Introducing mapsnap: Automated Georeferencing for Historic Sanborn Insurance Maps
Summary
Mapsnap automates georeferencing of historic Sanborn insurance maps using OCR to detect street labels, RANSAC to fit ground-control points, and OpenStreetMap to obtain coordinates. The project showcases open-source GIS tooling and AI-assisted data processing to unlock historical maps for modern spatial analysis, while outlining current limitations and future work.