The Special Issue of the International Journal of Cartography: Issue 7.3, 2021 Special Issue ICC2021, Florence, Italy – part 1, is now published on-line. The print version of the issue will follow this.
Two Special Issues will be published to coincide with the conference: Issue 7.3 2021 (this issue) and Issue 8.1 2022. As the conference will take place in December 2021, all Special Issue papers will be published on-line before the Conference takes place, with print issues to follow.
Editorial: The International Cartographic Conference 2021 – Firenze, Italy: a truly wonderful occasion to celebrate the outcomes and advances of international collaboration and the resilience of Italian Cartographers
The international Cartography and GIScience community were gratified to receive news that the 2021 International Cartographic Conference would take place in Firenze, Italy between 14-18 December, in spite of the many hurdles that had to be overcome by the Associazione Italiana di Cartografia to ensure that this important event took place in this time of global disruption and uncertainty due to COVID-19. Our Italian colleagues are to be congratulated on their dedicated and diligent endeavours to ensure that the International Cartographic Association’s community will be able to meet and advance the theory and praxis of Cartography and GIScience.
The Journal editors worked closely with the Conference Publications Chair, Professor Paola Zamperlin of the Università di Pisa to progress papers for review and potential publishing. Selected papers submitted for the ‘Advances in Cartography’ publishing route for ICC2021 were considered for publication in the Special Issues of the Journal. Ninety-nine full papers were submitted to the ‘Advances’ publishing route. These papers were reviewed initially by the conference LOC, and evaluated by both national and international reviewers. After these reviews were complete and the outcomes considered by the LOC, selected papers were recommended to us for consideration for further review, with the potential of publishing in the Journal. Twenty-four selected papers were recommended by the LOC to the IJC editors. From these papers, sixteen papers were identified for consideration and a further two blind reviews were conducted on these papers. The papers published in Issue 7.3, 2021 and Issue 8.1, 2022 were realised by this process. We thank all LOC reviewers and Journal reviewers for their support of the review process, the Journal and, more broadly, the researchers whose work that advances the research goals of the International Cartographic Association are reported upon in these Special Issues of the Journal.
The papers herein begin with a contribution by Radek Barvir and Vit Vozenilek, with their contribution entitled Graphic map load measuring tool – development and verification. They explain that ‘Map load’ is a map property quantifying the amount of map content in cartographic products. This paper presents information about an easy-to-use and freely available tool GMLMT (Graphic Map Load Measuring Tool) that applies a metric averaging of the amount of visible structures in a map using an edge-detection approach to measure graphic map load of raster representations of maps. The process of designing the tool is described and the outcomes of their experiments is reported.
This is followed by the paper Spatial thinking in cartography teaching for schoolchildren by Sônia Maria Vanzella Castellar and Barbara Gomes Flaire Jordão. The paper provides the results of a study that investigated school teaching practises that relate spatial thinking with the learning of maps from a cartographic education perspective. The study was undertaken to support further research on school cartography and the use of digital cartographic resources in formal and informal teaching situations.
David Fairbairn, Georg Gartner and Mike Peterson examine the distinctiveness of the discipline of cartography and the success of the human endeavour that has produced maps. This paper is entitled Epistemological thoughts on the success of maps and the role of cartography. The authors argue that not only that cartography is a coherent and distinctive discipline, but that human society cannot function without maps. The paper concludes with pointers to the functional definition of the map.
Evaluating a location-based game to support citizens situated reflection on history: A mixed method approach is contributed by Catherine Jones. Catherine’s paper describes the process and findings of a critical evaluation conducted for a custom-made Location Based Game, designed to support reflection on social history. A ‘Think-aloud’ protocol was used in an evaluation in Valletta, Malta and adapted to the ‘Remind study’ protocol to explore participant experience in Luxembourg.
All of the issues of the International Journal of Cartography include a Column, entitled MAPS IN HISTORY, contributed by Imre Demhardt. In this issue, Professor Demhardt provides a timely column on the Renaissance frescoed map of Tuscany. This article describes the first 31 of 54 map-decorated cabinet fronts of the then known world in the Sala della Carte Geografiche in Palazzo Vecchio painted by Egnazio Danti in 1563–1575.
The International Journal of Cartography, since its launch some 7 years ago, has been committed to realising the publication of selected research papers submitted to the review stream of International Cartographic Conferences. As the conference will take place in December 2021, the two Special Issues are to be published to coincide with the conference are Issue 7.3 2021 (this issue) and Issue 8.1 2022. All on-line versions of the papers were published in 2021. The print version of Issue 7.3 will be published in 2021 and Issue 8.1 in 2022. (As is the case with all of our issues, the on-line versions of papers are published first, then the print versions.)
The international Cartography and GIScience community are indebted members of the Associazione Italiana di Cartografia and the conference team, led by Professor Giuseppe Scanu, for their unwavering commitment to ensure that ICC2021, a truly wonderful occasion, will take place in Firenze in December 2021.
William Cartwright, Anne Ruas and Paola Zamperlin
Melbourne | Paris | Pisa
