Commissions

• Advance the field of artistic and experimental cartographies, including but not limited to such subfields as narrative cartography, cinematic cartography, sensory and phenomenological approaches to mapping, locative media, performative and performance-based cartographies, and media archaeological and other research-creation or practice-led processes.
• Facilitate, through workshops and special events, interdisciplinary collaborations and exchanges of ideas and practices amongst diverse practitioners and theorists to promote the development of hybrid cartographic practices, from arts and digital humanities to social and geo-sciences.
• Produce new forms of knowledge on mapping, space and place theory, location and spatial studies, as well as new cartographic expressions.
• Promote creative research and scholarly publication on art and cartography in all of its aspects, to both an academic audience (special issues of journals and edited collections) and to the general public (websites, screenings, exhibitions).
• Explore alternative avenues of publication as research-creation documentations and experimentations.
• Hold bi-annual meetings, in conjunction with the International Cartographic Conference.
• Abide by the ICA directory, which includes outreach to developing countries when requested and possible, coordination with other ICA commissions or other international organizations when possible and advantageous, and to support equity-seeking groups to take active roles in professional activities.

Website of the commission on Art and Cartography

Chair: Taien Ng-Chan
Department of Cinema and Media Arts
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
e-mail: taien@yorku.ca

Vice-Chair: Joanna Gardener
Department of Communication Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Hawthorn, Victoria
Australia
e-mail: jgardener@swin.edu.au

Vice-Chair: Sharon Hayashi
Department of Cinema and Media Arts
York University
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
e-mail: hayashi@yorku.ca

Executive Committee liaison: Alex Kent

• Promote and support the design, production and use of all kind of printed and digital atlases (e.g. national, regional, city, educational, topographic and thematic atlases).
• Renew the concept of atlas: Analyse the structure of existing products systematically; revise atlas taxonomy.
• Conduct workshops to discuss and solve relevant issues and new approaches in atlas cartography.
• Generate publications that represent historic, recent and potential atlas issues.
• Develop easy-to-use frameworks to create atlases and to find atlas source data.
• Elaborate and maintain an electronic inventory of national atlases containing the main characteristics of these map works as well as relevant links.
• Maintain a commission website aiming to provide for information exchange between CoA members and disseminating information on CoA activities to a wider public.

Website of the commission on Atlases

Co-chair: Vít Voženílek
Department of Geoinformatics
Faculty of Science
Palacký University Olomouc
17. listopadu 50
771 46 Olomouc
Czech Republic
e-mail: vit.vozenilek@upol.cz

Co-chair: Eric Losang
Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (IfL)
Schongauer Str. 9
04329 Leipzig
Germany
e-mail: e_losang@leibniz-ifl.de

Executive Committee liaison: Tim Trainor

• Promote research and development on the field of cartographic heritage, more specifically on:
  • objects – old maps, charts, globes, relief models, bird’s eye views, etc.
  • digitisation – 2d, 3d; hardware, software, issues, solutions
  • georeferencing – georeferencing methods, tools, recognising map projections
  • archiving – how to store; metadata
  • extracting content – possibility of automatic content extraction (vectorisation)
  • providing cartographic heritage on-line
  • analysing old maps in the terms of…
    • geometry: accuracy analysis, projection recognition
    • map symbols: how symbols depend on age, place, author etc.
    • content: spatial/spatio-temporal analysis of map content
• Partnership with MAGIC (Map and Geoinformation Curators Group)
• Promote intra- and interdisciplinary co-operation
  • annual conferences on Cartographic Heritage
  • thematic workshops, joint projects and workshops with other commissions, societies
  • connecting existing on-line collections, creating meta-search pages
  • interdisciplinary research – cartography and various fields of geo- and biosciences (e.g. landuse/landscape/habitat change analysis based on old maps) and especially digital humanities (history, archaeology, linguistics, literature),
• Popularisation – tools, websites, campaigns to popularise cartographic heritage
• Tutorials – examples of good practice of all above
• Documentation of commission work
  • abstract database of all cartoheritage conference/journal papers

Website of the commission on Cartographic Heritage into the Digital

Chair: Mátyás Gede
Department of Cartography and Geoionformatics ELTE Eötvös Loránd University
Budapest
Hungary
e-mail: saman@map.elte.hu

Vice-Chair: Angeliki Tsorlini
School of Rural and Surveying Engineering Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Greece
e-mail: atsorlin@auth.gr

Vice-Chair: Marcy Bidney
American Geographical Society Library
Milwaukee
USA
e-mail: bidney@uwm.edu

Executive Committee liaison: Dušan Petrovič

• Promote and disseminate the outcomes of research into map use by children and young people through an enhanced set of online bibliography and web links on cartography and children including publications in social networks.
• Organize sessions and meetings to stimulate a debate on various aspects of cartography for children in the interest of collecting and publishing (in digital or/and printed format) the research results.
• Promote the use of web-based cartographic solutions for visualization of geodata in School Cartography and Geography, including the use of GIS and GIS-based solutions in schools.
• Develop stronger connections with other ICA commissions as appropriate and relevant international and regional organizations related to cartography and children.
• Provide support to the ICA Executive Committee in relation to the rules, judging, and other tasks related to the Barbara Petchenik Children's World Map Competition, including the popularization of the Competition in social networks.

