Technology Forum - Modern Cartography

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Georg Gartner
President, International
Cartographic Association
Austria



BIO
Georg Gartner is a Full Professor at the Research Group in Cartography at the Vienna University of Technology. He holds graduate qualifications in geography and cartography from the University of Vienna and received his Ph.D. and his Habilitation from the Vienna University of Technology. He was awarded a Fulbright grant to the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1997 and a research visiting fellowship to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2000, to South China Normal University in 2006 and to the University of Nottingham in 2009. He is Dean of Academic Affairs for Geodesy and Geoinformation at Vienna University of Technology. He is responsible organizer of the International Symposia on Location Based Services & TeleCartography and Editor of the Book Series “Lecture Notes on Geoinformation and Cartography” by Springer and Editor of the Journal on LBS by Taylor & Francis. He serves as President of the International Cartographic Association.

ABSTRACT
Modern Cartography and the role of the International Cartographic Association
Cartography is seen by many as facing a change of paradigms currently, triggered by technological challenges. As a result of innovative available technologies like the Internet, Multimedia and telecommunication infrastructure it becomes considerable, that cartographic communication processes can be realized which deliver user-tailored information to a specific user everywhere (“ubiquitous”) and anytime.
This paper reviews the enormous diversity of fundamental questions which are appearing in modern cartography based on new technologies. It argues that a theoretical fundament is necessary to be able to define the core elements of a discipline. The role of international efforts in this respect is discussed and will be highlighted. By discussing the existing instruments of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) the vision of a further development of modern cartography and related disciplines is discussed.
Prof. Milan Konecny
Faculty of Science,
Institute of Geography,
Masaryk University, Czech
Republic



BIO
Prof. Konecny is the Professor of Cartography and Geoinformastics of the Masaryk university, Brno. He was a Guest Profesor of Vienna University, Austria, Technical University in Ust Kamenogorsk, Kazachstan and The Chinese University in Hong Kong, China. Prof. Konecny takes the leadership in many international professional bodies, during 2003-7 was President of International Cartographic Association (ICA], now serves as chairman of ICA Commission on Cartography on Early Warning and Crises Management”, the Vice-President of International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) and Academician and President of European Center of International Eurasian Academy.
Prof. M. Konecny leaded several European and domestic reesearch projects. The most important have been project of Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic the Dynamic Geovizualization in Crises Management and contemporary he is a member of high level EU-China project on Disaster Risk Management.
He is a member of editoval boards of prestigious journals like International Journal on Digital Earth (IJDE) and Annals of GIS (both published by Taylor&Francis]
His research interests include the role of geoinformatics and cartography in Early Warning and Crises Management, dynamic geovisualization, creation of SDI in Europe (INSPIRE and GMES), design of Information and Knowledge-based Society. He is a co-author of first GIS book in Europe in 1985, and editor of EW and CM book in Springer Verlag (in 2010) and two specialized issues on Geoinformatics and Cartography in Early Warning and Crises Management in IJDE).

ABSTRACT
Context and Adaptive Cartography for Risk and Disaster Management
The Cartography is developing in the environment which is influenced by several important aspects. First are technological (progressive) aspects linked with Web 2.0 and Web 3 in preparation with potentials of crowd sourcing. Second is organizational – continuous building of SDIs with integration tendencies on the continents (e.g. in Europe the INSPIRE and GMES), global projects and initiatives (GEO, GEOSS, Galileo, etc.). Third ones are societal requests. One of the most important of them is efforts to find new paradigm in Risk and Disaster Management with final target of their reduction. Fourth are economical complex conditions of contemporary World and financial potentials for solving them. Fifth are research ones, when potentials of cartography are developed in new areas of context and adaptive cartography and used for solving of new types of tasks including more attention of individual skills and abilities of users (decision makers) in specific situations like disaster management. Main idea of context and adaptive cartography is to create a real-time individual cartographic representation from a common data sources to achieve efficient support for decision-making processes in emergency situations.
The principles of adaptation cartography deal with the development of so-called contexts. The context is a set of determinants identifying particular cartographic representations. If something happens the map context is changed and an appropriate visual representation is selected. The author of the paper informs about some theoretical and practical steps to realize such approaches.
Key words: context and adaptive cartography, crowd sourcing, SDI, disaster/risk/emergency management, cognitive style

Prof. D. R. Fraser Taylor
FRSC Director, Geomatics and
Cartographic Research Centre, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton
University, Canada




