ICC2023: Early Bird Registration Special Ends May 31st

If you’re planning to attend the 31st Cartographic Conference 2023, now is the perfect time to register as our early bird registration offer ends on May 31st, 2023. Join 800 delegates from nearly 78 countries in Cape Town, South Africa!

We are also proud to announce that the UN-GGIM Africa 9th Meeting of the Regional Committee will be hosted alongside ICC 2023 as well as SDG DATA Hub Workshops that are open for all to attend. Register today on icc2023.org

We look forward to welcoming you in Cape Town!

Category: General News

Tag: ICC2023, South Africa

Invitation to Pre-ICC2023 Workshop Other Cartographies

The ICA Commission on Art and Cartography invites to a workshop prior to ICC2023 in Cape Town, South Africa, on August 11, 2023.

Background

The ICC2023’s theme is SMART CARTOGRAPHY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. How can this theme be interpreted through Art? The Commission on Art & Cartography’s Terms of Reference include the directive to “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.” What might “sustainability” mean in terms of these and other such subfields? However the theme is interpreted, one thing is clear: other ways are needed, other points of view, other methodologies, visions, practices. What other cartographies can challenge the status quo?

The goal of this workshop is to provide an intellectual and creative space to share different ideas around artistic methodologies of mapping and engaging with space and place, particularly those that challenge the status quo of capitalism, colonialism, extractive resource development (etc., the list is long). The format of the workshop will be as follows: a morning of lightning presentations from all of the participants, to introduce each other; an afternoon of 3-4 mini-workshops that explore different methodologies or practices related to our theme of Other Cartographies.

The workshop will be hosted by the National Geospatial Information in Cape Town, South Africa on Friday, August 11^th from 10am-5pm. A catered lunch is included!

Please submit either a 100-150 word proposal if you are interested in leading a mini-workshop of about 45-60 minutes, or a short bio if interested in attending as a participant.

Submission Process & Registration

The workshop is open to everyone with an interest in alternative and sustainable mapping art practices and experimental cartographies. Registration is required and is free of charge. Please note that it is not necessary to be registered for the main ICC conference (which requires fees) to be able to attend the workshop. For more information or to register, please contact Workshop Coordinator Sharron Mirsky (see contact details on the workshop website).

Timeline

May 20, 2023 – Call for participants and workshop leaders
June 15, 2023 – Deadline for submitting abstracts and proposals (max. 150 words)
June 22, 2023 – Successful Applicants notified;
July 1, 2023 – Final program released;
August 11, 2023 – Workshop prior to the ICC 2023

Please find more information on the workshop website.

Category: Art and Cartography, Commission News

Tag: ICC2023, pre-conference workshop, South Africa

Cartographier pour un monde durable – French version of Mapping for a Sustainable World published

The book “Mapping for a Sustainable World”, a co-publication by the United Nations and the International Cartographic Association, has been translated to French – the second offical language of the ICA.

The pdf-version of the book written by Menno-Jan Kraak (ICA), Robert E. Roth (ICA), Britta Ricker (ICA), Ayako Kagawa (UN) and Guillaume Le Sourd (UN) can be downloaded from digitallibrary.un.org/record/3898826. A printed version is in preparation.

Category: General News

Tag: Mapping for a Sustainable World, sustainable development goals, UN

Invitation to Pre-ICC2023 Workshop on Cartographic and Geospatial Information Education: Transformation in the Era of AI

You are warmly invited to participate in and contribute your research, experiences and insights to the International Workshop on Cartographic and Geospatial Information Education: Transformation in the Era of AI, jointly organized by the Commission on Education and Training, the Working Group on the Cartographic Body of Knowledge and the Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies in partnership with the Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

The workshop will take place at the campus of the Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa, on August 12, 2023. It is scheduled for attendees to conveniently continue their journey to the 31st International Cartographic Conference in the same city between August 13-18, 2023.

Background

Education is recovering to a better normal after the pandemic, while facing an ever evolving digital revolution. Powerful digital technologies and tools ensure quality and sustainable education for all. Among these, artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the contents and pedagogies of cartographic and geospatial information education. Debates about roles of generative AI tools in education are being heated in various fields. What will the role of AI be in cartography and GIS education, research and practice? It is exciting to explore how educators and learners can better tap such tools for the transformation of Cartographic and Geospatial Information Education in the era of AI.

