A Reformulation of the Lambert Conformal Conic Projection with Application to Bulgarian National Mapping

This paper examines the Lambert conformal conic (LCC) projection. Although its equations are well established, they are rederived here because a new notation, V, defined as the reciprocal of the commonly used U, is introduced to simplify the expressions. Using the resulting distortion formulas, the conditions determining whether the projection has two, one, or no standard parallels are obtained. To identify an optimal LCC configuration, we adopt a criterion requiring that the local linear scale factors at the two boundary parallels be equal, and that the maximum scale factor exceed 1 by the same amount that the minimum falls below 1. Applying this criterion to the territory of Bulgaria, we compute a new, optimized pair of standard parallels, which constitutes the main contribution of this study.