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Tania Rossetto and Laura Lo Presti seek to rescue the national map from nationalism. Or at least from that nationalism characterized by reactionary, tradition-bound, and exclusionary practices and imaginaries. The authors provide readers with an insightful and challenging article on reimagining what national maps are, how they function, and what they could be if recast through the perspective of those often excluded and/or marginalized from the nation. Their article is both a critique of the manner in which national maps have typically been understood in the literature and an invitation to rethink national maps through everyday cartographic practices and vernacular mappings. But what is the national map in the first place? What counts as vernacular? And why is mapping privileged as the site for cultivating progressive imaginaries?

Reimagining the national map should also invite a reimagining of ‘nation’ as a category. Maps do crucial work in stitching together the term's two overlapping meanings – nation as territorial state, and nation as group of people – and maps can, in turn, help to interrogate and reconstitute these meanings. In my commentary, I offer three ways that ‘nation’ is at stake in Rossetto and Lo Presti's argument: (1) in distinguishing cartographies of diversity from cartographies of belonging; (2) in distinguishing a pluralism of bodies from a pluralism of perspectives; and (3) in the choice between renegotiating and abandoning the term itself.

This brief commentary responds to Tania Rossetto and Laura Lo Presti’s (2022) thought-provoking article ‘Reimagining the national map’ by offering three points for reflection. Firstly, it highlights the scholarly value of embracing their notion of the carto-sphere as a mode of enquiry into cartography, maps, and mapping practices. Secondly, it draws attention to the theoretical and empirical questions that arise when we embrace the plurality of cartographic knowledges. Thirdly, it raises some ethical considerations to think through if and when making this shift.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free and editable map of the world. You can think of OSM as the 'Wikipedia' of cartography. An important geospatial component of this database is the road network quality, which is important for applications such as routing and navigation.The objective of this work is the geometric enhancement of the OSM road network using a standard national map as a reference. We use two transformation methods, the global transformation and the local transformation (Delaunay triangulation).This study aims to present a new approach to improve the OSM road network geometrically. To this end, we present a three-step approach based on two techniques that leads to the enhancement of the geometric accuracy of the OSM road network. The first step is the global transformation of the OSM road network. The second step consists of applying the local transformation (Delaunay triangulation) on the OSM road network. In the last step, a comparison between the two methods is examined by calculating the mean and the standard deviation of the checkpoints in order to justify which is the best technique for the geometric enhancement of the OSM road network. We will be particularly interested in the application of this approach in the geometric enhancement / correction where each node of the OSM network will have a newly calculated position. Both approaches have been tested in the region of Oran in Algeria as testing example. The reference data is a city map produced by the National Institute of Cartography and Remote Sensing (INCT) in 2006. The proposed techniques show a clear improvement in geometric accuracy.

The map of the nation may be considered a power tool that persists in reproducing exclusive forms of nationalism in response to migration crises. Yet, in this article, we argue that in an era marked by new, rampant rhetoric regarding nationalism, maps are surprisingly among the few spaces left to cultivate progressive imaginaries of cultural diversity and migration as intrinsic, positive features of national experiences. Discussing critical readings of national mappings, we encourage a dialogue between map studies and nation and nationalism studies through the lens of everyday cartographic nationhood. Taking Italy as a context of analysis, the paper considers subject-centred refabrications of national maps (IncarNations), alien phenomenologies of national cartographic objects (AlieNations), and transformative creative cartographies of migrant nations (ContamiNations) to promote an alternative understanding of the national map as a sensitive tool of pluralism in multicultural societies.

Objective To develop and use planning maps to prioritize and facilitate county‐level recruitment for Together With Veterans (TWV), community‐based rural Veteran suicide prevention program. Method Choropleth maps were created for 49 U.S. states, with four mutually exclusive categories indicating eligibility for the TWV program and increasing levels of need assigned to each county based on (a) percent Veterans Health Administration enrollees residing in rural communities, (b) percent population that are Veterans, and (c) crude suicide mortality rate. Results Of 3113 counties, 78.2% were eligible for TWV and 25.8% met our highest priority definition. A national map and state map were provided to demonstrate final products used to engage stakeholders. A table of recommendations for creating and using planning maps was provided for future projects to reference. Conclusions Geographic information system (GIS) is useful for identifying and prioritizing counties that may benefit most from a rural Veteran suicide prevention program. Choropleth maps allow for dissemination of information about county suicide risk and need for suicide prevention to community members, researchers, and others with a vested interest in suicide reduction. The maps are one tool among many which can support decision‐makers in focusing available resources on populations with the most need.

Contrary to the traditional approach to the analytical category of the national map, Tania Rossetto and Laura Lo Presti use it to highlight the cultural pluralism inherent to the national experience in Italy. Their study offers a conceptual framework with considerable potential, capable of developing an insightful observation into the practices of everyday nationhood through which nationalism takes on concrete meaning. Moreover, the category of the national map appears to be usable in different theoretical paradigms, provided that the conditions for its use are specified.

Currently, a change in the relations between the Police and the society, taking on the form of a dialogue, can be noted in Poland. The paper describes the operation of the National Map of Security Threats, an important element in the process of public security management implemented by the Polish Police. It presents the operation of the tool and discusses the results of personal research into the assessment of the National Map of Security Threats made by the inhabitants of the Silesian Province. The results are then compared with the results of the nationwide survey carried out by the Polish Police. This article consists of several parts. The first indicates that the National Map of Security Threats is a tool of contact between the public and the Police. Based on information obtained from citizens, the Police may use their force and resources more rationally, and can better plan the service of police officers. Within the framework of the dialogue and feedback obtained by the Police communicating with the public, the elimination of risks is more efficient and effective, which in turn reinforces the public sense of security. The National Map of Security Threats has given citizens the opportunity to speak in situations of threat, preceding the occurrence of threats and enabling the implementation of public expectations related to the formation (co-shaping) of security on the local scale. The second part of the article discusses the legislation governing the operation of the National Map of Security Threats. The National Security Risk Map is a platform for the exchange of information between the Police and the public. This is one of the most important elements of socialisation of the Police. The evaluation of the National Map of Security Threats by the users in the light of conducted surveys was presented. The last part of the article discusses the ‘Operation of the National Map of Security Threats’ project which was implemented in the Opole garrison. This project was completed in 2019. It resulted in studies on the assessment of the functioning of the National Security Risk Map in all units of the Opole garrison.