Website of the commission on Cartography and Children

Chair: Silvia Marinova
Department of Photogrammetry and Cartography
Faculty of Geodesy
University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy
1 Hristo Smirnenski Blvd.
1164 Sofia
Bulgaria
e-mail: marinova_silvia@abv.bg

Vice-chair: José Jesús Reyes Nuñez
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics
Eötvös Loránd University
Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A
H-1117 Budapest
Hungary
phone: +36 1 372 2975
e-mail: jesusreyes@caesar.elte.hu
personal website

Executive Committee liaison: Dariusz Dukaczewski

• Advance the use of cartography to communicate effective Sustainable Development strategies by offering written visualization guides made available online and offering in person tutorials with governmental statistics and environmental agencies as the target audience.
• Demonstrate how cartography is an effective tool to illuminate gaps, evaluate challenges and identify solutions faced at different (spatial and administrative) scales (or levels of geography and government) in terms of cartographic design, production and data management (missing data).
• Illustrate, curate and share effective cartographic communication techniques for Sustainable Development initiatives for economic, environmental, educational and social phenomena.
• Define short- and medium-term research goals that address key issues associated with building a sound theoretical and applied methodological base to support the production of maps and geographic information used to advance Sustainable Development. Results will be shared through a Special Issue of the Journal of Cartography and made Open Access.
• Appraise the relevance of size in terms of data collection, analysis and visualization in combining global, national and local initiatives to achieve Sustainable Development – offering geovisualization and cartography solutions related to these specific challenges.
• Actively seek to encourage participation in the Commission from researchers and practitioners in the African, Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions, and those from Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which are currently underrepresented among our ICA membership. We commit to host at least one event in the African region during the term. We also seek, insofar as possible, to also open participation through electronic means, in workshops by using technologies such as Zoom to live cast and record events to improve access for those who cannot physically travel.

Website of the commission on Cartography and Sustainable Development

Chair: Britta Ricker
Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development
Utrecht University
Utrecht
The Netherlands
e-mail: b.a.ricker@uu.nl
personal website

Chair: Carolyn Fish
University of Oregon
Department of Geography
USA
e-mail: cfish11@uoregon.edu

Executive Committee liaison: Serena Coetzee

• Initiate development of concepts, models and standards for the cartographic visualization of early warning, disaster management, monitoring and resilience.
• Integrate spatiotemporal information and related data in humanities and social sciences with thematic data for disaster detection, early warning, monitoring, damage assessment, response and training/education.
• Develop big data analysis, social computing, information distribution technologies (e.g., APIs) crowd-sourcing and artificial intelligence technologies for early warning and crisis management.
• Generate hazard zone, vulnerability and exposure maps for different type of hazards, such as forest fire, cyclone, floods, droughts, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, landslides, infectious disease etc., and for the identification and assessment of potential risk and disaster zones.
• Foster quality mapping and cartographic modeling, including state-of-the-art visualization and dissemination technologies, geospatial process and publishing tools, for early warning and crisis management through suitable publications.
• Provide methodological and technical inputs and advice for efficient technical systems for risk reduction and increase of resilience: monitoring, multi-hazard early warning systems, impact assessment, and risk-based decision-making.
• Promote the development of disaster management plans for pre-, during and post- disaster situations and enhance support for early warning systems, emergency events mitigation and risk-based decision making.
• Develop technical training and know-how transfer about emergency geospatial information service for institutional partners and developing countries.
• Conduct international workshops or symposia about selected aspects of cartography and GIScience in early warning and crisis management.
• Compile and publish reports and proceedings about the work of the commission.

Website of the commission on Cartography in Early Warning and Crisis Management

Co-chair: Christophe Lienert
Managing Director Steering Committee «Intervention in Natural Hazards» LAINAT
Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications DETEC
Federal Office for the Environment FOEN
CH-3003 Berne
Switzerland
e-mail: christophe.lienert@bafu.admin.ch

Co-chair: Shen Jie
School of Geography
Nanjing Normal University
1 Wenyuan Road
Nanjing 210023
China
phone: +86 25 85891347
e-mail: shenjie@njnu.edu.cn

Vice chair: Milan Konecny
Cartography and Geoinformatics Lab
Masaryk University
Brno
Czech Republic
e-mail: undatra@yahoo.com

Vice chair: Yong Wang
Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping
China
e-mail: wangyong@casm.ac.cn

Executive Committee liaison: Jiping Liu

• Foster the awareness of cognitive issues in cartography, developing humancenteredcartographic theory and practice based on sound empirical findingson the use of cartographic displays for spatio-temporal inference anddecision-making.
• Develop events and activities that explore key issues relevant to buildinginnovative maps that work, including those in 3D and immersive environmentsand those that support human/machine cognition and collaboration(including artificial intelligence).
• Continue engagement with standards organisations (e.g., Open GeospatialConsortium - OGC) to use knowledge from our Commission to positivelyinfluence and contribute to standards related to maps and decision making.
• Encourage interdisciplinary and international collaboration with cognate disciplines and relevant stakeholders, including those internal to the ICA(e.g., other Commissions and Working Groups) and external to the ICA(e.g., International Association of Chinese Professionals of Geographic InformationScience - CPGIS, ISPRS Working Groups, AGILE).
• Actively seek to encourage more participation in the Commission from researchers in the African, South American, and Asia-Pacific regions, whichare currently underrepresented among our membership. We also seek,insofar as possible, to also open participation through electronic means,in workshops by using technologies such as Zoom to livecast and recordevents to improve access for those who cannot physically travel.

