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EDUCATION AND TRAINING IN CARTOGRAPHY
Ferjan Ormeling
ICA Standing Commission on Education and Training
University of Utrecht, Netherlands
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK OF ICA-CET
In order to adapt the cartographic curriculum and cartographic manuals like Basic
Cartography to the demands of our society, the Standing Commission on Education and
Training of the International Cartographic Association (ICA-CET) has elaborated a
programme aimed both at the developing and the developed world. For the first we
have initiated a series of seminars that should make cartography teachers and trainers
aware of the state of the art of cartographical education. Seminars in this line have been
held in Rabat, Morocco in 1984, in Wuhan, China, 1986, and we are planning seminars
for Chile and Thailand for next year. For the second group of countries we have started
a series of seminars aimed at identifying the new directions we should take for the
future. In this series of seminars we have tackled the following issues:
- Teaching Computer-assisted Map Design (Munich, Siemens 1988)
- Education and Training in GIS (ACSM/ASPRS, Baltimore 1989)
- Teaching Cartography for Environmental Information Management (ITC, Enschede
1989)
- Teaching the Interface between Remote Sensing, GIS and Cartograohy (Eurosense,
Budapest, 1989)
- Teaching Map Analysis (Intergraph, Huntsville 1990, tentative)
- Teaching the History of Cartography, Stockholm 1991.
With the material contributed to these seminars, we intend to update the manual Basic
Cartography. It consists new of two volumes, that contain chapters on historical
cartography, the scope of cartography, projection systems, manual map production
techniques, theory of cartographic design, map reproduction, topographic and thematic
cartography, map compilation, generalization and computer-assisted production tech
niques. It is to be extended with a third volume with chapters on Remote Sensing, GIS,
Documentation, Map Analysis, and Tactile Map Production. As a companion to this
manual, an Exercise book has been produced which will be published for the Internatio
nal Cartographic Association this year by Elsevier, and which has been collated from
material sent in by 11 ICA member countries. Though we are very happy with the result,
the collating procedure was rather discouraging, extremely time-consuming, and we had
to spent a lot of money on custom dues imposed on the various contributions that were
sent in free, in 2000 copies each, by the team of authors. An inspection copy will be
presented here in Rhodos.
In this paper I will present those results of our seminar programme that are deemed
relevant to members of the ISPRS. The new developments in the cartographic
curriculum will be discussed, the integration with other mapping sciences, and the
teaching of cartography to those who will not have it as their main field of activity. In
order to do so I will draw on the proceedings of the seminars mentioned that have been
published untill now.