Purpose This paper reflects on the author’s experience of an education foundation’s developing a robust and nationally recognized futures studies practice over a period of 14 years. In so doing, this paper aims to inform other futures studies practitioners about the kinds of considerations that can be encountered, and which must be managed, in starting, developing and maintaining a futures studies practice. Design/methodology/approach Organized around KnowledgeWorks’ triennial forecasts on the future of learning, the paper takes a narrative approach to describe the organization’s and the author’s future studies journeys, examining ways in which organizational learning and dynamics, as well as audience reception, affected the relative success of the study. Findings The paper begins by describing KnowledgeWorks’ excitement when publishing its first forecast on the future of education as a client of the institute for the future put KnowledgeWorks on the national map. It goes on to examine the organization’s capacity development in learning how to engage education audiences in exploring the future of learning, situating the study in the field of futures studies and developing internal capacity and thought leadership in the field. The paper concludes by reflecting on key aspects of KnowledgeWorks’ organizational learning; the organization’s leadership, moment and culture; and the author’s professional development journey. Originality/value The paper will help other future studies practitioners, along with organizations interested in considering investing in futures studies, anticipate considerations that could help them strengthen their practice or set up their organizational investment for success.

Marine management areas in Indonesia can be claimed 12 nautical miles from the coastline by regional governments, according to Law 23 of 2014. However, in reality, there are many provinces whose distances to other provinces are fewer than 2 × 12 nautical miles, necessitating that they be delimited fairly and proportionally. The provinces of South Sumatra and Bangka Belitung Islands are such an example. The absence of clear boundaries drawn on the national map of Indonesia was the fundamental problem and focus of this study, owing to the need for delimitation of regional sea boundaries. The delimitation method used to obtain the median line was the equidistance principle using the basepoint to basepoint approach and baseline to baseline, within the consideration of the coastline proportion. Small islands are taken into account as a highly influencing factor and cause of the deviation from the pure median line. The median line results based on the basepoint to basepoint approach showed an area of the ocean as large as 7426.24:5973.41 km2, considering the coastline proportion. Meanwhile, with the baseline to baseline approach, resulting area was 7430.65:5956.13 km2 (South Sumatra:Bangka Belitung Islands). The equidistance principle is a comprehensive method for calculating the median line, as shown in this research.

A national map of pasture productivity, in terms of mass of dry matter yield per unit area and time, enables evaluation of regional and local land-use suitability. Difficulty in measuring this quantity at scale directed this research, which utilises four years of Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and collected pasture yield measurements to develop a model of pasture productivity. The model uses a Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), with spatio-temporal segmentation and averaging, to estimate mean annual pasture productivity across all of New Zealand’s grasslands with a standard error of prediction of 2.2 t/ha/y. Regional aggregates of pasture yield demonstrate expected spatial variations. The pasture productivity map may be used to classify grasslands objectively into stratified levels of production on a national scale. Due to its ability to highlight areas of land use intensification suitability, the national map of pasture productivity is of value to landowners, land users, and environmental scientists.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the carbon that remains in the soil after the partial decomposition of any material produced by living organisms. It is an essential parameter for agricultural production, the potential sequestration of CO₂ in soil and a vital soil function for global carbon cycle. However, a vast potential of soil carbon is removed from agricultural soils due to non-sustainable soil management practices. Mapping SOC and its changes over time and space is highly valuable for estimating the CO₂ emissions and effects of climate change to the environment. In the present work, the Greek National Map of SOC is presented calculating the SOC stock in 30 arc-seconds spatial resolution using the Global Soil Partnership and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) guidelines for SOC mapping. The presented methodology considers the reference framework of the SCORPAN model for digital soil mapping, which can predict SOC stocks in correspondence with soil forming factors. Among the key variables used for estimating SOC stocks are environmental covariates such as climate and meteorological data, thematic maps, digital terrain data, geomorphometry and soil data. Data mining and geostatistical techniques (random forests, support vector machines, regression-kriging) are used to estimate the SOC stocks. Internal and external map accuracy is used to evaluate the performance of the Greek National SOC map. Accuracy of FAO’s methodology was examined herein using different modelling approaches. As indicated in the results, the most accurate map was produced by the random forest technique and an accuracy of FAC2=0.968, RMSE=0.322 and r=0.756. The main findings are also discussed herein covering aspects relevant to the method implementation, validation and feasibility of operational implementation.Keywords: soil organic carbon, climate change, soil management practices, Greek National Map

Due to the complexity of socio-economic-related issues, people thought of housing market as a chaotic nucleus situated at the intersection of neighboring sciences. It has been known that the dependence of house features on the residential property value can be estimated employing the well-established hedonic regression analysis method in teams of location characteristic, neighborhood characteristic and structure characteristic. However, to further assess the roles of urban infrastructures in housing markets, we proposed a new kind of volatility measure for house prices utilizing the Lie symmetry analysis of quantum theory based on Schrödinger equation, mainly focusing on the effects of transportation systems and public parks on residential property values. Based on the municipal open government data regularly collected for four cities, including Boston, Milwaukee, Taipei and Tokyo, and all spatial sampling sites were featured by United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Map, transportation and park were modelled as perturbations to the quantum states generated by the feature space in response to the environmental amenities with different spatial extents. In an attempt to ascertain the intrinsic impact of the location-dependent price information obtained, the similarity functions associated with the Schrödinger equation were considered to facilitate revealing the city amenities capitalizing into house prices. By examining the spatial spillover phenomena of house prices in the four cities investigated, it was found that the mass transit systems and the public green lands possessed the infinitesimal generators of Lie point symmetries Y2 and Y5, respectively. Compared statistically with the common performance criteria, including mean absolute error (MAE), mean squared error (MSE) and, root mean squared error (RMSE) obtained by hedonic pricing model, the Lie symmetry analysis of the Schrödinger equation approach developed herein was successfully carried out. The invariant-theoretical characterizations of economics-related phenomena are consonant with the observed residential property values of the cities internationally, ultimately leading to develop a new perspective in the global financial architecture.