Website of the commission on Cognitive Issues in Geographic Information Visualization

Co-Chair: Tumasch Reichenbacher
Department of Geography
University of Zurich
Switzerland
e-mail: tumasch.reichenbacher@uzh.ch

Co-Chair: Pyry Kettunen
Finnish Geospatial Research Institute
National Land Survey
Finland
e-mail: pyry.kettunen@nls.fi

Co-Chair: Petr Kubíček
Department of Geography
Masaryk University
Czechia
e-mail: kubicek@geogr.muni.cz

Co-Chair: Hua Liao
School of Geographic Sciences
Hunan Normal University
Changsha
China
e-mail: liaohua@hunnu.edu.cn

Executive Committee liaison: Amy Griffin

• To facilitate NMAs for their second transformation in the big data era
• To promote NMA alignment to the United Nations’ new Integrated Geospatial Information Framework
• To network geospatial researchers who are interested in the digital transformation of NMAs
• To organize sessions and workshops for exploring related issues on new ways of mapping, AI/deep learning, new maps/data services in a cloud/mobile environment
• To communicate, disseminate, and publish as appropriate the efforts and findings of the commission through various communication and publication channels

Chair: Bin Jiang
Division of Geomatics
Dept. of Technology and Built Environment
University of Gävle
SE-801 76 Gävle
Sweden
phone: +46 26 648901
fax: +46 26 648828
e-mail: bin.jiang@hig.se
personal website

Vice-chair: Juha Oksanen
Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI), Department of Geoinformatics and Cartography
National Land Survey of Finland
02150 Espoo
Finland
e-mail: juha.oksanen@nls.fi

Executive Committee liaison: Dariusz Dukaczewski

• Organize and deliver workshops and sessions in ICCs (and online, eLearning alternatives), possibly in conjunction with other ICA Commissions, with committees on education of sister societies and other international bodies in UN-GGIM Geospatial Societies, to incorporate latest research findings into teaching and learning materials, introducing, in particular, knowledge transfer to developing member nations of ICA, and further to promote CET as an academic research community of cartographic and geospatial teaching.
• Organize training and capacity building seminars and summer schools, particularly engaging early career faculty members, with an emphasis on learning from those ICA member nations which have been successful in expanding cartographic and geospatial education into various application scenarios and motivate international collaboration among higher learning institutions.
• Compile an inventory of open courses (notably those delivered online, commercially presented, or professional development courses) in topics of cartography, geographic information science & technology and applications, which can further confirm the scope of cartographic and geospatial education in a multi-disciplinary context.
• Maintain a website for commission’s news update, a membership database and teaching materials of cartographic and geospatial education, including bibliography, free geospatial datasets, software tools and case studies, which can be used or adapted by cartographic, geospatial and geographic educators at different levels.
• Support the ICA efforts of developing a Body of Knowledge (BoK) for cartography, which could be used for developing contemporary educational programmes and encouraging the creation of specific cartographic modules with valid and viable learning outcomes.
• Organize a special issue of a specific academic journal or edited book to publish best practices and findings of cartographic and geospatial education research.

Website of the commission on Education and Training

Chair: Tao Wang
College of Geospatial Information Science and Technology
Capital Normal University
West 3rd Ring, North Road 105
Beijing, 100048
China
phone: +86-10-68903472
e-mail: wangt@cnu.edu.cn

Vice-Chair: Juliane Cron
Chair of Cartography and Visual Analytics
Technical University of Munich
Arcisstr. 21
80333 Munich
Germany
e-mail: juliane.cron@tum.de

Executive Committee liaison: Serena Coetzee

• Review work to date on guidelines for ethical conduct and practices in cartography and closely related fields. This may include codes of ethics, codes of conduct, and principles for ethical practices, among others.
• Use the reviewed materials, and other resources as necessary, to articulate a set of basic guiding principles that reinforce ethical behavior and practice in cartography, focusing first on mapmaking, and in particular, the making of maps that are meant to support decision making (as opposed to maps for advertisement, propaganda, and such.)
• Develop guidelines that arise from and are justified by the basic guiding principles that help direct and assess a mapmaker’s decisions. These guidelines should reinforce the making of maps that convey their message accurately, justifiably, and thoroughly and, as such, can be taken to be reliable information sources.
• Identify resources created or endorsed by cartographic practitioners or professional organizations that relate to the guidelines and provide a better understanding of and/or practical experience with the skills needed for ethical mapmaking.
• Distribute all of the above in an open access format (distributed online and free of access charges or other barriers).
• Promote community involvement in the development of guidelines and collection of resources, paying special attention to opportunities to expand or update existing materials due to technological advancements or societal changes.
• Assess additional areas within cartography for which principles and guidelines for ethical conduct and practices are also justified (the business of maps and map preservation and curation, for example).

