Welcome to the International Cartographic Association
Welcome to the website of the International Cartographic AssociationGet to know the new ICA Executive Committee for the term 2023-2027
Welcome to the website of the International Cartographic Association
Get to know the new ICA Executive Committee for the term 2023-2027

President’s Blog: Season’s Greetings

Dear cartographers,

2016 has been an exciting year, the International Map Year. All over the world we have seen special events being organized related to maps. I would like to thank everyone of you who has contributed and made the International Map Year a success. For ICA, the poster exhibition at the United Nations headquarters has been one of the highlights, especially since the nineteen posters are the result of a concerted effort of all our commissions and working groups.

I’m convinced the spirit of the International Map year will not get lost when 2017 starts. Actually, that seems impossible because the next big event is in full preparation: our 28th International Cartographic Conference in Washington, D.C., USA, next July. The local organizers are working hard to make it a success. You have contributed over seven hundred submissions which are currently under review, promising an interesting and high quality program.

Via this blog post I would like to bring you the Executive Committee’s season’s greetings and wish you a Mappy 2017.

– Menno-Jan Kraak
President of the International Cartographic Association

 

The ICA Executive Committee wishes Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year!

President’s Blog: ICA Workshop in Georgia

ICA organized a workshop on modern thematic mapping in Georgia. This workshop is the first of its kind. ICA decided to offer workshops on demand to new members. The Georgians selected thematic mapping as their field of interest. It was co-organized by Menno-Jan Kraak (President ICA – Twente University), Dali Nikolaishvili (Georgian local representative – Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University), and Irma Kveladze (ICA and local support – Aalborg University).

Menno-Jan Kraak and the local organizers of the workshop

Menno-Jan Kraak and the local organizers of the workshop

The program consisted of three sections:

  1. Introduction to the International Cartographic Associations inventory;
  2. Lectures on how do decide which thematic map to choose and the most important map types;
  3. Breakout sessions and discussions on your maps, mapping environments and your mapping problems.

The workshop was attended by 70 people, including about 25 students.

– Menno-Jan Kraak
President of the International Cartographic Association

Tag:

Invitation to the Barbara Petchenik Competition 2017

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the International Cartographic Association and the Commission on Cartography and Children, it is our pleasure to invite you to participate in the next Barbara Petchenik Map Competition 2017, an event created with the aim of promoting the creative representation of the world in graphic form by children.

In 2017, this biannual international award has a special connotation, because it is organized on the frame of activities programmed within the International Map Year. For this reason, the theme for the 2017 competition equals the motto of the International Map Year: “We love maps”. Entries can be nominated in four age groups: under 6 years, 6–8 years, 9–12 years and 13–15 years. The deadline for the participation in the contest is 1 May 2017. [All details can be found in the rules document.]

The world in our hands by Pan Sin Yi (15), Malaysia

Winning entry of the 2015 competition: “The world in our hands” by Pan Sin Yi (15), Malaysia

Winner drawings selected at national level will be displayed in the International Exhibition to be held during the 28th International Cartographic Conference in Washington, DC, USA, from 2–7 July 2017. An international jury will select the best entries by each age group. Additionally there will be a prize issued based on a public vote by the conference participants. New will be the Creativity Award issued by the ICA Commission on Art and Cartography.

For more detailed information about the competition, please visit the Petchenik section on the ICA website, the website of the Commission on Cartography and Children or their Facebook page.

If you are interested in using children maps in your context, e.g. with publications, we would like to encourage you to contact us. The map drawings made by children in the previous competitions can be found in the Archive of the Barbara Petchenik Children’s Map Competition, maintained by the Maps, Data and Government Information Centre at Carleton University Library.

ICA assumes we can count on the participation of your country in the competition 2017.

