China has completed a 1:50000 database for the national fundamental geographic information system, said an official with the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping Friday.

The 1:50000 database is a national basic geographic information database that covers all of China with the largest scale and highest precision to date, said Lu Xinshe, director-general with the bureau, at a press conference.

It covers all the land areas of China containing elevation, imagery, terrain, and geographic name datasets, said Lu.

The terrain dataset in the database contains the physical and human features of hydrology, residential areas, transportation and boundaries.

State and provincial roads of over 300,000 kilometers long can be found in the database. County and township roads of more than 1.3 million kilometers are also included.

The database specifies farmland, forest land, and grassland as well as residential areas, industrial land and wild land, Lu said.

The images in the database, which cover all the large and medium-sized cities and developed areas of China, can be distinguished by one meter. "It means people who live in those areas can even locate their apartment buildings from the database," said Lu.

The 1:50000 topographic map is one of the mostly used maps in economic development. "It will support the construction of new countryside, development of West China and urbanization," said the official.

Environmental protection and utilization of energy and resources also require 1:50000 basic geographic data, he added.

According to the official, the database will play a role in the decision-making of the governments in land and regional planning, resources survey and evaluation, disaster prevention and alleviation.

It will serve as a platform for the construction of e-government and e-commerce and provide basic data for car navigation, mobile positioning and intelligent transportation.

The data from the database has been employed by over 1,000 organizations in the land, environmental protection, national defense and transportation sectors, said sources with the bureau.

(Xinhua News Agency February 24, 2006)