Chair: Aileen Buckley
ESRI
Redlands, CA
USA
e-mail: abuckley@esri.com

Executive Committee liaison: Alex Kent

• Define the topics of GeoAI and promote the methods and knowledge of GeoAI among scientists and professionals in cartography, GIScience and related fields.
• Provide an updated, attractive web-portal with information about Commission activities, links to other events, theme-specific knowledge, related web sites and bibliographic information.
• Discuss different issues about the use of GeoAI to extract machine-readable knowledge from maps unavailable elsewhere and to guide cartographic map style, symbolization, and design.
• Develop a workshop series.
• Promote publication activities (proceedings, web-proceedings, journal articles and special issues) and common research activities.

Chair: Samantha T. Arundel
Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science
US Geological Survey
Lake Ozark
Missouri 65049
USA
sarundel@usgs.gov

Executive Committee liaison: Amy Griffin

• Foster a community for geospatial analysis, modeling, and data analytics research, with strong links to geovisualization and location-based big data
  • develop a medium-term research agenda for the commission, which will serve as the guiding basis for commission events
  • organize academic events for community members to share ideas and research findings.
• Develop and maintain connections and joint efforts with other ICA commissions as well as other related GIScience and geographic academic organizations
  • organize special sessions and workshops at ICC as well as other GIScience or geography conferences, in accordance with the research agenda
  • collaborate with commissions within ICA or other academic associations to organize joint workshops on topics of shared interest
• Encourage concerted efforts on new research topics related to the research agenda themes;
• Publish research findings in the community through various outlets including special issues of academic journals and books.

Website of the commission on Geospatial Analysis and Modeling

Vice-chair: Xintao Liu
Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics
Faculty of Construction and Environment
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong SAR
e-mail: xintao.liu@polyu.edu.hk
personal website

Executive Committee liaison: Haosheng Huang

• Promote the original and practical research in use of image and range data acquired by various sensors for mapping with a focus on spatial big data handling, cartographic information extraction, 3D reconstruction of built environments, and integration of indoor mapping with BIM.
• Network cartographers with the researchers and practitioners in the photogrammetry and remote sensing community, computer science community involved in sensor-driven mapping.
• Develop closer links with ISRPS, IAG, FIG, IEEE-societies, and other ICA commissions with similar interests in sensor-driven mapping to organize ICA workshops or joint symposia during 2019-2023.
• Publish special issues with the International Journal of Cartography and other related journals as well as books and reports.
• Promote knowledge transfer at fundamental and advanced levels on sensor-driven mapping technology to natural and built environments, early warning and natural disaster mitigation.
• Prepare promotional materials reflecting the commission’s terms of reference and activities that can be used to support ICA’s presence at international forums (e.g., World Map, Map Middle East, meetings of the Joint Board of Geospatial Information Societies (JB GIS), UN meetings, and other regional conferences).

Website of the commission on Geospatial Data Analytics

Chair: Ruisheng Wang
Department of Geomatics Engineering
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4
Canada
phone: +1-403-210-9509
e-mail: ruiswang@ucalgary.ca
personal website

Executive Committee liaison: Haosheng Huang

• Developing and maintaining a membership list, and a commission website for information dissemination and exchange, and organizing scholarly events.
• Research the following areas:
  • The interfaces between natural language processing, cartography, and geographical information systems (GIS)
  • Ontology design through knowledge graphs and query-based analysis
  • Spatial semantic data infrastructures
  • Institutional aspects of semantics and ontology
  • Creating, finding, and communicating meaning
  • Linked open data and controlled vocabularies
  • Reasoning and inference axioms
• Facilitate science and humanities community interactions to connect semantic and ontological research in academic, government, and professional areas. The influence of institutions and their cultures on ontology and semantics is a particular area of interest. One or two central projects are proposed to provide a focus for collaborative work; a workshop with resulting edited publications, such as articles, journal special issues, and book publications (e.g, in The International Journal of Cartography or Springer's GIScience series); and education or resource building technology to advance geospatial semantics and ontology practices. The Chair and co-chair plan to organize conference sessions at ICC 2020 and 2022 and host or collaborate with conference-connected workshops. An off-site workshop of geographical proximity for its members will be organized. The commission will offer support to conferences and workshops where it is invited to do so.
• Using the ICA Research Agenda as a broad framework, the commission will support approaches that address the complexity of growing online data repositories through ontological analysis and automated knowledge extraction of geographic information. Aspects of various ICA themes, such as generalization, visualization, society, history, and theory are areas that support strong collaboration with other commissions and working groups and groups outside the ICA. Among these are coordination with IGU Commission on Geographic Information Science, University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), or other institutions represented or contacted by Commission members.
• Organize conference sessions at ICC 2021 in the Florence ICC and subsequent ICC and GA meeting in 2023 and host a conference-connected workshop in 2020 and 2022. The commission will offer support to conferences and workshops where it is invited to do so.
• Create publications, such as articles, journal special issues, and book publications (e.g, in ICA's Publication Series).

