Please be aware, that the Early Bird Registration Deadline and
the Authors Registration Deadline for the International Cartographic Conference 2013 in Dresden is on 15 April 2013!
Make sure you are registered for this festival of cartography!
ICA has a long tradition in publishing results of ICA-related work. This includes books, journals, proceedings and online resources.
Books have been published with Butterworth Heinemann, Map Collector Publications and Elsevier in the past. Since 2011 ICA is entitled to publish results of their activities, such as commission work, conferences or symposia in a subseries of the Lecture Notes on Geoinformation and Cartography of the Springer-Verlag, called Publications of the International Cartographic Association. Currently nine projects are listed in this series, some of them in progress. In its joined meeting with all commission chairs the current Executive Committee strongly encourages all commissions to consider the opportunity to publish outcome of the work of commissions in this book series. Thus more book projects can be expected in the next years to come.
In terms of journals ICA is – other than comparable sister societies – not running an own journal so far. In many countries related to ICA journals exist, most of them are often accepting papers in the local language only, while the English speaking journals run by the respective national societies of Canada (Cartographica), USA (Cartography and Geographic Information Science) and the UK (The Cartographic Journal) have gained international presence, and thus are important partners of ICA. Due to the raising importance of the availability of high-quality publication media, as a key indicator for a scientific discipline and the academics working in this discipline, the journals within the domain of Cartography have put some efforts in making themselves aware of this situation. Some journals start to accept English papers, many have adopted a peer-reviewing system to control the quality, usually you can find an international editorial board and some are even trying to get accepted for quality measuring systems, allowing for calculating impact factors, something which needs to be referred to when applying for jobs in academia.
The online availability of all proceedings of International Cartographic Conferences since 1993 has proven to be a most useful source. We aim on continuing this service after the next conferences as well. At this point I would like to mention the two ICA Webmasters who have made quite some efforts to have this service up and running: Manuela Schmidt and Felix Ortag, both from Vienna University of Technology, Austria.
Finally I would like to mention two more important publication sources.
The biannual newsletter ICA News is edited by Igor Drecki from Auckland University, New Zealand. This publication is strongly committed to ICA-related information, being presented in high-quality in terms of both, content and design. All newsletters can be downloaded for free from the ICA website.
Within the professional magazine GIM International the former Secretary-General David Fairbairn (Newcastle University, UK) is editing and collecting contributions to a one-page ICA column, allowing to address a very prominent number of subscribers with ICA related topics.
At this point I would like to thank both of them, Igor Drecki and David Fairbairn for their efforts.
A final word: Related to the upcoming International Cartographic Conference 2013 in Dresden all publication types will be used. A book in the ICA Book Series of selected papers will be published, five special issues of journals will be published (Kartographische Nachrichten, Cartographic Journal, CAGIS, Cartographica, GIM International) and proceedings will be made available via electronic media.
Georg Gartner
President of ICA
On behalf of the International Cartographic Association I send the best wishes to the Japan Cartographers Association – please find my video greetings below.
Georg Gartner
President of ICA
ICA is proud of having a number of affiliate members. Affiliate membership can be granted to organizations, institutions or companies wishing to support the mission and activities of the International Cartographic Association.
Affiliate members are contributing to the work of ICA in many ways. They participate in commission and working group activities, they participate and exhibit in International Cartographic Conferences, they sponsor and contribute to conferences, workshops, symposia and publications, and they are, first of all,
partners in disseminating information about the importance and progress in cartography.
Given the fact that I have personally found discussions and contributions of the ICA affiliate members often very rewarding I feel obliged to use this first blog entry of 2013 to highlight the importance and role of the ICA affiliate members by thanking them for their ongoing commitment and name all of them here:
ESRI
Intergraph
Ordnance Survey
East View
Ekograf
PPWK
SuperMap
UN Cartographic Section
Wuda Geoinformatics
Bundesamt für Kartographie & Geodäsie
Dubai Municipality
Geospatial Information Authority of Japan
Instituto Geográfico Nacional España
Institut Géographique National
Institut Cartografic de Catalunya
National Hydrographic Office
National Land Survey of Finland
Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects, Chamber of Surveying and Cadastre Engineers
United States Geological Survey
Association of Polish Cartographers
Centro Argentino de Cartografía
Chinese Cartographic Association (Chinese Taipei)
Indian National Cartographic Association
Land Information New Zealand
Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
Faculty of Information Engineering, Wuhan
Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography
Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development
Rectas
University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy, Bulgaria
University of Balamand
Dear Friends of the International Cartographic Association,
The year 2012 was in many ways a successful year for cartography and the ICA. I want to thank you for your efforts and interest you have taken in the ICA. The Executive Committee is looking forward to working with you in the upcoming year and wishes to express their best season’s greetings.