Call for participation

This workshop will bring together educators and experts to share the latest work, best practices and developments on related themes. Suggested topics of interest can include, but are not limited to, the following:

Developing the Body of Knowledge for cartography
AI-powered teaching and learning in cartography and GIS
Integrating AI into cartographic and geospatial information education
Curriculum design for cartographic and geospatial information education
Developing on-line educational resources for cartography and GIS teaching
Best practices in teaching and learning in cartography and geospatial information
Open source software and datasets in cartographic and geospatial information education
Integrating cartography into education of geomatics, geography and other disciplines
Partnerships and collaborations between universities and industry in GIS
Experiences in teaching cartography and GIS in general education
Cartographic and geospatial information education in Africa

The workshop is designed to be hybrid depending on local conditions and open to all interested researchers in cartographic and geospatial information education. We cordially invite you to join forum to exchange thoughts on the Education Transformation in the Era of AI.

Submission Details

You are mostly welcome to present your work in this workshop by submitting abstracts to the organizers, using the ICA abstract template.

The deadline for submitting abstracts is June 06, 2023. Acceptance notification will be sent out before June 30, 2023. Authors of accepted submissions are expected to present their works in the workshop. Selected papers will be invited for a further review for an edited volume planned next year.

Please find more information on the workshop website.

Organizing Committee

Silvana Camboim, Federal University of Paraná, Brazil
Terje Midtbø, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Zahn Münch, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Stefan Peters, University of South Australia, Australia
Tao Wang, Capital Normal University, China

Category: Cartographic Body of Knowledge, Commission News, Education and Training, Open Source Geospatial Technologies, Working Group News

Tag: ICC2023, pre-conference workshop, South Africa

The Atlas Cookbook – finally published!

The ICA Commission on Atlases (CoA) proudly announces the publication of The Atlas Cookbook – 10 ingredients how to edit an atlas.

The intention of The Atlas Cookbook is to advise atlas authors in a general way:

to give an overview over the realization phases,
to show how to start a new atlas project (which is always the hardest part),
and how to deal with conceptual, organizational, graphical or publishing issues.

What’s in it?

We divided The Atlas Cookbook in 10 chapters, which reflect a viable and practicable way to carry out an atlas project. The chapters start with Organization & Marketing, followed by Editorial Aspects. After the administrative issues are addressed, the book focuses on Atlas Use and Data Management. Other components to be considered in the atlas process include the use of Multimedia Elements and the Atlas GUI Design, followed by detailed chapters on Map Design and on Interactive Atlas Functionality. And finally, Prototyping and Evaluation describes the last steps before publishing the atlas.

A peak inside chapter 8 by Ernst Spiess.

A peak into chapter 8 by Ernst Spiess.

For whom?

The Atlas Cookbook is intended for atlas makers, map producers, and all kind of cartographers; it can be read as a whole, but even just a single chapter can help!

The Atlas Cookbook is written at a management level, not in a technical way. Most comments and recommendations apply to current and emerging digital technologies, but many sections are also valid and useful for editing printed atlases.

And where to get?

To get a digital copy, we offer the The Atlas Cookbook as a PDF on the CoA Website. You can download it for free and use it according to the CC license.

Additionally, we produced a printed book in a limited edition of 200 copies, supported by ICA and ETH Zurich. If you’d like to receive a printed edition (also free of charge), please send your postal address together with some kind words and good reasons to René Sieber, the current chairman of the CoA: sieberr [at] ethz.ch

Category: Atlases, Commission News

Tag: The Atlas Cookbook

Registration open for “Conquering the World through Cartography”

From Tuesday 30 May till Wednesday 31 May 2023 the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography and the Belgian Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences will jointly host an international conference on colonial cartography. This will be organized as a hybrid event, both face-to-face at the Palace of the Academies in the centre of Brussels and via livestream.

Theme

The 21st century map image of continents beyond Europe is still decisively shaped by inherited aesthetics and content dating back to the turn from explorative to imperialist cartography. The symposium welcomes contributions (papers and posters) to analyse aspects of the imperialist Global North hegemony by investigating topographic mapping, hydrographic charting, and thematic mapping in personal, institutional, and regional case studies. The regional scope of the conference are overseas continents and seascapes within the time frame from about the Napoleonic wars to the European de-colonization in the mid-twentieth century (1940s to 1960s).

Programme & Registration

A provisional list of accepted oral and poster presentations can be found here.

Please visit history.icaci.org/brussels-2023 for more details and the link to the registration page. The early bird registration deadline is 5 May.

The conference’s scientific programme of lectures will take place all day on Tuesday 30 May and on Wednesday morning 31 May. Optional free tours are planned both on the afternoon of Wednesday 31 May, visiting the map collection of the AfricaMuseum, as well as on the morning of Thursday 1 June, for a visit to the Map room of the Royal Library of Belgium, themed “Not just Congo. Belgian colonial mapping in the 19th and 20th centuries”.

We hope to see many of you there!

