With the development of computer graphics, the three-dimensional (3D) visualization brings new technological revolution to the traditional cartography. Therefore, the topographic 3D-map emerges to adapt to this technological revolution, and the applications of topographic 3D-map are spread rapidly to other relevant fields due to its incomparable advantage. The researches on digital map and the construction of map database offer strong technical support and abundant data source for this new technology, so the research and development of topographic 3D-map will receive greater concern. The basic data of the topographic 3D-map are rooted mainly in digital map and its basic model is derived from digital elevation model (DEM) and 3D-models of other DEM-based geographic features. In view of the potential enormous data and the complexity of geographic features, the dynamic representation of geographic information becomes the focus of the research of topographic 3D-map and also the prerequisite condition of 3D query and analysis. In addition to the equipment of hardware that are restraining, to a certain extent, the 3D representation, the data organization structure of geographic information will be the core problem of research on 3D-map. Level of detail (LOD), space partitioning, dynamic object loading (DOL) and object culling are core technologies of the dynamic 3D representation. The objectselection, attribute-query and model-editing are important functions and interaction tools for users with 3D-maps provided by topographic 3D-map system, all of which are based on the data structure of the 3Dmodel. This paper discusses the basic theories, concepts and cardinal principles of topographic 3D-map,expounds the basic way to organize the scene hierarchy of topographic 3D-map based on the node mechanism and studies the dynamic representation technologies of topographic 3D-map based on LOD, space partitioning, DOL and object culling. Moreover, such interactive operation functions are explored, in this paper, as spatial query, scene editing and management of topographic 3D-map. Finally, this paper describes briefly the applications of topographic 3D-map in its related fields.