Georg Gartner
President of the International Cartographic Association
In its resolution 6 the UN Regional Cartographic Conference, held in Bangkok in November 2012, recommends the ICA to organize an International Map Year in 2015.
The wording of the resolution reads in detail as follows:
Resolution 6. Usefulness and benefits of geospatial information
The conference,
- recognizing the enormous benefit of reliable and authoritative geospatial information and maps in decision making for sustainable use of natural resources, economic development and for community well being;
- noting the need to promote geospatial information education and training for national governments, decision makers, the geospatial industry and users;
- also noting the preparations made by the International Cartographic Association ad-hoc committee for the International Map Year, and the support by the Joint Board of Geospatial Societies (JB-GIS) on this initiative;
- recommends the International Cartographic Association (ICA) to organize an International Map Year in 2015.
The resolution has been adopted and included in the report of the UNRCC 2012.
At that moment the merits for achieving this resolution have to be given to Former President Bengt Rystedt and former Secretary-General Ferjan Ormeling, who provided the necessary concepts and documentations through the ICA Working Group for the International Map Year and Immediate Past-President William Cartwright for working through the UN administration.
Please consider the press release of the International Council for Science dealing with the penalisation of scientists related to the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009.
http://www.icsu.org/news-centre/news/the-international-council-for-science-pledges-support-for-scientists-in-the-l2019aquila-case
The most important date for all cartographers for 2013 is 25–30 August 2013, when the International Cartographic Conference will take place in Dresden, Germany.
The deadline for submissions has been extended to 15 November 2012!
This allows all of us working in cartography and GI Science to prepare our papers or abstracts accordingly, so that we can share our concepts, ideas and results in the conference. You are able to indicate, if you want your submission to be reviewed on the full paper and thus qualify eventually for a journal or book publication as well as for a presentation or you prefer a review based on the abstract and qualify for the presentation sessions and proceedings. Please check out all details on www.icc2013.org.
Whatever you are up for, it is most important, that all of us are contributing actively by submitting papers and abstracts, so that the conference can be a true platform of those working in cartography and GIScience and reflect the relevance, attractiveness and innovative character of our domain.
The International Cartographic Association invited students, young cartographers and other mapping enthusiasts to express their vision on modern cartography through the development of a video answering a call for videos earlier this year. It was envisaged that the video would focus on content like “how cartography relates to situations in daily life” and “what is the role of cartographers”.
The ICA Executive Committee judged the entries on originality, creativity, adherence to the theme and decided on Mr Jeff Welter’s entry as winner of the ICA Video competition 2012 – congratulations! You can have a look at Jeff’s video here:
Any comment is welcome as well as eventually further ideas on how to promote the importance and relevance of cartography in modern daily life, either on a global or on a private scale.
To depict elements of the topography of a landscape in a symbolic, abstract, geometrically sound but also eventually easily understandable way is a core discipline of cartography. Beneath all topographic elements of a landscape mountains are for sure amongst the most challenging ones to model and depict. Not only the derived geometry needs to fulfill the constraints of allowing a meaningful combination with other map elements but also the applied cartographic design should support the visual impression from the terrain features and especially the most dramatic ones, including the mountains itself.
It is therefore not a big surprise that beyond the most famous cartographers you can find especially such which have deserved their merits by designing and producing cartographic mountain depictions of high quality.
Within the International Cartographic Association the specific importance of this particular area of cartographic challenge has led to the foundation of the Commission on Mountain Cartography at the ICC 1999 in Ottawa. Since then this Commission, chaired by Lorenz Hurni from Switzerland from 1999-200 and Karel Kriz since 2007, has managed to attract ambitious cartographers and fascinating aficionados of all kind of different backgrounds being interested in mountain cartography. The unique spirit of this group has proven to be specific just recently when the Commission meet at their International Workshop at Tongariro National Park New Zealand. ICA Commissions are platforms for enthusiasts, experts and those which want to exchange and share their ideas, solutions and developments for the sake of the issue. The mountain cartography commission is fulfilling this role exactly and thus leads to an ongoing benefit to its members.
The merits of the recent meeting in New Zealand belong to the Commission Chairs, namely Karel Kriz and in replacement of Lorenz Hurni also Dusan Petrovic and Stefan Räber, but especially also to the colleagues from the local organizing committee Geoff Aitken, Roger Smith, Igor Drecki, Antoni Moore and Christian Fremd who not only organised the whole event but also managed to make everybody feeling most welcome in New Zealand.
Participants of the 8th ICA Mountain Cartography Workshop