Website of the commission on Geospatial Semantics

Vice-Chair: Silvana Philippi Camboim
Department of Geomatics
Federal University of Paraná – UFPR
Caixa Postal 19001 – CEP 81531-980
Curitiba PR
Brazil
phone: +55 41 3361-3636
e-mail: silvanacamboim@gmail.com

Executive Committee liaison: Serena Coetzee

• Promote and advance visual analytics in cartography, which is the science of analytical reasoning as supported by interactive visual interfaces to spatio-temporal data.
• Develop science, technology, and design approaches to address major challenges associated with geographic information analysis and synthesis that enable users to solve key societal and environmental problems.
• Foster interdisciplinary and international collaboration between potential users of geospatial visual analytics and researchers, as well as between allied research communities in other disciplines and other ICA Commissions. o The Commission will achieve this vision by:
• Actively disseminating technical and methodological advances in cartographic visual analytics through workshops, seminars, edited special issues of journals, and peer-reviewed publications - with linkages to other ICA Commissions and allied organizations in other fields.
• Conducting annual meetings, workshops, or tutorials to develop research in key thematic areas, partnering with international conferences and other ICA commissions to expand our reach beyond traditional venues and audiences and to diversify who engages with visual analytics in the ICA.
• Recruiting and retaining a co-chair and bolstering the core membership to help guide Commission activities and foster collaboration within and outside of the ICA.
• Maintaining a dedicated web presence and engaging with members via social media to highlight Commission activities and promote participation beyond attendance at in-person meetings through new forms of distance collaboration.

Website of the commission on Geovisualization

Co-Chair: Florian Ledermann
Research Unit Cartography, Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation
TU Wien
Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10 / E120-6
1040 Wien
Austria
phone: +43 58801 12614
e-mail: florian.ledermann@geo.tuwien.ac.at
personal website

Co-Chair: Arzu Çöltekin
Institute of Interactive Technologies
University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland
Bahnhofstrasse 6
5210 Windisch
Switzerland
phone: +41 56 202 84 73
e-mail: arzu.coltekin@fhnw.ch
personal website

Vice Chair: Anthony C. Robinson
Department of Geography, Penn State University
318 Walker Building
University Park, PA, 16802
USA
phone: +1 814 865 3433
e-mail: acr181@psu.edu
personal website

Vice Chair: Izabela Gołębiowska
Department of Geoinformatics, Cartography and Remote Sensing
Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies
University of Warsaw
ul. Krakowskie Przedmieście 30
00-927 Warszawa
Poland
phone: +48 225521511
e-mail: i.golebiowska@uw.edu.pl
personal website

Executive Committee liaison: Amy Griffin

• comparing and studying selected topics of High-Definition Maps in a multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural and technical perspective.
• promoting the research topics on how cartography is evolving into a machine and AI related new field by interconnecting different new technology and sceneries in modern society.
• build the commission into a bridge between academic and industrial members for a sustainable move-on until more and more intelligent world of maps.
• establishing an efficient information system to facilitate collaboration among the researchers in the field by maintaining an up-to-date Commission website with news important for the membership, reports on the activities of the commission, information on recent publications of interest, etc.
• promoting the existing glossary in multi-language in the circle of researcher and extending the glossary with the further research interest.
• conducting workshops or symposia about selected aspects of HD map in different nations.
• compiling and publishing reports and collected papers about the work of the commission.

Chair: Qingyun Du
School of Resource and Environmental Science
Wuhan University
430072 Wuhan
PR China
phone: +86 27 68778842
e-mail: qydu@whu.edu.cn

Vice-Chair: Young-Hoon Kim
Department of Geography Education
Korea National University of Education
Cheongju-si, Chungbuk
South Korea
e-mail: gis@knue.ac.kr

Vice-Chair: Jing Dai
Google GWC1
Mountain View, CA
USA
e-mail: jddai@google.com

Executive Committee liaison: Jiping Liu

• Explore and research country-specific implementations of integrated geospatial information for maps and cartography in support of national strategic priorities, share national experiences on this and identify associated research and education needs.
• In collaboration with other ICA Commissions, participate at the scientific level with other organizations and agencies active in geoinformation management, UN-GGIM IGIF and the creation of geospatial knowledge infrastructures with a special focus on cartography.
• Develop reports, conference presentations and/or journal articles on our work and help to arrange workshops, conferences or other meetings.
• Organize reporting sessions on the Commission’s activities at the 2025 and 2027 International Cartographic Conferences.
• Organize and hold full Commission meetings in 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027, and other meetings with Commission members at suitable events and conferences.

Co-chair: Anja Hopfstock
Abteilung Geodaten
Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie (BKG)
Richard-Strauss-Allee 11
60598 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
e-mail: anja.hopfstock@bkg.bund.de

Co-Chair: Kathryn Arnold
Urban and Regional Dynamics Research Group, Smart Places
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
Meiring Naudé Rd, Brummeria, Pretoria, 0184
South Africa
e-mail: KArnold@csir.co.za

Executive Committee liaison: Serena Coetzee

• Promote research on Location based Services (LBS) in all its interdisciplinary aspects.
• Maintain the commission website and update it regularly to allow commission members to exchange information, as well as to disseminate information on activities in this field to a wider public.
• Maintain the commission E-Mail list for the exchange of activities, knowledge, news, and information on LBS.
• Update the LBS Research Agenda to reflect the new challenges brought by the new technological development, scientific advancement and societal changes.
• Organise ICC sessions, workshops and international conferences on LBS for colleagues from various disciplines to meet, and share research findings, ideas, and plans on how LBS can and could be improved and on how it will influence both science and society.
• Publish reports, books and special issues on LBS with scientific journals.
• Encourage interdisciplinary and international collaboration with cognate disciplines and relevant stakeholders, including other ICA commissions and working groups, and other allied research communities (e.g., ISPRS, FIG, IAG), mainly through joint meetings, seminars, and publications.

