In 2009 the International Cartographic Association celebrates its 50th anniversary. Read more about ICA’s history here.
Category: General News
Tag: 50th anniversary
Chen Shupeng (1920–2008)
Prof. CHEN Shupeng (1920–2008), founder of remote sensing and geographic information system studies in China, died on 25 November in Beijing.
Prof. Chen, an expert in geography, cartography and remote sensing application, was born in Pingxiang, Jiangxi Province in February 1920. He was graduated from Zhejiang University in 1941 and received his master degree from the university in 1947. In 1950, Prof. Chen joined the former CAS Institute of Geography, a predecessor of the CAS Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research.
In the 1950s, Prof. Chen energetically pushed forward the compilation and publication of national atlases of China. In the 1960s, he initiated the aerial photo interpretation and computer-aided mapping. In the 1970s, he devoted himself to the development of remote sensing application and organized airborne remote sensing experiments of natural resources and urban environment. In the 1980s, he took charge of the standardization of Chinese information system of resources and environment, made preparations for the establishment of a State key laboratory and served as its first director, designed an information system which has been used to assess flood damages in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. After that, he joined the studies of global change.
Prof. Chen was elected a CAS Member in 1980. He was also a member of the World Academy for Developing World and the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences. He was an honorary member of France Geographical Society, and an honorary director of the CAS Institute of Remote Sensing Application. He was the founder of State Key Lab of Resources and Environmental Information System.
Category: General News
New ICA website design
New ICA website design
Category: General News
Tag: website news
New website hosting
The ICA website is now hosted at Research Group Cartography at TU Vienna.
Category: General News
Tag: website news
ICA executive committee meeting in Vienna
The ICA executive committee meeting took place at Vienna University of Technology on 2 February 2008.
Category: General News
Jack Dangermond is awarded the Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal
Jack Dangermond
Jack Dangermond is the founder and president of ESRI. Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Redlands, California, ESRI is widely recognized as the technical and market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, pioneering innovative solutions for working with spatial data on the desktop, across the enterprise, in the field, and on the Web. ESRI has the largest GIS software install base in the world with more than one million users in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide. He fostered the growth of ESRI from a small research group to an organization of over 3,100 employees, known internationally for GIS software development, training, and services. Jack holds six honorary doctorates: California Polytechnic University-Pomona, State University of New York at Buffalo, University of West Hungary, City University in London, University of Redlands in California, and Ferris State University in Michigan.
Jack Dangermond supports development of new cartographic tools in cartographic generalization and cartographic visualization, creation of digital atlases and approaches promoting cartography in many various areas of human activities from crises management situations to the issues of healthy geography. He is a supporter of distributing and sharing knowledge and creation of capacity building through fundamental projects on the United Nations level – such as Global Mapping – providing opportunities for young users to become a part of the development of cartography by means of grants devoted to application of cartographic and geographic approaches in solving problems of the contemporary world.
Jack Dangermond helped to highlight and make globally visible one of the most successful ICA ideas by publishing – together with the ICA – the best drawings from Barbara Petchenik Contest in a book called “Children Map the World: Selection from the Barbara Petchenik Children’s World Map Competition”.
He promotes the ICA and cartography in general, and stresses the role of cartography in solving global problems. He supports projects highlighting cartographic and geographic science potentials in the process of designing information/knowledge-based society on a global scale. He supports ideas of ICA by creating new widely-known series of cartographic publications, and has published several very influential books, such as Imhoff’s “Three-Dimensional Representation of the Relief”. He still continues in publishing contemporary cartographic books helping to share the latest ideas of cartographers from all over the world.
Similarly as Joel Morrisson and David Rhind have been pioneers of the new era of digital cartography, Jack Dangermond is a pioneer of the delimitation and definition of the role of cartography and geographic information in the realization of the Global Millennium Goals and in the creation of an Information/Knowledge–based Society.
For his outstanding contribution to cartography and geographic information science Jack Dangermond is honored with the highest award of ICA – the Mannerfelt Gold Medal.
Category: General News
Honorary Fellowship for Kira B. Shingareva
Kira B. Shingareva is professor at the Moscow State University for Geodesy and Cartography. She graduated from the Dresden Technical University at 1961 and received her Ph.D in 1974, and became Doctor of Science in 1992. She has hold positions as principal scientist at the Planetary Cartography Laboratory and at the Laboratory of Comparative Planetology at the Institute of Space Researches at the Academy of Science.
