International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B4, 2012 
XXII ISPRS Congress, 25 August — 01 September 2012, Melbourne, Australia 
THE IMPORTANT OF TOPONYM IN THE MIDDLE OF 
MAPS AND IMAGERY FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT 
A. P. Perdana ^ *, E. Hendrayana', W. E. Santoso" 
* Center for Topographic Base Mapping, BAKOSURTANAL, Cibinong, Bogor, West Java Province, Indonesia - 
aliputran(@gmail.com, (aji.perdana, edwinh)@bakosurtanal.go.id 
b Toponym Expert, BAKOSURTANAL, Cibinong, Bogor, West Java Province, Indonesia — wides_bgr@yahoo.com 
ICA and TC IV/8 Maps, Imagery and Crowd Sourcing for Disaster Management 
KEY WORDS: Maps, Imagery, Disaster Management, Toponym, Gazetteer 
ABSTRACT: 
Maps without toponym is blind maps, imagery without names in top of it is hard for us to understand for which location the 
imagery stand for. Place names should be verified and validated to maintain its unique, the consistency and accuracy also to 
understand the meaning behind the geographical names. In Indonesia, toponym is part of basic geospatial information that 
mentioned in Act Number 4 Year 2011 about Geospatial Information. According to Presidential Regulation Number 112 Year 
2006 about National Team for Geographical Names Standardization mentioned that accurate information and data about the 
geographical names should be achieved and realizing the national gazetteer so there is a similarity of topographical names in 
Indonesia. Based on several disaster evidences in Indonesia, peoples are always looking for geographical names as the first key to 
enter relevant information. The accurate and consistent writing in geographical names play important roles in the maps and 
imagery. There is a need to build national gazetteer for disaster management and many other purposes because it is basic element 
  
for communication extensively in support social development, economic, conservation, and national infrastructure. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
1.1 Background 
Recently maps and imagery is part of our life and the 
development of information and technology has brought new 
perspective in understanding our environment through the use 
of geospatial information. Now people can easily access and 
get geospatial information in maps form or imagery. Maps 
already used as tools in planning and management, in this case 
for disaster management. 
The first question when disaster happen is where (location). 
Location is related to geographical position and name of place. 
When they have no exact latitude and longitude or not have 
information which number of topographic maps for the area 
where disaster happen and in other side the only information 
that they know is name of place. This is the important of 
toponym and gazetteer to solve it and connect or enter to 
related information they need. 
Toponym is name of place in earth surface, while toponym as 
science is science about geographical names and toponym also 
the totality of place name in certain area (Santoso, 2006). 
Geographical names include all the names of natural and 
cultural phenomena, such as the names of mountains, hills, 
islands, bays, straits, village, sub district, district, provincial, 
bridges, dams, buildings, roads, etc. Geographical names 
which sometimes are called Place Names or Topographical 
Names, in Indonesia used “Topographical Names” (Perdana, 
  
* Corresponding author. 
et. al, 2011a). Toponym has become part of Indonesian 
topographical maps. Toponym is one of the layers in basic 
geospatial information according to Act Number 4 of 
Geospatial Information. 
In maps, it can be seen that there are name of mountains, 
rivers, bay, administrative names, etc and maps without is 
blind. Not only maps that need geographical names or 
toponym, but the emerging of Google Earth and Bing Imagery 
in their sites, toponym is also included and gazetteer is become 
one of the geospatial information that used as the key for 
people searching place based on names. Imagery without 
names in top of it is hard for us to understand for which 
location the imagery stand for. Crowded sources related 
geographical names should controlled by names of authority 
organization. 
Place names should be verified and validated to maintain its 
unique, the consistency and accuracy also to understand the 
meaning behind the geographical names (Santoso, 2006 b; 
Mayasari, et. al., 2011). All geographical names with a variety 
of relevant information such as name, writing, pronunciation, 
and origin of language, history, and type of element, 
coordinates, site of administration, name and map number, 
status, accessibility, potency have been collected by 
BAKOSURTANAL in database of geographical names (PPDR, 
2011). But, those data not yet validated totally due to a lot of 
information and need coordination among members of National 
Team for Geographical Names Standardization. Until now, 
features that have been verified by team are names of islands 
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