Let’s Make the World a Better Place with Maps

Menno-Jan从是新当选的总统the International Cartographic Association (ICA). Cartographer Kraak is a professor in Geovisual Analytics and Cartography at the University of Twente, ITC in The Netherlands, and is a long-standing and active member of the organisation he now heads up. Over the next four years, Kraak will shape the policy of the ICA, striving to make further progress on the steps taken by his predecessor Georg Gartner while naturally also introducing some ideas of his own. His goal is to make the world a better place through maps. He recently shared his thoughts with188金宝搏特邀。

(By Durk Haarsma, publishing director, GIM International)

You’ve just become the new president of ICA. What are your goals?

I’ve got four main focal points for my period as president. First of all, the map! We covered that with the ‘Year of the Map’, of course, in which the map plays a central role. Secondly and thirdly, our internal and external relationships. Internally, we have quite a ‘bottom-up’ organisation; all working groups are initiated by members, and the work has to be done by them as well. I would like to see how we can make that process work even better. The same goes for external relationships; we have immensely increased our commitment in the last few years, especially through the Joint Board of Geospatial Societies but also through UN-GGIM, which has recognised and endorsed our International Map Year. That puts a responsibility on our shoulders. The fourth area of focus is membership. We have around 70 members – i.e. national organisations – but the potential is 200, so there’s plenty of scope to expand our number of members.

新成员的主要好处是什么？他们为什么要加入？

Most importantly, membership provides them with a gateway to ICA’s global network. There’s a lot of information exchange between members and possibilities to work together and learn from each other. Basically they are gaining access to knowledge within the association. I know that is difficult to measure, which is why it’s often hard to convince member states or national organisations to become members. By the way, a lot of that knowledge is provided to students or young researchers, for instance, in the form of a grant or a reimbursement for visiting a conference. Such benefits are of course very easy to measure.

Do you see a changing role for learned societies like ICA?

Well, just as membership no longer goes without saying nowadays, as an association you should always keep an open mind about your own role. But I still believe that if you want to promote your profession, coming together in real life is most effective. Even virtual contact via Skype or other tools doesn’t work half as well. The ‘platform role’ of ICA remains a very important aspect, enabling people – from many different backgrounds but all united by an interest in the cartography profession – to come together. From commissions and working groups to conferences and congresses, attendance can vary from a few dozen to thousands.

What was your main motivation behind taking on this role?

My love for the profession! I’ve been active in ICA for such a long time. I’ve acted as vice-chair and chair in several commissions and I was vice-president for eight years. My professional life has been intertwined with the association, so I guess this was a logical step. But I must stress that it’s also a great honour!

目前，司法和制图的最大变化是什么？

That’s a difficult one… story mapping is very much a hot topic these days and the newest GIS techniques are perfect for portraying a story in a map. However, in the early days of my career, and even before that, a map was published in a booklet or atlas including a small text explaining the map. In my view, that was the same as story mapping. Today’s IT tools are making it easier, fancier and more accessible for everybody, but the concept of story mapping, i.e. telling a story through a map, has been around for many years. I don’t see any Nobel Prize-winning discoveries, but what is gradually changing is the individualisation and personification of maps on the one hand and how the individual responds to the map on the other.

In188金宝搏特邀we keep highlighting the fact that 75% of land-citizen relationships are not documented. Is that another hot topic in your world?

老实说，在制作地图的艺术方面，会计地图并不是制图师最具挑战性的工作，而我们的委员会现在都没有涵盖。联合国的可持续发展目标将公民与地球之间的关系进一步，我认为作为数据产出的地图可以在这方面有所作为。

How do you envisage the role of the ‘modern-day’ cartographer?

现代制图师的最重要特征之一是能够聆听并与地图的用户联系，以建立以用户为中心的设计。现代制图师需要问并接收答案 - 诸如：此用户想要什么？该地图需要回答哪个问题？必须讲哪个故事？然后，制图师必须能够将这些问题和答案转换为正确的地图。另一个重要的事情是快速分析数据，以找出数据是否包含答案。

Your presidency starts in the International Year of the Map. What is the main goal of this themed year?

我们想提高对地图的认识。我们正在通过Un-ggim进行此操作，因此我们的所有姊妹组织（如无花果，ISPRS和GSDI）都会看到许多地图和解释地图可以为他们做什么。我们启动了一个专门的网站，项目和组织可以在其中展示他们的工作。我们已经写了一本书，标题为The World of Mapswhich has already been downloaded more than 15,000 times so I believe we are succeeding in creating more awareness.

What other projects is ICA working on?

我们计划通过分享地图如何帮助他们提供对目标并监控世界进步的最佳实践来支持联合国实现新的可持续发展目标的努力。我们还与出版公司Taylor和Francis一起启动了新期刊，称为The The国际制图杂志, and we have become a member of the International Council for Science (http://www.icsu.org)。我们参与了许多OpenGeo活动以及Maps4All。我们所有的佣金都非常“活着和踢”。当我来时，很多事情都已经到了。我继承了一个非常健康和活跃的组织，因此信誉归功于我们的前总统和我的前任乔治·加特纳（Georg Gartner）做得很好！

您想与我们的读者分享什么消息？

A map can help you solve a lot of problems: from ‘How to get from A to B’ to ‘How can I reduce poverty?’. First of all I want to create awareness among professionals and map users about the problem-solving ability of maps in particular and the field of cartography in general. I’ve even tried to coin a catchphrase: ‘Let’s make the world a better place with maps’.

Menno-Jan Kraak

Menno-Jan Kraak was elected president of the International Cartographic Association at the ICA Congress in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 2015. Kraak graduated cum laude from the Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Utrecht University, in 1981. He obtained a PhD degree in Cartography from Delft University of Technology in 1988 and, after a career at the Faculty of Geodesy, Delft University of Technology he joined the University of Twente/ITC as a professor of Geovisual Analytics and Cartography in 1996. Currently he is principle investigator for the ITC research programme Spatio-Temporal Analytics, Maps and Processing (STAMP) and member of theTwente Graduate School。他曾担任荷兰制图学会和荷兰地理信息社会（GIN）的董事会成员兼总裁。他一直活跃于国际制图协会，担任副主席，并担任国家代表，并担任（可视化和虚拟环境委员会的联合主席）。Menno-Jan Kraak曾担任与制图和GIS相关的200多家出版物的（包括编写几本书和担任各种制图期刊的编辑）的（包括）作家。