Latin American Perspective

The ICA Executive Committee held a meeting in Mexico City in February 2005 at the invitation of the Pan American Institute for Geography and History (PAIGH). This business meeting resul-ted in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by ICA president Milan Konecny and PAIGH secretary-general Santiago Borrero to "advance spatial data infrastructures at multi-levels, as in the Global SDI and Global Mapping initiatives."

One major item discussed at the meeting was preparation for the 22nd International Cartographic Conference (ICC) in A Coruña, Spain, to be held from 9th to 16th July 2005. A record number of abstracts have been submitted and over five hundred oral presentations will be given, along with over two hundred posters; www.icc2005.org/ shows full details. A number of associated professional workshops and ICA Commission meetings will also be held during July, both in A Coruña and elsewhere in Spain.

The Hispanic community is deeply involved in this conference and in the development of cartography in general. The EC visit to Mexico was a related attempt by ICA to reach out yet farther to Latin American cartographers. Already the vibrant nature of geomatics in the western hemisphere is reflected in the United Nations Regional Cartographic Conferences for the Americas. The 8th conference in this series will be held in New York from 27th June to 1st July this year. PAIGH, with 21 member nations and four permanent observer nations, plays a significant role in promoting and supporting this international activity. Created in 1928 as a correspondent member of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Institute is located in Mexico City, providing technical assistance, training through research centres, distribution of publications and supporting technical meetings on cartography, geography, history and geophysics.

The interest shown by PAIGH in carto-graphy includes a number of Committees (Fundamental Geospace Data, Institutional Enhancement and Technical Cooperation, Thematic Applications, and Standards) each of which has working groups. Interests in geography and geophysics are similarly organised. In addition, one of the Institute’s journals, Revista Cartographica, is used to disseminate research findings and overviews of cartographic activity in the Americas.

Such activity is now concentrating on the need for SDI development in Latin America and the Caribbean region. Nineteen SDI initiatives have been identified at a national level, although regional integration is not proceeding quickly. An international committee, the Permanent Committee on Spatial Data Infrastructure for the Americas (PC-IDEA), is active under the aegis of INEGI, the Mexican national mapping authority based in Aguascalientes. These contributions from Latin America to the development of Global SDI are significant; cartographic and mapping developments in Latin America are important for the rest of the world. The surface picture of uniformity masks a host of differing national approaches to the handling of spatial data; this diversity is reflected in the range of papers from Latin America to be presented at the ICC in A Coruña in July.