Discussing Atlases

Two years ago, this column reported that the ICA Commission on Atlases had met in Romania, Algeria and Chile, and was about to host a major workshop in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The renewed Commission, its new Terms of Reference for the 2011-2015 period having been approved by the ICA General Assembly last year, continues in 2012 with its worldwide mission to improve atlas cartography.

The Commission, along with the National Committee of Geographers of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Geographical Society, the Ukrainian Cartographic Association, the Institute of Geography of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and the State Scientific and Production Enterprise Kartographia, is organising the 5th All-Ukrainian Scientific and Practical Conference on National Mapping entitled ‘National Atlases in the Formation of the Global Information Space’ [1]. The event will be held this month (13-14 September) at the Kiev House of Scientists in Kiev, Ukraine

The programme will address a range of important themes: characteristics of national and regional atlases of different countries of the world, modern conceptual approaches to the creation of national and regional atlases, problems of information reflection and co-ordination of thematic maps of border regions, and software and technology for the creation of paper and electronic versions of national atlases. With its official languages confirmed as Ukrainian, Russian and English, this international conference will further develop the mature atlas business in Ukraine.

On 15-16 November 2012, the Commission will collaborate with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Geography and Natural Resources Research, the Geographical Society of China, the Surveying and Mapping Society of China, and the Geology Society of China, in organising a ‘Workshop on City Atlases’ as part of the 7th National Conference of Cartography and GIS: Digital Cities Benefit Human Beings. The workshop will take place at the Institute of Geography and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou, China, and will focus on various aspects of city atlases. Considerable local participation is expected.

Meanwhile, in Europe, six ICA Commissions – including the Atlas Commission – are jointly organising the International Symposium on Service-Oriented Mapping (SOMAP 2012). The themes covered in detail by this symposium, which will be held at the Austrian Federal Office for Metrology and Surveying (BEV) in Vienna, Austria, on 22-23 November 2012, will include: modern map production methods, service-oriented architectures for mapping and geobusiness, innovative map applications, geobusiness models and map dissemination, (service-oriented) crowdsourcing, joining distributed sources (legal, organisational, technical, etc.) for map production, licences, co-operation and prices, long-term management of (map) production flows, preservation of service-oriented maps, projections in service-oriented mapping, security aspects and protection of critical SDI, smart maps, use and user issues in service-oriented mapping, location-centred mapping, browser-based service-oriented mapping, and application-based service-oriented mapping. The Commission on Atlases will organise a special session with presentations of new atlases from Central Europe and beyond. For more information about the scope of service-oriented mapping and its contemporary relationship with networked spatial infrastructures, and for details of the symposium, visit website 2.