At the University she participated in the National Space program by mapping the Moon, Mars, Phobos and Venus. She is an author of more than 150 publications, among them “Atlas of Terrestrial Planets and their Moons” and “Space Activity in Russia – Background, Current State, Perspectives”.
Since 1995 Professor Shingareva has been active in the ICA. She has been co-chairman of the ICA Planetary Cartography Working Group 1995-1999 and chairman of ICA Planetary Cartography Commission for two consecutive terms, 1999-2007. Among the achievements of her ICA activities we find “Series of multilingual maps of planets and their moons”, “Glossary on planetary cartography” and “Specialised map-oriented Databases on planetary cartography”.
Kira Shingareva has served ICA in an exemplary way. In spite of limited resources she has organised and documented several commissions meeting, and always reported the activities of her commission to the Executive Committee in a timely manner.
For her outstanding services to ICA Dr. Shingareva is awarded an Honorary Fellowship of ICA.
Category: General News
Honorary Fellowship for Graciela Metternicht
Graciela Metternicht has for the last 10 years been teaching at Curtin University, Perth Australia and is since July, 2007 professor of Geospatial Systems and Environmental Management at the School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia. In 1985 she finished an education in cartography at Santa Fe, Argentina. In 1992 she received an MSc in Integrated Map and Geo-information Production at ITC in the Netherlands and in 1996 a PhD in Geography at the State University of Gent, Belgium.
Graciela Metternicht´s publication record contains over 100 works and she is active member of many organisations. In 1999 she took the responsibility to be the editor of ICA News, the newsletter of ICA. She is acting chair of the ICA Commission on Mapping from Satellite Images and active member of several other ICA commissions.
For her outstanding service to ICA, especially as editor of ICA News, Graciela Metternicht is awarded an Honorary Fellowship of ICA.
Category: General News
Honorary Fellowship for Helen Kerfoot
Helen Kerfoot was already presented with a diploma for outstanding services to ICA as member of the LOC that organised the 1999 International Cartographic Conference in Ottawa. She has played a more important role for cartographers worldwide however as chairperson of the UNGEGN standing advisory commission of the ECOSOC, UN.
After an MSc in Geology in Britain she took up a job as geologist in Northern Canada, where she became interested in toponymy and did toponymic fieldwork. Later she went to work for the Govt. Department of Energy, Mines and Resources in Ottawa. She is a past president of the Canadian Society of the Study of Names, which she presided over from 1997-2003. She was delegated by the Canadian Government to the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names around 1987, and was elected as chairperson in 2002.
Since then she has succeeded in turning UNGEGN into a more professional body and in bringing its work in line with current SDI-initiatives. She is one of the few experts with hands-on experience in practically all fields of toponymic standardization. Her drive to attend all the meetings of UNGEGN working groups, her participation in toponymy courses world wide, in scientific seminars and technical meetings as well as her endeavours to make all UNGEGN ‘jurisprudence’ on geographical names accessible through its website have benefited the whole spatial information community, as geographical names standardisation is a most important aspect in the exchange and linking of geospatial data.
For her services and contribution to cartography Helen Kerfoot is awarded an Honorary Fellowship of ICA.
Category: General News
Ernst Spiess is awarded the Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal
Ernst Spiess
Ernst Spiess was the founding Chair of the ICA Commission on Cartographic Technologies and was awarded the ICA Honorary Fellowship in 1995. He is an Honorary Member of the Swiss Society of Cartography which he served twice as president, as well as president of the organizing committee of the international congress of cartography in Interlaken in 1996. He was also president of the Swiss Society of Photogrammetry. He has represented Switzerland at UN Congresses on geographic names and was member of the German-Speaking Commission on Geographic Names. He was a collaborator of the Schweizer Mittelschulatlas and has been and still is editor-in-chief of the new Schweizer Weltatlas, which was awarded the ICA prize in 1997.
In 1959 Ernst Spiess participated in a Swiss Expedition to the Panta Mountains in Peru, from which an outstanding topographic relief map–including a breathtaking cliff representation–resulted. In 1974, he introduced at the Institute one of the first digital cartographic computer systems, which became a basic tool for advanced scientific work on map production, thematic cartography, and map projections. The adaptation and extension of Bertin’s “Graphical Semiology” to modern thematic cartography is one of his most important contributions. He has always regarded the application of theoretical work as equal in importance to theory, and he has been a highly effective communicator and teacher of both.
For an outstanding career in cartography that has included contributions in topographic mapping, atlas production, technological advancement, and as an effective teacher and researcher, the International Cartographic Association awards Professor Ernst Spiess its highest honor, the Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal.
Category: General News