THE EFFECTS OF USING WEB MERCATOR PROJECTION INSTEAD OF THE MERCATOR PROJECTION FOR REPRESENTING ROMANIA ON MAPS

ABSTRACT

The current article makes a comparison between the Web Mercator and Mercator projections, the former being frequently used for web mapping and visualisation applications. Web Mercator shows some significant differences from the Mercator projection: the Earth is approximated to a sphere, it is not conformal and the rhumb lines are not represented as straight lines on the plane. Both map projections were compared here with one another for representing Romania. Through Web Mercator, a shift to the North was found when representing the territory of our country, varying from 29 km in the South to 32 km in the North. We also calculated the linear, area and angular distortions produced by the Web Mercator projection. Since at present almost everyone is at least somewhat proficient with computers, one can create his/her own map using specialised software, but the non-specialist user should be aware that there are significant differences between the Web Mercator and Mercator projections, which should not be confused with one another due to their similar names.

Keywords: Web Mercator, Mercator projection, map distortion