Historic topographic maps, which are georeferenced and made publicly available by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Map’s Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC), are a valuable source of historic land cover and land use (LCLU) information that could be used to expand the historic record when combined with data from moderate spatial resolution Earth observation missions. This is especially true for landscape disturbances that have a long and complex historic record, such as surface coal mining in the Appalachian region of the eastern United States. In this study, we investigate this specific mapping problem using modified UNet semantic segmentation deep learning (DL), which is based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs), and a large example dataset of historic surface mine disturbance extents from the USGS Geology, Geophysics, and Geochemistry Science Center (GGGSC). The primary objectives of this study are to (1) evaluate model generalization to new geographic extents and topographic maps and (2) to assess the impact of training sample size, or the number of manually interpreted topographic maps, on model performance. Using data from the state of Kentucky, our findings suggest that DL semantic segmentation can detect surface mine disturbance features from topographic maps with a high level of accuracy (Dice coefficient = 0.902) and relatively balanced omission and commission error rates (Precision = 0.891, Recall = 0.917). When the model is applied to new topographic maps in Ohio and Virginia to assess generalization, model performance decreases; however, performance is still strong (Ohio Dice coefficient = 0.837 and Virginia Dice coefficient = 0.763). Further, when reducing the number of topographic maps used to derive training image chips from 84 to 15, model performance was only slightly reduced, suggesting that models that generalize well to new data and geographic extents may not require a large training set. We suggest the incorporation of DL semantic segmentation methods into applied workflows to decrease manual digitizing labor requirements and call for additional research associated with applying semantic segmentation methods to alternative cartographic representations to supplement research focused on multispectral image analysis and classification.

The first results of a project aimed at estimating forest height over the entire Spain by means of TanDEM-X data are shown and discussed in this work. Four test sites representative of the Spanish forests are introduced, as well as the data used for validation of results. Results obtained over one of the test sites (in Teruel province) are presented here. Among the challenges found in the project, the influence of slope in mountain areas and the relatively short height of the forest canopy make this work distinctive to previous projects employing TanDEM-X data for estimation of heights in tropical, boreal and temperate regions.

Thanks to the collective action of participating smartphone users, mobile crowdsensing allows data collection at a scale and pace that was once impossible. The biggest challenge to overcome in mobile crowdsensing is that participants may exhibit malicious or unreliable behavior, thus compromising the accuracy of the data collection process. Therefore, it becomes imperative to design algorithms to accurately classify between reliable and unreliable sensing reports. To address this crucial issue, we propose a novel Framework for optimizing Information Reliability in Smartphone-based participaTory sensing (FIRST) that leverages mobile trusted participants (MTPs) to securely assess the reliability of sensing reports. FIRST models and solves the challenging problem of determining before deployment the minimum number of MTPs to be used to achieve desired classification accuracy. After a rigorous mathematical study of its performance, we extensively evaluate FIRST through an implementation in iOS and Android of a room occupancy monitoring system and through simulations with real-world mobility traces. Experimental results demonstrate that FIRST reduces significantly the impact of three security attacks (i.e., corruption, on/off, and collusion) by achieving a classification accuracy of almost 80% in the considered scenarios. Finally, we discuss our ongoing research efforts to test the performance of FIRST as part of the National Map Corps project.

Threats to public order compromise the personal security of the individual, forcing him to take action to improve it, and thus to guarantee it to the closest people. The right to ensure the security of the individual, society is one of the duties of a state whose omission can be considered a violation of human rights. By implementing this obligation, a threat monitoring system was created in Poland – the National Safety Threat Map. It is a tool used by the Police which in 2016 was initially piloted, then already throughout the country introduced this mechanism to monitor and counteract local threats, affecting the safety of residents. This tool uses the Internet as a source of information about threats from citizens. The instruction was issued for both users – citizens, as well as for policemen of users and local administrators, and instructions for proper and reliable implementation. They impose on the Police officers’ specific tasks in the system for the implementation of applications. The work is an attempt to answer the question: What tool is KMZB in the system of monitoring by the state of public security and order? National Map of Security Threats (KMZB) – functions of the National Map of Security Threats in shaping local community safety, constitutes an element of the process of managing the public safety, as well as inspiring the local community in this respect. The Police as the formation serving the society and opened for its needs implemented the additional channel of the information exchange about the most troublesome threats defined on the local level.

The demand on energy has reached very high levels, the main reason of it, is the rapid increase of urbanization, the neighbourhoods, built environment, public transportation and services. In order to achieve energy sustainability, renewable energies must be taken into account. Among the renewable energies, wind energy is one of the most sustainable, research in this field is a crucial role for the development of a country as Mexico. This paper analyzed the contribution of Mexican institutions in literature specialized on wind during the period 1969–2016, considering complete years; 31,890 documents have been considered. It has been used Elsevier's Scopus database and bibliographic analysis techniques, considering in the analysis all the material reported by Scopus as source type, keyword, subject area, source title, affiliation, document type, country, journal articles or conference proceedings. Data reported in Scopus have been used in this study. An analysis has been done on many different publications such as document type, language, evolution on wind research, publication distribution, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) versus document published by State, h-index and the frequency of keyword appearance. A national map showing the distribution by state and a worldwide map presenting the collaboration with international researchers.

The Federal Office of Topography swisstopo plays a vital role as Switzerland’s Geoinformation centre. This paper shows how the New Swiss National Map 1 : 10’000 will take its place, within the strategic Geoinformation preparations for 2020 and swisstopo’ future technical developments. This topic can be told in five key chapters, each with their own strategic focal points for swisstopo: The National Centre of Geoinformation – Up-to-date reference data – Improved, future-orientated usability – Filling the gaps in Switzerland’s geographical reference data and finally Open Government Data. Implementing each of these strategic focal points will enable swisstopo to provide an even more effective, efficient and cost-conscious service. The data and products provided by swisstopo are built on the core objectives of ensuring that Switzerland’s official Geoinformation, firstly complies with current legislation, secondly insuring that the information covering various time periods will be readily available over the long term, and finally that the data is maintained as up to date as possible. In order to ensure long-term success and to provide a service that responds to the people’s needs and benefits Switzerland as a whole, swisstopo must also take into account social, political and technological developments. Moreover, it will enable swisstopo to continue a sustainable high-level of cartography in future.