Soetkin Vervust
Secretary ICA Commission on the History of Cartography

Category: Commission News, History of Cartography

Tag: Belgium

Call for Presentations: ICC 2023 Pre-Conference Workshop on Cartography and AI (MapAI)

The ICA Commissions on Visual Analytics and Cognitive Issues in Geographic Information Visualization are pleased to announce a Workshop on Cartography and AI (MapAI 2023) taking place on August 12, 2023 in Stellenbosch, South Africa before the ICC 2023.

Motivation

Cartographers have assessed the potential use of artificial intelligence for mapping for decades. Early work on expert systems explored AI as early as the 1980s (e.g., Buttenfield 1984; Fisher & Mackaness 1987; Brassel & Weibel, 1988; Johnson & Basoglu 1989). The AI tools of the time were limited by the (lack of) availability of computing power and data. More recently, as AI tools have become both more powerful and easier to use, a few cartographers and computer scientists have begun experimenting with artificial intelligence technologies to see how they might be applied to maps and mapping processes (e.g., Kang et al., 2019; Zhao et al, 2021; Christophe et al., 2022; Zhou et al, 2022; Santos et al., 2023). Others have made initial efforts to review the potential of AI technologies for cartography (Kang et al., 2022), laying out some possibilities and also some points of caution by identifying ethical issues these technologies raise and/or exacerbate. The 2022 launches of DALL·E 2, ChatGPT, and other AI platforms have caught the attention of the general public by making artificial intelligence technologies easy to use for a range of everyday tasks. Some cartographers have already put these to use for assisting their mapping practice (see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCOpxy3wk-o). There is much more for cartographers to explore, including the potential impacts of the use of AI on map users’ and map makers’ cognitive processes (see Keskin & Kettunen, 2023 for an initial investigation).

In this workshop, we aim to bring together ideation and practical experimentation to collaboratively explore some of the potential and limits of current AI technologies for cartographic practice and map use.

Call for Presentations

The first half of our planned 1-day workshop will be for participants to present Lightning Talks. In 5 minutes presenters will showcase either one major challenge or one significant opportunity you see that intersects between AI and Cartography.

These presentations should focus on frontiers in cartographic research that intersect with AI tools or techniques, and creative/unorthodox approaches are welcomed. Work-in-progress is the intended target, versus projects that are already fully completed.

Example topics could include, but are not limited to:

Implications of deepfake maps and satellite images
Machine-learning / AI based map updating based on image input
AI-generated wayfinding directions
Geographic aspects of algorithmic bias
Automated means of iterating design elements in cartographic layouts
Explainable AI & mapping
Natural language interaction with maps
Mapping with ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc…
Human-machine collaboration using maps

Workshop presentations will be used to motivate group discussions and hands-on experimentation in the second half of the planned 1-day workshop. We are excited to work together to push the limits of various AI mechanisms for cartographic design and inquiry, learning along the way about where the frontiers lie for future research and applications of AI in Cartography.

Submission Details

Please submit an abstract of <250 words that showcases either one major challenge or one significant opportunity that intersects AI and Cartography by May 15, 2023 to EasyChair. All submissions will be reviewed by the workshop organizers for clarity and fit with workshop themes. A final workshop agenda including accepted talks will be communicated by June 23, 2023.

Venue & Workshop Logistics

This workshop will take place on August 12, 2023 in Stellenbosch, South Africa. If you are attending the ICC 2023 in Cape Town, Stellenbosch is roughly an hour away by Taxi/Private Car. We recommend staying in Stellenbosch for 1 or 2 nights if you prefer not to commute to/from Cape Town. Stellenbosch is famous for its wineries and there are many scenic hotels located on wineries nearby.

We will notify authors and publish a preliminary workshop schedule by June 23, 2023.

Organizers

Amy L. Griffin, RMIT
Anthony C. Robinson, Penn State University
Arzu Çöltekin, FHNW – University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland

Please find more information on the workshop website.

Category: Cognitive Issues in Geographic Information Visualization, Commission News, Visual Analytics

Tag: ICC2023, pre-conference workshop, South Africa

Announcement: Pre-ICC2023 Workshop on OGC Standards for making geospatial data, maps and charts findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable

The ICA Commission on SDI and Standards and the Open Geospatial Consortium will jointly organize the pre-ICC 2023 Workshop on OGC Standards for making geospatial data, maps and charts findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

The workshop will be held on August 11, 2023 at the Colophon Room, SANBI, Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, Cape Town.

Workshop program

Introduction to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and its standards by Gobe Hobona, Director of Product Management for Standards, OGC
Technical foundations of OGC standards by Franz-Josef Behr, Co-Chair: ICA Commission on SDI & Standards
OGC API Standards by Gobe Hobona, Director of Product Management for Standards, OGC
Further into OGC API Standards by Gobe Hobona, Director of Product Management for Standards, OGC

For more information visit the workshop website.