Website of the commission on Location Based Services

Chair: Jukka M. Krisp
Institute of Geography
Augsburg University
Alter Postweg 118
86159 Augsburg
Germany
e-mail: jukka.krisp@geo.uni-augsburg.de
personal website

Vice-Chair: Anto Aasa
Department of geography
University of Tartu
Vanemuise st 46
Tartu 51003
Estonia
e-mail: anto.aasa@ut.ee
personal website

Vice-Chair: Weihua Dong
Faculty of Geography
Beijing Normal University
Beijing
China e-mail: dongweihua at bnu.edu.cn
personal website

Vice-Chair: Zhiyong Zhou
Department of Geography
University of Zurich
Winterthurerstrasse 190
8057 Zurich
Switzerland
e-mail: zhiyong.zhou@geo.uzh.ch

Executive Committee liaison: Haosheng Huang

• Build usable media products that help ICA better brand itself as an authority on spatial visualization in the GIS industry, including:
  • A short series of ICA-branded web video workshops helping people working in geospatial sectors design effective maps (these would be software agnostic, using both open-source and proprietary software).
  • Expand the MapCarte initiative even further, creating an accompanying podcast series (that’s right, a podcast!) interviewing professional cartographers about their own tips, tricks, and thoughts on effective, applied map design.
  • Continue creating online workshops, providing talks, and writing blog pieces.
• Prepare a Special Issue of a cartography journal to explore contemporary map design (e.g., augmented reality maps, mapping location within VR, game mapping, etc.).
• Collaborate with colleagues in other ICA Commissions as appropriate.
• Help organize sessions at the ICA in 2021 and 2023.
• Maintain and enhance the website with new content and contributions.

Website of the commission on Map Design

Chair: Ian Muehlenhaus
Esri
Redlands, CA
USA
e-mail: imuehlenhaus@esri.com
personal website

Vice-Chair: Ken Field
Esri
Redlands, CA
USA
e-mail: KField@esri.com

Executive Committee liaison: Dariusz Dukaczewski

• Promote and foster research on map projections, coordinate systems, transformations and conversions, and disseminate the outcomes. Specifically, encourage research, development, and use of correct and possibly adaptable map projections for GIS and Web implementations and applications.
• Promote intra- and interdisciplinary co-operation. Encourage collaboration with other ICA commissions.
• Continue the study of terminology on map projections and preparation of the multilingual dictionary for this area of cartography. Construct useful definitions for commonly misused terms.
• Study the history of map projections to clarify the origin of various mappings and help the identification of historical reference systems.
• Promote the proper use of map projections at all levels of education.
• Organize sessions, workshops, and meetings at least once a year to stimulate a debate on all aspects of map projections with the aim of collecting and publishing the research results.
• Enhance and maintain the Commission web site. Provide consultative support in relation to map projections through the Commission web site.
• Link known map projection websites into the Commission site. Assemble links and guides for map projection selection including existing web tools such as map projection decision support systems. Provide single stop from which users can determine the appropriate map projection to use for a specific application.
• Develop new map projections that adapt to the changing mapping requirements of GIS, and make use of recent advances in computer science.

Website of the commission on Map Projections

Chair: Krisztián Kerkovits
Institute of Cartography and Geoinformatics
ELTE Eötvös Loránd University
Budapest
Hungary
e-mail: kerkovits@map.elte.hu
website

Vice-Chair: Michael T. Gastner
Information and Communications Technology Cluster
Singapore Institute of Technology
Singapore
e-mail: michael.gastner@singaporetech.edu.sg
website

Executive Committee liaison: Dušan Petrovič

• Detect and integrate new trends related to the interconnection of cartography and the Internet such 3D cartography, semantic issues in cartography and spatial data, participatory mapping and co-creation approach in cartography, new education methods related to the Internet, Big data, Linked Open Data or Internet of Things.
• Define short and medium term research goals that address significant challenges associated with maps and the Internet – for example, new Internet mapping technologies, multinational and multicultural perspectives of Internet maps or Service-Oriented Mapping.
• Support education activities related to maps on the Internet.
• Publish the documents relevant for the commission domain with scientific journals (Open Access journals are preferred) and appropriate Internet channels, including the official website of the commission and social media.
• Organise (or co-organise) ICC sessions, workshops, hackathons, mapathons and international conferences to meet, interact and exchange knowledge, experience and ideas (in several cases, the events can be transformed into the virtual space to arrange a higher number of participants).
• Actively promote activities of the commission and ICA in general to eliminate the most critical problem of the Commission on Maps and the Internet, which consists of a low number of active people involved in its activities.
• Foster cooperation with other ICA commissions (for example Commission on Education and Training, Commission on Cartographic Heritage into the Digital, Commission on Location Based Services, Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies, Commission on Ubiquitous Mapping or Commission on Use, User and Usability Issues) to support „cross-commissions“ research and sharing information.