Recently, Italy has started the procedure for the selection of suitable sites for hosting the National Repository for Low-Medium Activity Radioactive Wastes. Sogin spa, a public company, taking into account the criteria of the ISPRA Technical Guide no. 29, solicited by the EU Directive 2011/70/Euratom, has presented the CNAPI (National Map of the Potentially Suitable Areas) which has become operative since January 5, 2021. Sixty-seven sites were identified in Italy as potentially suitable for hosting the repository. Some criticalities immediately appeared concerning the properness of the selection. An analysis was, therefore, achieved to explore part of the rationales underlying the adopted procedure. A paradigmatic site, namely the TO-10 one (NW Italy), was chosen for the analysis, which highlighted significant anomalies affecting both the procedure rationales and its results. Since the selection process majorly relies on geographical data, attention was particularly paid on the role of official data from open archives. With reference to the most updated and detailed ones, we demonstrated that the Sogin procedure suffers from several critical points. In particular, with reference to the TO-10 site, we found that it cannot be absolutely considered to be suitable for hosting the National Deposit. In fact, it proved to match several exclusion criteria included in the ISPRA Technical Guide n. 29. These include: the potentially high “seismic risk” due to a “seismic gap” and complex tectonics associated with uplift (up to 1–1.5 mm/y), a highly vulnerable and extremely superficial groundwater table, a high permeability (10−2–10−3 m/s) of the cover sedimentary units, not proper buffer zones around local settlements. In spite of the local specificity of the analysis, results concerning procedure weaknesses are general. Consequently, we expect that they can be a stimulus for Sogin to more properly face the next steps of the selection procedure.

Since 2014, the Land Survey Division of Singapore Land Authority (SLA) has spearheaded a Whole-of-Government (WOG) 3D mapping project to create and maintain a 3D national map for Singapore. The implementation of the project is divided into two phases. The first phase of the project, which was based on airborne data collection, has produced 3D models for Relief, Building, Vegetation and Waterbody. This part of the work was completed in 2016. To complement the first phase, the second phase used mobile imaging and scanning technique. This phase is targeted to be completed by the mid of 2017 and is creating 3D models for Transportation, CityFurniture, Bridge and Tunnel. The project has extensively adopted the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)'s CityGML standard. Out of 10 currently supported thematic modules in CityGML 2.0, the project has implemented 8. The paper describes the adoption of CityGML in the project, and discusses challenges, data validations and management of the models.

In early modern Japan, the central government was traditionally responsible for creating a national map and accompanying cadastre (an account book listing rice production village by village), as I ...

The mission of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is to provide the nation with reliable scientific information about the Earth for use in managing natural resources to protect and improve our quali...

Many approaches that have been proposed that allow users to create a Web Ontology Language (OWL) ontology from a relational database fail to include metadata that are inherent to the database tables. Without metadata, the resulting ontology lacks annotation properties. These properties are key when performing ontology alignment. This paper proposes a method to include relevant metadata through annotation properties to OWL ontologies, which furthers the ability to integrate and use data from multiple unique ontologies. The described method is applied to geospatial data collected from The National Map, a data source hosted by the U. S. Geological Survey. Following that method, an ontology was manually created that used the metadata from The National Map. Because a manual approach is prone to human error, an automated approach to storing and converting metadata into annotation properties is discussed.

This chapter examines the size, geographic distribution, and selected characteristics of the Jewish population of the US. Section 5.1 addresses the procedures employed to estimate the Jewish population of more than 900 local Jewish communities and parts thereof. Section 5.2 presents the major changes in local Jewish population estimates since last year’s Year Book. Section 5.3 presents a brief migration history of American Jews and examines population estimates for the country as a whole, each state, the 4 US Census Regions, the 9 US Census Divisions, the 21 largest US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), the 21 largest Combined Statistical Areas (CSAs), and the 52 Jewish Federation service areas with 20,000 or more Jews. Section 5.4 examines changes in the size and geographic distribution of the Jewish population at national, state, and regional scales from 1980 to 2019. Section 5.5 presents a description of the Detroit Jewish community based on the 2018 Detroit Jewish community study. Section 5.6 presents comparisons of Jewish communities on political party identification and voter registration. Section 5.7 presents an atlas of local American Jewish communities, including a national map of Jews by county and 14 regional and state maps of Jewish communities.

National historical map resources are assessed in four European countries to characterize river corridor features and associated channel changes, as well as identify issues limiting or promoting geomorphic assessment procedures at a continental scale. A geomorphic audit that launches potential data for diagnosis from reach to continental scales could offer a good resource for biology and ecology managers of river authorities or government agencies and engineers. The assessment compares the resources available by country in terms of period covered, spatial scale, history and chronology, and representation of the fluvial corridor features. We then applied the Historical Maps Vectorization Toolbox, initially developed for vectorizing river corridors from French maps, to detect and extract flow channels, unvegetated bars and riparian vegetation patches from historical topographical maps. We found that (a) it is difficult to apply an audit of channel changes to the whole continental scale because map legends differ between countries due to geographic and political specificity; (b) there exists an opportunity to get assessment information in all countries at reach or national scale where map resources are available; (c) the highest potential is observed in Switzerland and Belgium where there is high quality national map coverage from the 19th century; and (d) the algorithm Historical Maps Vectorization Toolbox applied to map resources works well with any of the countries, and its widespread application is encouraging.

Australia must overcome a number of challenges to meet the needs of our growing population in a time of increased climate variability. Fortunately, we have unprecedented access to data about our land and the built environment that is internationally regarded for its quality. Over the last two decades Australia has risen to the forefront in developing and implementing Digital Earth concepts, with several key national initiatives formalising our digital geospatial journey in digital globes, open data access and ensuring data quality. In particular and in part driven by a lack of substantial resources in space, we have directed efforts towards world-leading innovation in big data processing and storage. This chapter highlights these geospatial initiatives, including case-uses, lessons learned, and next steps for Australia. Initiatives addressed include the National Data Grid (NDG), the Queensland Globe, G20 Globe, NSW Live (formerly NSW Globe), Geoscape, the National Map, the Australian Geoscience Data Cube and Digital Earth Australia. We explore several use cases and conclude by considering lessons learned that are transferrable for our colleagues internationally. This includes challenges in: 1) Creating an active context for data use, 2) Capacity building beyond ‘show-and-tell’, and 3) Defining the job market and demand for the market.

