ICA is a broad-based organisation of members and affiliates from a wide range of representative bodies and interest groups: academia, commerce, government and learned societies. One important ICA aim is, in the wording of its mission statement, “to carry out or to promote multi-national cartographic research in order to solve scientific and applied problems.” Such research is primarily carried out in the ICA Commissions, research being their major work. Currently such commissions operate independently, although there are many examples of co-operation, notably in hosting joint meetings. The presentation of an ICA Research Agenda has as its main purpose co-ordination of research in Cartography and GIScience.

Forward-looking
It is also hoped that the new Research Agenda will help initiate research in subjects that cartographers were previously reluctant to approach, and to highlight topics that can be collaboratively investigated by researchers from ICA and other organisations. The importance of research agendas for international associations has been highlighted by the United Nations International Council on Scientific Unions (ICSU), which has recommended their adoption to help promote sustainable development and scientific progress. A first draft of the ICA Research Agenda was presented to the International Cartographic Conference in Moscow this summer, and ideas were discussed regarding how to adopt and implement it. The agenda reflects the nature and scope of ICA Commissions in existence from 2003-2007, and thus the initial direction of the document uses their structure and characterises the focus of each group. However, it is also a forward-looking document, identifying areas of future research. These were determined using “mind-map” techniques in meetings with commission chairs and in Executive Committee meetings.

Energising
The following “keywords” (which arenot mutually exclusive) have been presented as the framework for the Research Agenda:
- Geographic Information: its modelling, storing, processing and semantics
- Metadata and Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs): standards, design, implementation and use of both descriptive data and the nature of large, possibly multi-resolution databases
- Geospatial analysis and modelling: extracting added value from processing, computation and decision-making associated with mapping
- Usability: issues connecting the human user of spatial data to its representation and location
- Geovisualisation: covering dynamic, interactive, multidimensional data and some associated approaches such as visual analytics, and technologies, such as VR and multimedia
- Map production: addressing stages in mapping, technical processes and the resulting range of map types and their handling
- Cartographic theory: covering theories of cartographic conception, map semantics, syntactics and pragmatics, and analytical cartography
- History of Cartography and GI Science: the development of methods and practices throughout history that inform our current activities
- Education: informing and training future generations whilst optimising contemporary learning practices
- Society: considering how spatial-data handling of all forms is grounded in societal structures.

A further role of a research agenda is to help define the scope and nature of our discipline. It is hoped that presentation of the agenda will encourage all carto–graphers to energise their approach to their subject and commit themselves to a programme of work positively addressing all these topics.