,000,000 (1 sheet, complete coverage, published in 1985); 1:500,000 (1 sheet, complete coverage, published in 1983); 1:200,000 (1 sheet, complete coverage, published in 1980); 1:100,000 (1 sheet, complete coverage, published in 1978) and a city (1:10,000) topographic map of Aomen (Macau) published in 1977. These products are available in print, digital raster and digital vector GIS formats from East View Geospatial.

Hydrographic charting of waters around Macau is published by the Portuguese Institute Hydrográfico (IHP) in Lisbon.

A three-sheet 1:5,000 scale geological map of Macau was recently published by the Portuguese geological mapping agency Institute Geológico e Mineiro (IGMP).

Many of the smaller scale maps of the Hong Kong area also cover Macau, and a tourist town map is available from the Macau Government Tourist Office (Direcção dos Serviços de Tourisme da Macao (DSTM)). A commercially published town map was recently released by Berndtson & Berndtson (B&B).

Copyright © 2014 De Gruyter for e-version of World Mapping Today, 2nd Edition | Copyright © 2019 East View Geospatial, Inc.

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