Dear colleagues and friends of ICA,
The year 2014 was in many ways a most successful year for cartography and the International Cartographic Association: ICA has been accepted as full union member of the International Council of Science (ICSU), has prepared the launch of its own journal called “The International Journal of Cartography”, has been endorsed by the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) to run the International Map Year 2015/16, has successfully organized numerous activities of ICA Commissions including workshops, symposia, meetings, discussions and publications.
Cartography is facing fast, challenging and demanding developments. All of us within the ICA are feeling the increasing interest, activities and awareness of the core relevance of cartography. In the realm of big data and innovative technologies, the efficient communication of spatial information is getting more and more in the focus, adding to the keywords of competences needed to succeed in this arena not only data crunching and technology-savviness but also design skills.
Therefore I would like to use this opportunity to thank all of the many commission chairs, commission members, committee members, participants at ICA events, correspondents, cartographers and GIScientists or simply friends of ICA, who have contributed to the development of our attractive, modern and relevant discipline!
With this, I would like to express my sincere season’s greetings and wish all of us a successful and interesting “cartographic” year 2015!
– Georg Gartner
President of the International Cartographic Association