In Japan, many local map contests are held in various places. Among those contests, 14 organizations are involved in the council of national map contest for pupils and students with some public interest corporations. The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) plays a role as the secretariat of the council. In 2019, the 22nd contest was held and 2 applicants received Ministers’ Awards, one by the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, and the other by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The contest has been playing an important role for encouraging pupils and students to be familiar with cartography.

Many printed school atlases do not only comprise a collection of topographic and thematic maps or illustrations to convey geographic topics at different school levels, but also infographics and text introducing key concepts and methods of cartography and geo-information. However, this was not the case for previous editions of the printed Swiss World Atlas, the most commonly used student atlas for the secondary school level in Switzerland. This omission of a dedicated introductory part may be explained by the atlas’ long tradition of more than 100 years and the strong influence on the atlas design by former editors-in-chief. In this tradition, selected cartographic aspects were covered on different pages throughout the atlas. In contrast, other printed school atlases have included a general introductory part for many decades.This contribution presents the concept and implementation of a new, coherent, and innovative introduction chapter for the 2017 edition of the printed Swiss World Atlas (Figure 1). A comparison to similar chapters of other widely used school atlas examples from Europe and North America serves to evaluate the didactical value of this introductory part of the Swiss World Atlas.The first part of the presentation specifies the didactical and cartographic fundamentals, with a focus on developing the student’s map reading and interpretation competences. The new introduction chapter of the Swiss Wold Atlas 2017 is structured as follows: After four pages of the atlas table of contents and a two-page list of map topics, the different steps in geomatics are illustrated with infographics that explain the data capturing methods of geodesy and photogrammetry and the processing of geodata by GIS. The following double page presents the principles of map projection and reference systems, enriched by illustrative models and graphics. Another two pages provide an introduction to cartography with basic information on map models and cartographic principles. Then, the cartographic processes of map generalisation, map structuring, legend definition, or map symbolisation are explained. On the following four pages, the students should become familiar with the different map types contained within the atlas as well as the Swiss national map series at the various map scales (Figure 2). A double page about map reading, map use, and map evaluation completes the new introduction chapter. The chapter thus shows the complete process chain from geodata capturing and processing to applying cartographic principles for map representations, in a short but clearly illustrated format aimed at secondary school students. The wording of these technical facts is chosen so that students do not need any previous knowledge. Additional concise text information, written by external experts and the editorial team, helps atlas users to acquire knowledge about the general cartographic theory.In a second part of the presentation, the introduction chapter of the Swiss World Atlas 2017 is compared to four similar introductory parts of other printed school atlases. Concerning the content, this part of the Swiss school atlas seems more advanced, covers a broader range of topics, and goes more into details. From a graphics and layout point of view, the introduction chapter of the Swiss World Atlas 2017 combines a clear look-and-feel with a column-based structure, which contrasts with the "frame-and-box" arrangement in other atlases. It offers also a consequent and distinguished colour scheme (rather gentle colour contrasts for area objects), layout and design style (more white space for a clear page structure), and lettering concept (using a space-saving Univers font for the entire atlas). Despite of the comprehensive concept, the introduction chapter of the Swiss World Atlas 2017 is more suitable for higher school levels (10th grade or higher), due to the correctly and professionally formulated theoretical facts as well as the complex infographics. Younger students certainly like shorter and easier-to-read texts with more playful images. Thus, teachers of classes up to the 9th grade may face more challenges to explain the content in a more elementary fashion with the Swiss World Atlas than with other school atlases. Since the publication of the atlas in summer 2017, very little feedback from the different target groups has been received to the introduction chapter. Thus, an in-depth analysis is planned this year to assess if the expectations of teachers and students are met. The editorial board will then be able to critically evaluate the representation of the specific cartographic topics with the goal of improving the introduction chapter for the next atlas revision.

Mounting interest in ambitious clean energy goals is exposing critical gaps in our understanding of onshore wind power potential. Conventional approaches to evaluating wind power technical potential at the national scale rely on coarse geographic representations of land area requirements for wind power. These methods overlook sizable spatial variation in real-world capacity densities (i.e., nameplate power capacity per unit area) and assume that potential installation densities are uniform across space. Here, we propose a data-driven approach to overcome persistent challenges in characterizing localized deployment potentials over broad extents. We use machine learning to develop predictive relationships between observed capacity densities and geospatial variables. The model is validated against a comprehensive data set of United States (U.S.) wind facilities and subjected to interrogation techniques to reveal that key explanatory features behind geographic variation of capacity density are related to wind resource as well as urban accessibility and forest cover. We demonstrate application of the model by producing a high-resolution (2 km × 2 km) national map of capacity density for use in technical potential assessments for the United States. Our findings illustrate that this methodology offers meaningful improvements in the characterization of spatial aspects of technical potential, which are increasingly critical to draw reliable and actionable planning and research insights from renewable energy scenarios.

In this paper, we present the highest-resolution-available (10 m) national map of the mangrove ecosystems of Belize. These important ecosystems are increasingly threatened by human activities and climate change, support both marine and terrestrial biodiversity, and provide critical ecosystem services to coastal communities in Belize and throughout the Mesoamerican Reef ecoregion. Previous national- and international-level inventories document Belizean mangrove forests at spatial resolutions of 30 m or coarser, but many mangrove patches and loss events may be too small to be accurately mapped at these resolutions. Our 10 m map addresses this need for a finer-scale national mangrove inventory. We mapped mangrove ecosystems in Belize as of 2020 by performing a random forest classification of Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument imagery in Google Earth Engine. We mapped a total mangrove area of 578.54 km2 in 2020, with 372.04 km2 located on the mainland and 206.50 km2 distributed throughout the country’s islands and cayes. Our findings are substantially different from previous, coarser-resolution national mangrove inventories of Belize, which emphasizes the importance of high-resolution mapping efforts for ongoing conservation efforts.