Category: Commission News, SDI and Standards

Tag: ICC2023, OGC, pre-conference workshop, South Africa

Invitation to participate in the pre-ICC2023 Workshop on Cartography Connecting Schools

The ICA Commissions on Cartography and Children and Maps and Graphics for Blind and Partially Sighted People have the pleasure to invite all interested colleagues to participate in the Joint ICA Workshop Cartography Connecting Schools on August 12th, 2023.

The workshop is a gathering of experts, researchers, professionals, and students in the field of Cartography from around the world. It will provide an excellent platform to exchange ideas, share research findings, and foster collaborations with colleagues from different countries and backgrounds.

The workshop will take place as hybrid event: We will meet at Cape Town International Convention Center (CTICC) and the participants will also be able to join via Google Meet. Registration is free.

We believe that your participation would add significant value to the event, and we would be honored if you could join us.

Please visit our workshop website for more information and registration.

Category: Cartography and Children, Commission News, Maps and Graphics for Blind and Partially Sighted People

Tag: ICC2023, pre-conference workshop, South Africa

International Journal of Cartography, Issue 9.1, 2023 published

The new issue of the International Journal of Cartography is now available on the Journal website.

The list of papers published is provided below:

Leilani A. Arthurs, Sarah P. Baumann, Joel M. Rice & Shelby Dianne Litton, in their contribution, The Development of Individuals’ Map-Reading Skill: What Research and Theory Tell Us, addressed the question: “How do individuals develop map-reading skill from childhood to adulthood?”. Their research analysed articles related to ‘Fischer’s skill theory’ and subsequently developed a theory of map-reading skill development.
The Second Engraver of the Mercator-Thevet Map, by A. Terry Bahill, reports on research undertaken to identify the two engravers of a map held by the US Library of Congress accredited to Gerald Mercator and André Thevet (1569).
Martin Davis’s and Alexander Kent’s research analysed symbology from the global mapping initiatives of Soviet 1:10,000 city plans of La Paz, Bolivia (1977), Port-au-Prince, Haiti (1983) and Frankfurt am Main, West Germany (1983). It compared the symbology employed in the Soviet maps with contemporary OpenStreetMap coverage of the same cities. Their paper, Soviet city plans and OpenStreetMap: a comparative analysis, reports that results from the research indicate that Soviet and OSM symbologies are similarly comprehensive regarding some topographic features, but dissimilar in the way that physical and urban environments are portrayed.
Use of Cartosat-1 elevation data for local-scale terrain studies in India: A case study by Rahul Ranade describes the application of CartoDEM to develop a coarse geographic narrative of the terrain at the tehsil level. This was undertaken in a study area in Udaipur district of Rajasthan, India.
Chenyu Zuo, Linfang Ding, Xiaoyu Liu, Hui Zhang and Liqiu Meng contribute a paper entitled Map-based Dashboard Design with Open Government Data for Learning and Analysis of Industrial Innovation Environment. Their paper reports that they designed and implemented a map-based dashboard – InDash – to represent spatial and semantic information of the industrial innovation environment at different levels of detail. Twenty-four relevant factors – from economy, habitation, infrastructure, and research & development – were employed to illustrate the design.
Well-Being Evocative Places: Validating the Conceptual Model of an Evocative Place Based on the Inter-Rater Reliability Test by Alenka Poplin, Erin Duffer and Georg Gartner complete the research papers in this issue. Here, data was collected relating to evocative places – places that evoke emotions, memories and images – and descriptions were collected in a series of mapping experiments undertaken in three cities. The Conceptual Model of an Evocative Place (CMEP) was designed based on the collected data from the three cities studied. It was then evaluated using the Inter-Rater Reliability test as a framework.
As is usual in all issues of this Journal we include an Invited essay from Imre Demhardt. His piece in this issue is entitled: Allegorical Maps in human shapes.

Two Book Reviews are also included:

Visual analytics for data scientists by Natalia Andrienko, Gennady Andrienko, Georg Fuchs, Aidan Slingsby, Cagatay Turkay and Stefan Wrobel, Springer International Publishing (Switzerland), 2021, 440 pp., GBP 75 (hardback) ISBN 9783030561451. Reviewed by Sarah Battersby.
Newcastle Upon Tyne: Mapping the City by Michael Barke, Brian Robson and Anthony Champion, Edinburgh, Birlinn, 2021, GBP 30 (hardback) ISBN 9781780277264. Reviewed by Peter Vujakovic.

Also, you may have papers that you might wish to publish in the Journal. We would welcome the submission of appropriate papers.

William Cartwright, Melbourne, Australia
Anne Ruas, Paris, France
Editors, International Journal of Cartography

Category: General News

Tag: International Journal of Cartography