Document history
v0.1 25-Jul-24 / B. Köbben / first draft
v0.2 2-Aug-24 / B. Köbben / edits based on comments in online meeting
This document serves to propose to the Executive Council of ICA to establish a Working Group on Standards in Cartography. The initiators of the proposal think it is necessary and useful for the ICA to maintain close links to organisations that are maintaining and developing standards that are relevant to the field of cartography, and thus ICA and its members.
The proposed working group is to fulfil a liaison function: on the one hand keeping the ICA informed about the development and application of relevant standards, and on the other hand to represent the knowledge and the interests of cartographers in the organisations that set and maintain these standards.
1. Create, publish and maintain a database of the Standardisation Organisations and the groups within them (Standard Working Groups, Technical Committees, etc) that are most relevant for ICA and its members.
2. Establish contact with persons within these groups (liaisons) that are willing to regularly report activities and publications that are relevant for ICA and its members.
3. Disseminate these reports regularly to the ICA membership.
4. Through the liaisons, provide these groups with input to their standardisation work that is representing the knowledge and the interests of cartography and mapping. To this end, establish contacts between the liaisons and relevant ICA commisions and Working Groups.
5. Keep in contact with the ICA WG on Cartographic Body of Knowledge to ensure the terminology used in the CartoBOK is related to existing standards in the field.
6. ...
We propose that membership of the WG is following the liaison function mentioned earlier: Persons that are active in a standardisation organisation (e.g. members of an OGC SWG or DWG) and are willing to become an active reporter of that group’s activities to ICA; And cartographers that are (interested in) sharing their knowledge and the interests of cartography in a standards organisation (e.g. invited experts in a W3C WG). We will try to have such persons in each of the groups that the WG identifies as relevant (see below). We intend to invite membership in an open call to ICA members. Also, we will actively seek people to fulfil the role in the various groups. The current contacts that we identified (see Table 1) will be an important first cohort to start further searches.
As the WG’s convenor we propose Barend Köbben (University Twente – ITC). He will be responsible for maintaining contact with the liaisons/members. The convenor will organise regular meetings of the members and report to the Executive Council.
Many organisations in the world deal with standardisation and terminology that is relevant to the field of cartography. They all have quite varying organisations (from open international standards bodies to country-specific industry-based), representation rules (one member per country, one per organisation, open for all) and accessibility (ranging from open and free to paid-for membership). One of the first tasks for the Standards WG would be to create a comprehensive overview and come up with some prioritization of their importance for ICA and its members. Based on the existing links that ICA already has (and specifically members of the former Commission on SDI and Standards), likely candidates with a high priority are listed in Table 1.
|
NAME |
FULL NAME
|
RELEVANT GROUPS |
CURRENT CONTACTS |
REMARKS |
|
ISO |
International Organization for Standardization |
TC 211: Geographic information/Geomatics ... |
Reese Plews*, Serena Coetzee, ... |
*-Reese is official liaison from ISO |
|
OGC |
Open Geospatial Consortium |
Portrayal DWG Styles & Symbology SWG API Maps SWG API Styles API CRS SWG ... |
Amy Griffin*, ... Barend Köbben, ... ... |
*-Amy is currently setting up a Technical Paper with OGC Portrayal DWG |
|
W3C |
World Wide Web Consortium |
Spatial Data on the Web WG SVG WG |
... Barend Köbben, ... |
|
|
IHO |
International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) |
... |
ICA Commission on Marine Cartography |
|
|
... |
...etc...
|
|
|
|
Table 1: Preliminary inventory of relevant Standardisation Organisations