Website of the commission on Maps and the Internet

Chair: Otakar Čerba
Department of Geomatics
Faculty of Applied Sciences
University of West Bohemia
Technická 8
301 00 Plzeň
Czech Republic
phone: +420 37763 9206
e-mail: ota.cerba@gmail.com

Vice-Chair: Karel Jedlička
Department of Geomatics
Faculty of Applied Sciences
University of West Bohemia
Technická 8
30100 Plzeň
Czech Republic
phone: +420 377 639 206
e-mail: smrcek@kgm.zcu.cz

Vice-Chair: Sverre Iversen
Geological Survey of Norway
Norway
e-mail: Sverre.Iversen@ngu.no

Executive Committee liaison: Dariusz Dukaczewski

• Promote the specialism of Marine Cartography within ICA and other affiliated organisations.
• As the ICA expert focus group for Marine Cartography, promote research on cartography relating to the visualisation and management of ocean data.
• Identify and recommend appropriately qualified and experienced professional cartographers to represent ICA membership on the FIG/IHO/ICA International Board on Standards of Competence for Hydrographic Surveyors and Nautical Cartographers (IBSC).
• Promote a network of marine cartographers using media to facilitate the access by interested communities to marine cartographic knowledge.
• Foster and support local meetings and/or workshops on marine cartography and assist in engaging appropriate recognised experts.
• Liaise and coordinate with other relevant ICA Commissions and Working Groups.
• Liaise and coordinate with relevant groups from sister organisations and associations relating to the maritime environment (e.g. IHO, FIG, IGU …).
• Encourage and promote policies of equal opportunity wherever possible within the profession and especially within the marine cartography community.

Website of the commission on Marine Cartography

Chair: Ron Furness
IIC Technologies Pty Ltd
PO Box 174
Belrose West NSW 2085
Australia
phone: +61 (0)405 576 196
e-mail: rfurness@ozemail.com.au

Vice-Chair: Lysandros Tsoulos
National Technical University of Athens
Greece
e-mail: lysandro@central.ntua.gr

Vice-Chair: Christie Ence
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Office of Coast Survey, Marine Chart Division
1315 East-West Highway
Silver Spring, Maryland 20910
USA
e-mail: christie.ence@noaa.gov

Executive Committee liaison: Alex Kent

• Define the topics of Mountain Cartography and promote the methods and knowledge of mountain cartography among scientists and professionals in cartography and related fields.
• Provide an updated, attractive web-portal with information about Commission activities, links to other events, theme-specific knowledge, related web-sites and bibliographic information.
• Discuss different issues about mountain cartography and map related representations in large scale topographic mapping, as similarity and differences in symbolization and map design, technological issues, maps use, connections to Location-based Services (LBS).
• Continue the well-established workshop series.
• Promote publication activities (proceedings, web-proceedings, journal articles and special issues) and common research/activities.

Website of the commission on Moutain Cartography

Chair: Patrick Kennelly
Bend, Oregon
USA
e-mail: patrick.kennelly@liu.edu

Vice-Chair: Timofey Samsonov
Russia
e-mail: tsamsonov@geogr.msu.ru

Executive Committee liaison: Dušan Petrovič

• Foster a community for geospatial analysis, modeling, and data analytics research, with strong links to the use of maps and visualization techniques
  • develop a medium-term research agenda for the commission, which will serve as the guiding basis for commission events
  • organize academic events for community members to share ideas and research findings
• Develop and maintain connections and joint efforts with other ICA commissions as well as other related GIScience and geographic academic organizations
  • organize special sessions and workshops at ICC as well as other GIScience or geography conferences, in accordance with the research agenda
  • collaborate with commissions within ICA or other academic associations to organize joint workshops on topics of shared interest
• Encourage concerted efforts on new research topics related to the research agenda themes;
• Publish research findings in the community through various outlets including special issues of academic journals and books.

Website of the commission on Multi-scale Cartography

Chair: Guillaume Touya
LaSTIG, COGIT team, IGN France
73 avenue de Paris
94165, Saint-Mandé
France
phone: +33 1 43 98 62 37
e-mail: firstname.lastname@ign.fr
personal website

Executive Committee liaison: Haosheng Huang

• Establish and develop a research agenda for topographic mapping in association with partners in academia and in industry (national mapping organizations and commercial producers of topographic maps).
• Work in partnership with other ICA Commissions to organise and participate in joint events with the aim of advancing and disseminating knowledge regarding topographic mapping past, present and future.
• Create, develop and maintain the Commission website to incorporate news items relating to topographic mapping.
• Enable and facilitate research generation and staff exchange between producers of topographic mapping.
• Develop an online portal to allow easy access to information about producers of topographic mapping worldwide.
• Organise sessions at the 2021 and 2023 ICCs that focus on presenting the latest research with regard to topographic mapping and pursue its publication and wider dissemination.

Website of the commission on Topographic Mapping

Chair: David Forrest
School of Geographical & Earth Sciences
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ
United Kingdom
phone: +44 141 330 5401
e-mail: david.forrest@glasgow.ac.uk
personal website

Vice-chair: Łukasz Halik
Department of Cartography and Geomatics
Faculty of Geographical and Geological Sciences
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
Krygowskiego 10
61-680 Poznań
Poland
phone: +48 61 829 62 46
e-mail: topovicechair@icaci.org

