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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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 into chapter 8 by Ernst Spiess.
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.
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
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.
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).
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
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Please find more information on the workshop website.
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.
For more information visit the workshop website.
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.
The new issue of the International Journal of Cartography is now available on the Journal website.
Two Book Reviews are also included:
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
The ICA Commission on Location Based Services, Commission on Geospatial Analysis and Modelling, and Working Group on Digital Transformation of National Mapping Agencies will jointly organize the pre-ICC 2023 Symposium on Location-Based Big Data and GeoAI (LocBigDataAI 2023).
The symposium will be held in hybrid mode, and will be associated with ICC 2023. It is a follow-up of the successful previous conferences of ICLSM 2015, LSMTD 2017, and LocBigData 2019.
Acquisition, management, and analytics of location-based big data
Geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI)
Applications of location-based big data and GeoAI
Social and ethical issues of location-based big data and GeoAI
You are invited to submit work-in-progress or position papers with a length of 400-1200 words in PDF format at EasyChair. If accepted, at least one of the authors must attend (online or in-person) the symposium to present the work. Authors of selected submissions will be invited to submit full papers for considerations for publications in a journal special issue.
For more information visit the conference website: https://lbs.icaci.org/locbigdata2023/
We invite you to participate in the 12th Mountain Cartography Workshop at Snow Mountain Ranch, Colorado, April 11—15, 2023.
Registration is already open!
For more information about the workshop visit www.shadedrelief.com/workshop/