9th International Workshop on Digital Approaches to Cartographic Heritage Budapest, 4-5 September 2014 Előd Biszak * , Hannes Kulovits ** , “áŶdoƌ Biszak * , Gáďoƌ Tiŵáƌ *** , Gáďoƌ MolŶáƌ ***, **** , Balázs “zékely *** , AŶŶaŵáƌia JaŶkó ***** , IstǀáŶ KeŶyeƌes ****** Cartographic heritage of the Habsburg Empire on the web: the MAPIRE initiative Keywords: Habsburg Empire; historic maps; online publication; historic topographic maps; MAPIRE Summary: After years of successful publication of the cartographic database of the First, Second and Third Military Surveys of the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire on off-line DVDs, a consortium of data hosts, a SME and a university department started an initiative. In the frame of the MAPIRE (MAPs of the empIRE) project, geo-referred version of high-scale (1:28800 in case of First and Second survey, 1:75000 at the Third one, to be improved later) survey sheets of the whole territory of the Habsburg Empire are published online, throughout of the portal www.mapire.eu . The horizontal control of the geo-referred maps is aimed better than 150 meters; sheets can be viewed in synchronized mode with each other or with the Google Maps cartographic database (base topographic map or satellite images). The whole database can be viewed also in 3D via a Google Earth application, as the space shuttle-based SRTM elevation dataset is combined to the historic cartographic dataset throughout the unified coordinate systems. The software background is ready to publish other maps, too: our future plans concern the cadastral datasets of the Empire as well as foƌeigŶ dataďases. Introduction The Hungarian SME Arcanum Database Ltd., cooperating with several data hosts and scientific partners published a lot of DVD issues in the last deĐade ;Tiŵáƌ et al., ϮϬϭϭͿ. These puďliĐatioŶs cover the whole spectrum of the Habsburg military surveys of the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire (historical Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia). Map sheets from the Austrian State Archives and the Map Archive of the Hungarian Institute and Museum of Military History were scanned and geoƌefeƌƌed ;Tiŵáƌ et al., ϮϬϬϲ; ϮϬϬϳ; ϮϬϬϴ; Biszak et al., ϮϬϬϳa; ϮϬϬϳďͿ. The useƌs aƌe aďle to ƌoaŵ and zoom the mosaic of the original sheets as well as to export the selected map content to files for offline GIS use. Part of this data (namely the Hungarian part of the Second Military Survey) was published online via the website of the Arcanum, and it quickly became popular in the public, having several feedbacks even in the mainstream media. In the last year, the Arcanum, the existing and the possible data owners and the cooperating * Arcanum Database Ltd, Budapest, Hungary. ** ÖsteƌƌeiĐhisĐhes “taatsaƌĐhiǀ, VieŶŶa, Austƌia. *** Dept. of GeophysiĐs aŶd “paĐe “ĐieŶĐe, Eötǀös UŶiǀeƌsity, Budapest, HuŶgaƌy [ timar@caesar.elte.hu] **** 1MTA-ELTE Geological, Geophysical and Space Science Research Group, Hungarian Academy of Sciences at Eötǀös UŶiǀeƌsity, Budapest, HuŶgaƌy. ***** Institute and Museum of Military History, Budapest, Hungary. ****** 6 Budapest City Archives, Budapest, Hungary.