Executive Committee liaison: Alex Kent

• Act jointly with IGU fostering the geographic and cartographic research on all fields involving toponymy;
• Disseminate the scientific knowledge on processing and use of toponyms within geography and cartography;
• Verify the use of other sciences' toponymy concepts, such as anthropology, linguistics and others, in favour of cartography and geography;
• Maintain contacts and scientific exchange with UNGEGN and ICOS, such as by organizing joint events;
• Support and encourage the elaboration and publication of gazetteers, toponymic data files and toponymic reference systems (such as EuroGeoNames);
• Organize regional joint IGU/ICA events (workshops, symposia and others) with IGU and ICA members;
• Participate in IGU and ICA Regional, Thematic and Main Conferences;
• Organize and maintain a website to facilitate contact between researchers in the field of toponymy and disseminate source material and literature available to the community and the general public alike;
• Organize and publish books, chapters and encourage paper publishing in specialized journals and the International Journal of Cartography.
• Establish a consortium of universities organizing training courses on toponymy.
• Publish a study book on Critical Toponomastics.
• Promote the representation of under-represented groups on the research agenda (e.g. female commemorative naming, indigenous names).

Website of the commission on Toponymy

Chair: Matjaž Geršič
ZRC SAZU
Novi trg 2
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenija
e-mail: matjaz.gersic@zrc-sazu.si

Chair: Cosimo Palagiano
Dipartimento di Lettere e Culture Moderne
Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia
Sapienza Università di Roma
Piazzale Aldo Moro 5 (Città Universitaria)
00185 Roma
Italy
e-mail: cosimo.palagiano@uniroma1.it

Executive Committee liaison: Dušan Petrovič

• Organize international workshop or joint meeting on ubiquitous mapping with other ICA commissions at future ICA conferences and other regional conferences on Cartography and GIScience.
• Publish special issues on the trends and technologies of ubiquitous mapping in international journals of cartography and other related disciplines as well as books and reports.
• Evaluate the theory and application of ICT-based technologies for context-aware mapping: e.g., AI, Robotics, Autonomous Cars, and location-based games.
• Evaluate the theory and application of crowdsourced geospatial information and collaborative mapping: e.g., OpenSteetMap, crisis mapping.
• Examine the positive/negative effects of Ubiquitous Mapping on human society: e.g., spatial literacy, navigation skills, digital divide and privacy issues.
• Place the notion of Ubiquitous Mapping in domain of Theoretical Cartography.

Website of the commission on Ubiquitous Mapping

Vice-Chair: Angela Schwering
Spatial Intelligence Lab
Institute for Geoinformatics
University of Münster
Germany
e-mail: schwering@uni-muenster.de

Vice-Chair: Armand Kapaj
Geographic Information Visualization and Analysis Group
Department of Geography
University of Zurich
Switzerland
e-mail: armand.kapaj@geo.uzh.ch

Executive Committee liaison: Jiping Liu

• Website: Maintain and expand the ICA Commission website on user experience (UX) issues: https://use.icaci.org/. Usability is identified as one of the 10 main research themes in the ICA agenda, and UX design encapsulates issues related to map use, maps users, and map usability. Map UX design herein is defined as the set of workflows, methods, and techniques needed for a successful user outcome with a map or interactive mapping system, as well as a productive and satisfying user process while arriving at this outcome.
• Bibliography: Maintain an online bibliographic database on user studies and UX design research in Cartography and related fields. The bibliography includes references on the following topics: map-based user interfaces (Ul) and user experience (UX) design; user-centered design and usability engineering, as applied to map design and development; studies of user abilities and differences therein; use case studies with print, web-based, and mobile maps; methods and techniques for evaluating products; the use of emerging mapping technologies.
• Student Services: Hold listening sessions to involve young (PhD) researchers and researchers from different cultural environments in all UX Commission activities in order to promote scientific research and support them in their activities.
• Educational Workshops: Organize training workshops for students and non-specialists on map-based user studies and UX design. The resulting educational materials will be made available on the commission's website.
• Scholarly Workshops: Jointly organize with other ICA Commissions pre-conference workshops in disciplines adjacent to Cartography (e.g., GIScience, Information Visualization, Human-Computer Interaction) aimed at research and design innovations.
• ICA Sessions: Organize special sessions on map-based user studies and UX design at future ICA conferences as well as other regional cartography conferences. Original scientific contributions will be gathered and organized through the UX Commission website.
• UX Research Agenda: Jointly organize with other ICA Commissions research agenda papers and/or special issues on topics intersecting with user studies and UX design. Planned topics include mobile map UX and reproducibility in cartography, although topics will evolve through the workshop process.
• User Studies Handbook: Jointly organize with other ICA Commissions a workshop to produce a handbook on user methods for cartography. The handbook will support an audience of both students and practitioners, treating user methods for basic science and user-centered design. The handbook will discuss best practices for a range of UX methods, breaking down method alternatives by participants, materials, procedures, and analyses.

Website of the commission on User Experience

Chair: Robert Roth
Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin‒Madison
550 N. Park Street
Office #375
Madison, WI 53706
USA
e-mail: reroth@wisc.edu

Vice-chair: Luciene Stamato Delazari
Geoinformation Applied Research Center
Federal University of Paraná
Brazil
e-mail: luciene@ufpr.br

Vice-chair: Merve Keskin
Geo-social Analytics Lab
Department of Geoinformatics (Z_GIS)
Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS)
Austria

Vice-chair: Zdeněk Stachoň
Masaryk University
Czech Republic
e-mail: zstachon@geogr.muni.cz

Executive Committee liaison: Amy Griffin