– Menno-Jan Kraak
President of the International Cartographic Association

Update: List of national organizers (as of 7 February 2017)

President’s blog: ICA posters on display at the United Nations Headquarters in New York

ICA posters at the UN GGIM meeting

During the sixth session of the Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM, 3–5 August 2016), the posters created by ICA’s Commissions on the Sustainable Development Goals were on exhibit in the conferences area in United Nations Headquarters in New York. During the opening session the participants were pointed to the exhibition of the ICA posters. During the first day of the conference the exhibition catalog was distributed to all participants. ICA’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals was well received.

The posters as well as the catalog for the poster exhibition can be found on icaci.org/maps-and-sustainable-development-goals.

Let’s make the world a better place with maps!

Menno-Jan Kraak
– President of the International Cartographic Association

 
posters-at-un2
More photos can be found on the ICA Facebook page

Tag:

President’s Blog: A map perspective on the sustainable development goals

The Sustainable Development Goals, officially known as Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are a UN Initiative. Official website: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org

In the light of the International Map Year (IMY), the ICA and its commissions are highlighting the value of cartography by “mapping” the UN sustainable development goals.

In the past months, a set of posters has been created, one for each sustainable development goal. They do not map the goals and their target based on indicators as such. The poster series tells the story of cartographic diversity, of mapping options, and of multiple map perspectives. Each of the goals has been mapped from a particular perspective by different ICA Commissions. All posters have a short take-home-message that should make one aware of particular strengths of the map.

The posters as well as the catalog for the poster exhibition can be found on icaci.org/maps-and-sustainable-development-goals

A huge thank you to all commissions involved and to Wim Feringa from ITC for the poster design and production. Let’s make the world a better place with maps!

Menno-Jan Kraak
– President of the International Cartographic Association

President’s Blog: Invitation to ICC2017

Our bi-annual International Cartographic Conferences are highlights on the cartographic calendar. It is with great pleasure that I invite you to Washington, DC, in the United States to participate in ICA’s 28th conference. It promises to be a unique and successful event. It will be unique because we will experience the developments in our discipline since the previous conference. These developments will be expressed in papers and posters and in exhibitions of maps and technology. Unique because Washington, DC, is the center of US cartography, and many organizations and companies will share their knowledge with us. Successful because you will be there too.

Menno-Jan Kraak
– President of the International Cartographic Association

 

The Call for Papers is now open. Please find all details on the ICC2017 website.
Submissions are due October 26, 2016.

icc2017-logo
 

Tag: , , ,

President’s Blog: General assembly, regional conferences and scholarships

EC Meeting in Madrid, Spain

EC Meeting in Madrid, Spain

During the last Executive Committee meeting in Madrid, we have made the following decisions:

We are preparing a Call for an Extraordinary General Assembly during the ICC2017 in Washington. The purpose is to change some articles of the statues to guarantee a smoother flow of ICA activities.

Establish Regional Cartographic Conference (RCC) series in the non-ICC years. There is a clear need to have ‘local’ conferences next to our bi-annual International Cartographic Conferences, as was recently again proven by the successful EuroCarto event in Vienna. A call to organize the first RCC’s in 2018 is being prepared and will be made public by the end of 2016.

The ICA scholarship rules have been refreshed and can be found at icaci.org/scholarship. We now have scholarships available for young scientists and professionals from our member nations to participate in our ICC’s, the RCC’s and also Commission and Working Group events. There is extra funding available for cartographers and GIScientists from non-developed member states.

Menno-Jan Kraak
– President of the International Cartographic Association

President’s Blog: #CartoSummit – A Report

The International Cartographic Association (ICA) and Esri hosted a Cartographic Summit, 8–10 February 2016 in Redlands, California. This summit of invite-only guests from a broad array of fields assessed the state of play in mapping and visualization and explored where we’re headed. Leading thinkers from academia, government and industry explored trends and how they are shaping the work that we’re doing.

Participants of the Cartographic Summit 2016

Broad themes of Data, Media, and Design provided a focus for open sharing and conversation to learn from each other, and share best practices, and find new or proposed solutions.