Im Internationalen Jahr der Kartografie publiziert das Bundesamt fur Landestopografie swisstopo erstmalig eine neue — vollautomatisch mit GIS erstellte — digitale Landeskarte 1:10’000 uber die gesamte Schweiz. Gleichzeitig beginnt die Ablosung der Landeskarte 1:50’000 mit teilautomatisierter Produktion als Basis fur digitale und gedruckte Produkte. Die im Jahr 2014 eingefuhrte anspruchsvolle Kartengrafik der neuen Landeskarte 1:25’000 wird auf zwei weitere Massstabe ausgedehnt und tragt damit zu einem homogenen nationalen Gesamtkartenwerk bei. Die hohe kartografische Qualitat der Darstellung und grosse Flexibilitat der GIS-Daten bilden eine ideale Basis fur die Nutzung in Verwaltung, Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft und der Offentlichkeit. Der Beitrag liefert Hintergrunde uber die aktuellen technischen Entwicklungen und stellt diese in den Kontext der Marktbedurfnisse sowie des Umfeldes von swisstopo als Bundesamt. During the International Map Year the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo has launched for the first time an all new — automatically created with only GIS software — digital 1:10’000 National Map for the entire Switzerland. Simultaneously the production of the 1:50’000 National Map is being moved to a new, partially automated production system for both its digital and printed products. Furthermore, the new map design, successfully introduced in 2014 for the new V.25’000 National Map series, is now also being implemented for a further two scales and thus contributing to a homogeneous overall design for the National Map Series. Finally, the high cartographic display quality combined with the flexibility of the GIS data mean that the Geodata from swisstopo form an ideal basis for the usage within all major industry sectors including Administration, Business, Science and the Public. This article provides background information on the latest technical developments and presents them in the context of market requirements and the environment of swisstopo as a Federal agency.

The authors have analyzed their experience of the production of various Electronic Atlases (EA) and Atlas Information Systems (AtIS) of so-called "classical type". These EA/AtIS have been implemented in the past decade in the Web 1.0 architecture (e.g., National Atlas of Ukraine, Atlas of radioactive contamination of Ukraine, and others). One of the main distinguishing features of these atlases was their static nature - the end user could not change the content of EA/AtIS. Base maps are very important element of any EA/AtIS. In classical type EA/AtIS they were static datasets, which consisted of two parts: the topographic data of a fixed scale and data of the administrative-territorial division of Ukraine. It is important to note that the technique of topographic data production was based on the use of direct channels of topographic entity observation (such as aerial photography) for the selected scale. Changes in the information technology of the past half-decade are characterized by the advent of the “Web 2.0 epoch”. Due to this, in cartography appeared such phenomena as, for example, "neo-cartography" and various mapping platforms like OpenStreetMap. These changes have forced developers of EA/AtIS to use new atlas basemaps. Our approach is described in the article. The phenomenon of neo-cartography and/or Web 2.0 cartography are analysed by authors using previously developed Conceptual framework of EA/AtIS. This framework logically explains the cartographic phenomena relations of three formations: Web 1.0, Web 1.0x1.0 and Web 2.0. Atlas basemaps of the Web 2.0 epoch are integrated information systems. We use several ways to integrate separate atlas basemaps into the information system – by building: weak integrated information system, structured system and meta-system. This integrated information system consists of several basemaps and falls under the definition of "big data". In real projects it is already used the basemaps of three strata: Conceptual, Application and Operational. It is possible to use several variants of the basemap for each stratum. Furthermore, the developed methods of integration allow logically coordinate the application of different types of basemaps into a specific EA/AtIS. For example, such variants of the Conceptual strata basemap as the National map of Ukraine of our production and external resources such as OpenStreetMap are used with the help of meta-system replacement procedures. The authors propose a Conceptual framework of the basemap, which consists of the Conceptual solutions framework of the basemap and few Application solutions frameworks of the basemap. Conceptual framework is intended to be reused in many projects and significantly reduce the resources. We differentiate Application frameworks for mobile and non-mobile environments. The results of the research are applied in few EA produced in 2014-2015 at the Institute of Geography of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. One of them is the Atlas of emergency situations. It includes elements that work on mobile devices. At its core it is "ubiquitous" subset of the Atlas.

National administration of surveying, mapping and geoinformation started to launch the project of national fundamental geographic information database dynamic update in 2012. Among them, the 1:50000 database was updated once a year, furthermore the 1:250000 database was downsized and linkage-updated on the basis. In 2014, using the latest achievements of 1:250000 database, comprehensively update the 1:1000000 digital line graph database. At the same time, generate cartographic data of topographic map and digital elevation model data. This article mainly introduce national 1:1000000 cartographic data of topographic map, include feature content, database structure, Database-driven Mapping technology, workflow and so on.

The U.S. Geological Survey is developing a new geospatial hydrographic framework for the United States, called the National Hydrography Dataset Plus High Resolution (NHDPlusHR), that integrates a diversity of the best-available information, robustly supports ongoing dataset improvements, enables hydrographic generalization to derive alternate representations of the network while maintaining feature identity, and supports modern scientific computing and Internet accessibility needs. This framework is based on the High Resolution National Hydrography Dataset, the Watershed Boundaries Dataset, and elevation from the 3-D Elevation Program, and will provide an authoritative, high precision, and attribute-rich geospatial framework for surface-water information for the United States. Using this common geospatial framework will provide a consistent basis for indexing water information in the United States, eliminate redundancy, and harmonize access to, and exchange of water information.

Radon gas is a pulmonary carcinogen and the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. There are many countries that have not implemented measures to reduce the risk it poses to the general population. The aim of this study was to locate available evidence on exposure to residential radon and the regulations to monitor and control this across Central and South America, by conducting a review of the scientific literature and government documents in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. This review included 31 studies which had taken measurements of radon in these countries. While Brazil, Argentina, and Peru have undertaken most research, no country in Central and South America has a national map of exposure to residential radon. The prevalence of exposure to radon was uneven, both among the different countries and within individual countries. No country has regulations to prevent the entry of radon into homes, and nine countries have not set maximum permissible concentrations for residential radon. There is a limited number of studies in South and Central America, with a limited spatial coverage, and there is a need to improve knowledge on exposure to residential radon and its effects, and for governments to take the necessary actions to introduce preventive measures in their statutory regulations.