BIO
Professor Taylor received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Edinburgh and did post graduate work at the University of London and Harvard University. Currently he is Distinguished Research Professor of International Affairs and Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He is also Director Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading cartographers. Dr. Taylor’s main research interests in cartography lie in the application of geographic information processing to the analysis of socio-economic issues and the presentation of the results in the form of cybercartographic atlases. Cybercartography is an innovative new concept which he first introduced in 1997. The theory and practice of Cybercartography continue to be developed and expanded. Dr. Taylor’s current funded research involves working with aboriginal and Inuit communities to empower these communities to express their perceptions of their own environmental and socio-economic reality in new ways utilizing the Cybercartographic Atlas Framework. This includes the innovative open source software called Nunaliit which can be used by individuals with little knowledge of geographic information processing to create their own atlas content. Cybercartography is very much a Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 concept and provides a new framework for “crowd sourcing”, encouraging communities and individuals to tell their own stories. Currently Dr. Taylor is Chair of the International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM). and Chair of the International Advisory Group on the Arctic Spatial Data Infrastructure. He is also a member of the Mapping Africa for Africans Working Group of the International Cartographic Association, a member of the Joint Board of the Geospatial Information Societies and a member of the UN initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management. He was Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS) from 1970 to l985, and President of the Canadian Cartographic Association (CCA) in both 1978 and 1979. His contributions have been recognized by an Honorary Life Membership in CAAS and by two Awards of Distinction by CCA. He served as Vice-President of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) from 1984-1987, as President from 1987-1995 and as a member of the Executive Committee as Past President for the period 1995-99. Dr. Taylor received an Honorary Fellowship from ICA in 1999.

ABSTRACT
Cybercartography
Tim Berners-Lee has, when discussing the future of the Web, identified two major challenges: linking datasets on disparate topics and displaying the new information created in innovative ways. The Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre does both using the theory and practice of cybercartography and in this respect we are at the cutting edge of the Web 3.0 era. Cybercartography is a holistic and dynamic concept which continues to develop in an iterative fashion through the interaction of both theory and practice. It has relationships to other developments in both geography and cartography, especially critical cartography, participatory mapping, neogeography, volunteered geographic information and others and incorporates many of the technologies of GIS. Cybercartography predates some of these but includes elements of all these approaches. It is the holistic nature of cybercartography which sets it apart. The paper will discuss the seven key elements and six central concepts of cybercartography and illustrate these by demonstrating some recent cybercartographic atlases.

Prof. Menno-Jan Kraak
ICA Vice-President and
University of Twente
The Netherlands




BIO
Menno-Jan Kraak (1958) has a Doctor's (PhD) degree in Cartography of Delft Technical University (1988). In 1981 he graduated in Cartography from the Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Utrecht University (cum laude). After his compulsory army service (military geography) he started to work at the Faculty of Geodesy, Delft University of Technology as (senior) lecturer in Cartography in 1983. In 1996 he started at ITC as professor in Geovisualization (as of 2010 University of Twente). In 1998 an additional appointment followed as professor in New visualization techniques in Cartography at Department of GeoSciences, Utrecht University. Currently he is head of ITC's Geo-Information Processing Department.

He wrote more than 200 publications on cartography and GIS. His most visible publications are three books on aspects of cartography:
Cartography, visualization of geospatial data (with Ormeling) and published by Prentice Hall, (translated in 5 languages), Webcartography, developments and prospects (editor with Brown) published by Taylor & Francis, and Exploring Geovisualization (edited with Dykes and
MacEachren) published by Elsevier.

He is a member of the editorial board of several international journals in the field of Cartography and GIScience. He has been board member and president of the Netherlands Cartographic Society and of the Society Geo-Information Netherlands (GIN). He is active in the International Cartographic Association as Vice-President, as National Delegate and has been (co-)chair of the Commission on Visualization and Virtual Environments.

In the Netherlands he is chair of the board of GIMA (a MSc offered by the University of Twente/ITC, Utrecht University, Wageningen University and Delft University of Technology, chair of the Foundation Scientific Atlas of the Netherlands; was member of the Academic advisory Council of research program 'Ruimte voor Geoinformatie'(2006-2010). He is Principle Investigator of the ITC research program Space-Time Data Integration and Visualization (STDIV).

ABSTRACT
From cartography to geovisual analytics Today, society has an attitude to demand up-to-date, or (near-)real-time, information, about virtually anything, anywhere, and anytime for their decision making. In many situations location - and time - can make a difference, and this it requires maps to make sense of the data. The challenge for cartography is the continuous development of new options for information provision, that benefit from fast development of the information technology. This should result in new modes and models of user interaction, and in novel graphic data representations. This contribution will look into these trends based on ‘How to offer a diversity of visual representations that support the user during any phase of the spatio-temporal data handling process?’, and ‘How can these visualizations help to understand the information displayed, improve insight, and support reasoning and decision making?’ A third question that links both previous questions is ‚Does it work?’. It will demonstrate the strength of the combination of the computer (automated analysis techniques and geocomputation) and of the human (interactive visualizations for an effective understanding, reasoning and decision making).