The summit intended draw together a plan for research, innovation and strategic thinking to support mapping and visualization needs as we move forward. The intent was to set a marker for understanding common challenges from a range of perspectives in and outside the traditional cartographic communities; to draw together different ways of thinking and working; and to build bridges across the many communities in the map-making and visualization fields.

Presentations (here by Menno-Jan Kraak) and break-out session for collecting and discussing keywords for each session

For each of the three topic half a day was reserved, and consisted of three speakers (a keynote and two lightning talks) and breakout sessions to discuss the topic based on the top five keywords generate by the audience after the talks. The findings of the four groups were reported after each session. In a final session an overall discussion was followed by a synthesis of the lessons learned.

Program

Data

  • Keynote: Improving Data Visualization Literacy: How to Empower Anyone to Read and Make Visualizations – Katy Börner, Victor H. Yngve Professor of Information Science, Indiana University
  • Lightning Talk: Big Data Cartography – James Cheshire, Lecturer in Quantitative Human Geography, University College London
  • Lightning Talk: Doing Cartography as Professional Amateurs – Alan McConchie, Lead Cartographer, Stamen Design

Data session: Katy Börner, James Cheshire and Alan McConchie

Keywords for the topic of data: data design, data analysis, domain expertise, user and applications, conceptualization

Media

  • Keynote: carto-future-ography – Gary Gale, CTO, what3words
  • Lightning Talk: Mapping for new media. Building on 128 years at National Geographic. – Kaitlin Yarnall, Director of Maps, Graphics, and Art, National Geographic
  • Lightning Talk: Cartographic Design as Visual Storytelling – Robert Roth, Director, University of Wisconsin Cartography Laboratory Assistant Professor, UW-Madison Department of Geography

Media session: Gary Gale, Kaitlin Yarnall and Robert Roth

Keywords for the topic of media: storytelling, technology to create interaction; ethics, tracking; purpose of map; user, human make and using the maps

Design

  • Keynote: Pictures and Geography – Nigel Holmes, Graphic Designer, Explanation Graphics
  • Lightning Talk: Geoprivacy in the Age of Big Data – Jeremy W. Crampton, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Kentucky
  • Lightning Talk: Evidence Based Design – Sara Irina Fabrikant, Professor, Department of Geography, University of Zurich

Design session: Nigel Holmes, Jeremy W. Crampton and Sara Irina Fabrikant

Keywords for the topic of design: clarity, user/audience, privacy, uncertainty, issues of design for big data

Synthesis

  • Synthesis: ICA Viewpoint & Lessons Learned – Menno-Jan Kraak, ICA president, Professor of Geovisual Analytics and Cartography, University of Twente / ITC

The third day was a view into the ESRI Kitchen. The participants were able to comment on planned developments related to topics such as Mapping and Visualization,  3D and Story Mapping as well as a few other topics, while discussing with ESRI developers.

Results

How the audience reacted to the summit can be found on Twitter via #cartosummit

The results of the discussions is summarized in the figure below. An more extensive interpretation will follow in a contribution to our International Journal of Cartography.

The results of the summit summarized in one chart

Follow-up

  • Further elaboration of the materials into a column for ESRI news.
  • The recordings of the event will be shared and disseminated widely (links via our website).
  • Convert this report into an ICA News article.
  • Elaborate into a paper for our International Journal of Cartography.

President’s Blog: Follow the future live: Cartographic summit

cartosummit

The International Cartographic Association (ICA) and Esri will host invited guests at the Cartographic Summit: Future of Mapping in Redlands, California, to examine new directions in mapping. Mapping is evolving at a rapid pace – enabling us to communicate in new ways, analyze important issues, and understand our world. At this summit, leading thinkers from academia, government, media and design will discuss how cartography can and should meet changing needs and expectations.

The event will be live streamed:

After the event I will report here about the outcome, but we also aim at a paper in the upcoming research agenda issue of our International Cartographic Journal, which will provide even more details.

Menno-Jan Kraak
– President of the International Cartographic Association

rawboned-refined