Since the 1980s, Italian terraced landscapes have become the object of scientific attention, with a significant increase in systematic studies only in the last twenty years. However, the state of knowledge is still fragmentary. The studies were initially concentrated in limited areas considered particularly significant from an environmental or historical point of view. Even today, a detailed, national map of terraced landscapes is still lacking. Starting from this “state of the art” formed by extremely differentiated knowledge levels, the project “Mapping Terraced Landscapes in Italy” (MAPTER) began, thanks to the collaboration of several research centers at the third Meeting of the International Terraced Landscapes Alliance (ITLA) (October 6–15, 2016). MAPTER collected and attempted to harmonize, for the first time, the available data on both local and regional scales, integrating them with further surveys for uncovered areas, to produce an initial estimate of national terraced systems. This contribution delineates, first, the project’s outcomes, presenting the initial data concerning the extent and geographical distribution of Italian terraced systems. The second part of the contribution includes observations on the new processes of returning to abandoned terraced lands. These observations have emerged from a survey (the Livingstones Project) promoted by the Italian Alpine Club, and they are used here to identify practices of a virtuous “third way” for managing rural mountain areas, far from marginality, abandonment, and productive intensification.

This chapter examines the size, geographic distribution, and selected characteristics of the Jewish population of the US. Section 6.1 addresses the procedures employed to estimate the Jewish population of more than 900 local Jewish communities and parts thereof. Section 6.2 presents the major changes in local Jewish population estimates since last year’s Year Book. Section 6.3 presents a brief migration history of American Jews and examines population estimates for the country as a whole, each state, the four US Census Regions, the nine US Census Divisions, the 21 largest US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), the 21 largest Combined Statistical Areas (CSAs), and the 52 Jewish Federation service areas with 20,000 or more Jews. Section 6.4 examines changes in the size and geographic distribution of the Jewish population at national, state, and regional scales from 1980 to 2018. Section 6.5 presents a description of local Jewish community studies completed in the past year (Indianapolis, St. Petersburg). Section 6.6 presents comparisons of Jewish communities on antisemitism. Section 6.7 presents an atlas of local American Jewish communities, including a national map of Jews by county and 14 regional and state maps of Jewish communities.

Recognizing the potential utility and importance of a large quantity of spatial data generated using public funds by the Government Departments, organizations and institutions of the State for good governance and taking into consideration that most of such spatial data remains inaccessible to common citizen although most of such data may be unrestricted and not sensitive in nature and also most of such data generated at different State Government Departments do not have compatibility due to lack of common standards and non-interoperability and further taking note of that Government of India framed the “National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP)”, National Map Policy (2005) and “Remote Sensing Data Policy (RSDP- 2001 and 2011)” to spell out sharing principles of information generated using public funds, Government of Odisha has institutionalised “Odisha Spatial Data Infrastructure(OSDI)”, in the line of National Spatial Data Infrastructure(NSDI)”. The Government of Odisha gazetted “Odisha Spatial Data Policy (OSDP)” in 22nd August 2015, in the line of NDSAP, to institute a policy frame work to facilitate sharing of such Government owned data through OSDI, in open format, for supporting sustainable and inclusive governance and effective planning, implementation and monitoring of developmental programmes, managing and mitigating disasters and scientific research aiding informed decisions, for public good. The OSDI has already been operational and made live.This paper highlights the Data Model, Meta Data Standard and Sharing Policy adopted in OSDI, apart from other institutional / operational issues in smooth grounding and operationalisation of the OSDI in a State framework.

Digital cartographic generalization is one of the basic issues currently implemented by the National Map Agencies. The commonly used generalization methods are based on procedures for processing spatial databases where the DLM and/or the DCM are stored. The authors have proposed new solutions for large-and small-scale maps generalization on the example of river network objects. The first stage of process takes into account the hierarchy of watercourses resulting from the Map of Hydrographic Division of Poland (MPHP). The condition of entire watercourse recognition is checked iteratively considering the changing topology. In the second stage, scaledriven generalization (simplification) is carried out, taking into account the width of the symbol. Data used in the article are: General Geographic Database (BDOO) (reference scale 1:250k) and MPHP database (reference scale 1:50k). The obtained results were compared with the BDOO as well as visually in relation to other maps.

IMY was a worldwide celebration of maps and their unique role in our world. Supported by the United Nations, IMY provides opportunities to demonstrate, follow, and get involved in the art, science, and technology of making and using maps and geographic information. International Map Year (IMY) started in Paris 2011 when the General Assembly of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) asked the ICA Executive Committee (EC) to follow up on the proposal given in a motion from the Swedish Cartographic Society. An IMY Working Group (WG) was constituted – it defined the IMY goals and the activities required to reach them, and it proposed a suitable time period for the IMY to the ICA EC. IMY commenced in August 2015 and ended in December 2016. The success of IMY was dependent on all member nations of the ICA participating in an effort to broaden the knowledge of cartography and geographic information in society in general, especially among citizens and school children. Member nations of the ICA were responsible for organizing IMY activities, such as a national Map Day, through national IMY committees tasked to engage national organizations and spearheading collaboration. The IMY WG set up an IMY web site with general information on IMY, guidelines for how to organize Map Days, suggestions relating to activities aimed at general map awareness, and more. The web site also provides access to the electronic book The World of Maps, which has been translated from English into five other languages.

The National Map provides geospatial data that support various uses such as resource management, disaster response, and science investigations. To properly support these needs, data themes of the National Map must be regularly updated and spatially integrated as the features on the ground change because of environmental or man-made events. The elevation theme of the National Map is managed through the 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), which is currently (2019) coordinating collection of high resolution (HR) elevation data for the United States over an eight-year period (Sugarbaker et al. 2014). Through this program, lidar point-cloud data are being collected for the conterminous United States, Hawaii, and U.S. territories, with coarser resolution interferometric synthetic aperture radar (ifsar) data being collected for the remote areas of Alaska. HR digital elevation models (DEMs) can be generated at 1 and 3 meter resolution from the lidar point-cloud data and are also furnished by 3DEP.This research develops automated methods to update the hydrography and transportation themes of the National Map in a manner that integrates with the HR elevation and image layers. Surface water drainage networks can be extracted from a HR DEM using flow-direction and flow-accumulation modelling, but results of these methods vary depending on environmental conditions and the existence of anthropogenic features that may affect the accuracy of the elevation model, such as vegetative cover, roads, bridges, and other urban structures. Hydrologic conditioning or enforcement of a HR DEM overcome some of these issues and improve flow modelling for drainage network extraction through techniques such as filtering (Passalaqua et al. 2010), filling sinks (Tarboton 1997), cutting channels through embankments at culvert and bridge locations (Poppenga et al. 2012), or burning-in existing streams (Maidment 1996). However, drainage network extraction results can vary substantially with these techniques and the methods generally require some manual intervention and/or tuning of parameters (Poppenga et al. 2013). Consequently, additional work is needed to streamline and further automate such methods for the various landscape conditions within the United States.

