Greek word chartēs means papyrus/sheet of paper/map and graphein means write. Thus literally cartography means drawing the maps. According to Britanica “Cartography, the art and science of graphically representing a geographical area, usually on a flat surface such as a map or chart. It may involve the superimposition of political, cultural, or other nongeographical divisions onto the representation of a geographical area.”  From very ancient age, it was great challenge to get the earth in a plane with a reasonable size. So by introduction of map the dream becomes the truth. In modern era it is also a matter of research to prepare more accurate and maximum informative maps. Cartography works with this very important and technical area of science.

The procedure of mapping in the classical analogue system was very difficult, time consuming and costly. On the other hand this type of map doesn’t meet the necessary accuracy and too much time consuming to produce. For that reason, maps were comparatively less available and usable for user of different level. After improvement of capacity of computer technology, Digital Mapping System was introduced. Digital mapping system makes the maps faster, easier, cheaper, dynamic and multidimensional usable. Now a day maps are being used almost all sectors of modern civilization.

More than two decades ago SOB started digital mapping. In that system we have been producing maps from our previous analog maps with huge field survey data. So the mapping system was not completely digital because of our dependency on analog data sources and we could not get all advantages of Digital mapping. By different successful projects we have been acquainted with latest technologies of mapping and gained capacity to prepare maps from mainly digital stereo imagery. So, from this map we can fascinate all the latest facilities of international standard.

Maps are being prepared using latest version of popular mapping software with appropriate extensions from an accurate GIS database that are prepared from stereo imagery and field surveyed data. To represent maximum number of features within limited area of space/paper SoB has its own Cartographic Specification for symbology and Generalization based on scientific analysis and traditional mapping culture. Thus, maps produced from this organization are informative, accurate and readable.

There are three Cartographic units at Survey of Bangladesh that produces Cartographic Maps. These are: No. 1 Cartographic Office, No. 2 Cartographic Office and Digital Cartographic Section. Cartographic Offices produces various types of Maps at different scales. Such as: Topographic Maps, Polytical Maps, Thematic Maps, Carts etc.

Besides regular map production, the Cartographic Offices can produce the topographic and thematic maps with the request/demand from other governmental/semi-governmental/non-governmental agencies and deliver to the respective users/clients demand.

Products of Cartographic Offices:

1. Topographic Map of 1:5,000 Scale for Major Cities (Barishal, Chattogram, Dhaka, Khulna, Rajshahi and Sylhet)
2. Topographic Map of 1:25,000 Scale (total 980 map sheets for whole Bangladesh)
3. Topographic Map of 1:50,000 Scale Sheets (total 257 map sheets for whole Bangladesh)
4. Topographic Map of 1:2,50,000 Scale Sheets (total 27 map sheets for whole Bangladesh)
5. Topographic Map of 1:5,00,000 Scale Sheets (total 6 map sheets for whole Bangladesh)
6. Topographic Map of 1:10,00,000 Scale Sheets (total 4 map sheets for whole Bangladesh)
7. Bangladesh Map of 1:10,00,000 Scale (Bangla and English)
8. Divisional Maps (for all all divisions)
9. District Maps (for all districts)
10. Upazilla Maps (Under Process)
11. Bangladesh Coastal Maps of 1:10,000 Scale
12. Ancient Monument Map
13. City Guide Map for important cities
14. Thematic Maps
15. BAF Chart etc.