The Role of Engineering Geology in Standardization of Innovative Geological Mapping

Abstract

The ever-growing development of national digital geological cartographic systems emphasizes the need for standardization of geological mapping. A synthesis of the two existing approaches, which are of interest as starting points in the tremendous process of standardization of innovative geological mapping, is presented. A recent example of the US Geological Survey standardized geological information system for the production of stratigraphic maps is emphasized. A general conceptual model of the database content and structure is presented in brief, considering the main concepts related to standardization of geological mapping procedures and geological terminology. A second issue concerns traditional engineering geological mapping. Its importance lies in the abundance of engineering geological standards and recommendations, which could be directly applied to custom-oriented geological mapping. Therefore, the goal of analyses of engineering geological mapping is to extract the main issues of engineering geological mapping related to standardization of modern geological cartography. The main contribution of this paper is to address the extensions of digital geological cartographic databases with engineering geological data which are required for the production of a wide spectrum of geological custom-oriented maps from the same geological information system.