In early modern Japan, it was a political tradition for the central government to compile a national map. Edo Shogunate had compiled nationally the nihon-sōzu (national map of Japan) from the kuni-ezu (provincial map). The Shogunate government ordered the major Daimyōs (feudal lords) of each kuni (province) to produce personally their own kuni-ezu (provincial maps), and present it to the Shogunate. Then the government compiled nationally the map of Japan from those provincial maps, which were consists of 68 pieces of all kuni traditionally in Japan.Each Shogunate national map of Japan was a huge chromatic hand writing map. For a considerable time, the national map created by the Shogunate government was mistakenly believed to have been produced total of four times (during the Keichō, Shōhō, Genroku, and Kyōhō eras) in all. This is because it was generally known that the Shogunate government collected provincial maps from each province in all these eras.By the way, recently it was revealed in my study that the national maps created by the Tokugawa Shogunate during the Edo era 260 years (1608-1867) was six times in all, as shown in Table 1, except for the last Ino’s map. Ino’s map was not compiled from kuni-ezu and the making of this map had a big personal role rather than work of the government. Therefore, in this report, it has not taken up about the Ino’s map.It was assumed that the Keichō era’s national map was based on its provincial map. However, it is now a general view that Keichō era’s provincial map not created nationwide but having been created only in western part of Japan with many lords promoted by Toyotomi Hideyosi. This raises an important question; how can a national map be correctly produced if all provincial maps in Japan are not included?On the other hand, the third shogun Tokugawa Iemitu sent Junkenshi (Administrative inspectors) to all provinces for the first time in 10th year of Kan’ei (1633), and each inspector collected provincial maps from their respective province and then the Shogunate government compiled the national map of Japan for the first time in the Edo period. Its copy remains nowadays in four places, including the Saga prefectural Library.The Revolt of Simabara occurred four years after the first national map of Japan was made, and Shogunate government had difficulty in dispatching armies to distant Kyūshū. Not only was strongly aware of the lack of traffic information in the previous map, but the 3-disc set map was too large for usable. From that reflection, Inoue Masashige, the chief officer of the government hurriedly thought about the revision of the national map, and collected the provincial maps again only from the Chūgoku district leading to kyūshū and quickly reproduced the map. That is the map of 15 years of Kan’ei.

There are a wide variety of initiatives and guidelines recommending publishing government data, especially geospatial data as open data, for instance:G8 launched in June 2013 in a meeting in Lough Erne (Ireland) the G8 Open Data Charter recognizing that Open Data improves Governance and it is an innovation engine. Geographic data where included as one of the areas of great value. The eight countries were committed to approve an action plan before 2013 October and yearly publish a report.G20 and United Nations supports the International Open Data Charter since 2015 extending the former proposal to all the countries. Six basic principles are defined: data should be open by default, timely and comprehensive, accessible and usable, comparable and interoperable, for improved Governance and Citizen Engagement, and for inclusive development and innovation. Until now 19 national and 43 local governments has adopted the chart and 46 organisations has endorsed it.The European Interoperability Framework v2, approved by the European Commission on March 2017 to improve the quality of European public services devotes a full section to explain what exactly Open Data is and to support it.The United Nations Global Geographic Information Management (UN GGIM) recognizes in its Integrated Geospatial Information Framework – Part 1 Overarching Strategic Framework (July 2018) that geospatial information is a key component of the government’s open data agendas which stimulates opportunities and include government delivery systems focused on the citizen in an efficient and effective way.But, although it seems there is a wide consensus on the positive effect of having governamental Open Data, and there is a common understanding of the theoretical meaning of Open Data (data with no barriers for use and reuse by everybody under any circumstances) there is not a common practical understanding about what Open Data is. In our opinion, the more detailed and precise technical definition of Open Data is due to the Open Knowledge International (opendefinition.org), but the problem is that there is not an Abstract Test Suite to check and verify if a dataset is published fulfilling the requirements defined in it.By the other hand, Open Data are not yet widely implemented. The Global Open Data Index 2018 states that the National Map 1: 250,000 data are published as Open Data only in the 10 % of the countries studied. We think one of the reasons of the lack of implementation Open Geographic Data (OGD) is that there is no a standard easily verifiable technical definition of OGD.Because of that, the Spanish Standardization Technical Committee 148 “Digital Geographic Information” decided in 2016 to define a Spanish standard on Open Geographic Data to have an objective procedure to verify and certify if a geospatial dataset is published or not as Open Data, as a tool to promote and support Open Data.UNE 148004:2018 “Datos geográficos abiertos” (Open Geographic Data) was approved in 2018 after following the standard UNE processes, including two rounds of comments and one public information period. More than the eighty five per cent of the comments received were totally or partially accepted and we think the result reflects the consensus reached in the Spanish geographic data community around this topic.This Spanish standard stablish a technical full and detailed definition of what exactly is Open Geographic Data (OGD) and defines a set of objective requirements to be fulfilled in order to publish a geographic dataset as Open Data. It is based in three main principles:Principle of minimizing barriers, following the idea that Open Data are data published without economic, technical and legal barriers for their use and reuse.Principle of no-discrimination of any kind of users, field of application, social group and future use of data.Principle of technological neutrality, which is in fact a particularization of the former one, stating that any user shall be discriminated on the basis of the technological solutions (browser, operating system, software…) he has chosen.Applying those general principles, UNE 148004:2018 defines four conceptual levels for geographic data in the way of progress towards having OGD: available, well described, under an open license and in an open format geographic data. It provides also an Abstract Test Suit for verifying and certifying, if required, Open Geographic Data.In this communication a general approach to open geographic data, a justification for developing this standard and a brief and complete summary of its contents and prescription are given. We think this new Spanish standard will promote and support Open Data in the field of Geographic Information and we hope it will promote the progress and grow of the Spanish geospatial sector.