BCS President's Report August 2011

I know it’s still July but here are a couple of reminders which might be helpful. 

First, nominations for Council have to be in by 1 August and second, the early-bird bookings for the Map Curators Group meeting in York, 7-9 September have to be made by 1 August too.

Whilst August is a quiet month for events, September is quite the opposite. The UK Cartographic Committee and the BCS Council both meet in York on 5 and 6 September respectively and I’ve already mentioned the MCG meeting at the same location. 

Some BCS members will be going to The IMTA(Americas) event in Palm Springs, 11-14 September. The following week the AGI holds its Annual Conference, 21-22 September in Nottingham. On 26 September we are running the BCS Schools Workshop at Lampton School, Hounslow, for up to 40 teams of 5 students which is both exciting and potentially exhausting!

The following day the UK GEOForum holds its meeting at Canary Wharf. Enjoy a quiet August, if circumstances allow, and I look forward to seeing you at the forthcoming events.

Peter Jolly

BCS President

Guest Blog - Wednesday

Conference centre much quieter this morning – perhaps some got more wine at the reception, or afterwards. Heard that some of the UK contingent were very late home, after the metro stopped running. A few brave souls, including ICA President Bill Cartwright, took part in a walk along the Paris meridian, but most found the 6:30 (am!) start a bit too much of a challenge.

There was a series of sessions on Wednesday devoted to National Mapping Agencies which the ICA is increasingly trying to collaborate with. Vanessa Lawrence was in attendance, so we were represented at the highest level.

UK members - Alex Kent, Kenneth Field, Peter Jolly and David Fairbairn

There are about 30 UK delegates as far as I can determine – no delegate list issued so far. This is much smaller than the likes of Germany and several other countries, but we are quite an active contingent.  Peter Jolly is promoting The BCS on the ESRI stand and Maney have a stand also, giving a high profile to The Cartographic Journal. An initiative of the UKCC has been to distribute lapel pins with the Union Jack & French flags to all UK delegates to increase our profile. Most seem to appreciate this gesture. Thanks to Chris Board for funding the pins. 

National delegates and a few others were invited to the German embassy in the evening to promote ICC2013 in Dresden. See photo above of some key members of the UK contingent partaking of German hospitality.


David Forrest PhD FBCart.S

School of Geographical & Earth Sciences

University of Glasgow

BCS President’s Report June 2011

As you may be aware I was unable to attend the BCS Symposium at Shrigley Hall because, on the Saturday before, my wife dislocated her right hip whilst flying a kite on White Horse Hill. She has now written all her ‘thank you’ letters to the emergency services including the air ambulance and is walking slowly around the house.

From all the reports I have heard this morning and during the Symposium the event at Shrigley Hall was a great success with attendance slightly up from last year. My sincere thanks must go to the Programme Committee for putting together such a varied and interesting programme, to the speakers, and especially Dr Peter Barber for delivering the Helen Wallis Lecture. My thanks also go to our sponsors: Autodesk, Esri UK, Victoria Litho, Cadcorp, Bentley, Ordnance Survey, Europa Technologies, STAR-APIC, Imray Laurie Norie & Wilson, PvPubs, Global Mapping, Newgrove Consultants and Steer Davies Gleave for their support. My congratulations to all the Award winners and, in particular, to Global Mapping winners of the BCS Award with their entry ‘The Environmental World’. Finally, the winner of the Golden Ball golf trophy was Andy Wilson from Victoria Litho with 39 points – well played.

www.icc2011.fr

The major event in July is the International Cartographic Conference in Paris 4-8 July. Unfortunately, the universities and the Royal Society have withdrawn their financial support for this event and, exceptionally, this year BCS has provided extra funding for participants at the request of the UK Cartographic Committee (UKCC). I look forward to reading the reports from all the beneficiaries in the winter edition of Maplines. In the light of these recent UKCC funding issues there will be a review of the operation/work of the UKCC. 

In September the Map Curators Group meets in York from 7-8 September. Prior to that meeting the UKCC will meet on 5^th and Council on 6^th. Remember too to keep an eye on events associated with the London Mapping Festival.

Oh, and just a gentle reminder to anyone who hasn’t paid their subscription that it would be helpful if that was received before the end of June. I’ll write my next email report after the meetings at the beginning of September and in the meantime I hope you all enjoy a sunny and happy summer break.

Best Wishes

Peter Jolly

BCS President

UK Police maps: X does not mark the spot

Today saw the UK Police map service launched which brings local policing to the desktop of the population through a range of maps and simple data summaries. In terms of a step towards more open data it is certainly to be applauded but in terms of the mapping it adds yet another woeful example to the plague of poor online web maps.

Users type in a place or a unit postcode and get data on the location showing handy point symbols identifying locations of crimes disaggregated by broad types...or do they? No! The points are some sort of generic locator placed on each road segment that is used as the point to symbolise crimes for that road. So what does Mr and Mrs average do with the site?..of course, they type in their postcode and are delighted to find out that all crime happened some distance away. Unless, that is, their property is located near the geometric centre of the road in which case they are now horrified.

I tried this for my own road and found that a well known crime that occured during the census period (I know because the dawn raid was fairly obvious) was missing. So either the data is incomplete (which doesn't bode well) or it has been positioned elsewhere to 'protect privacy'. Err, surely the location of the new point is now inaccurate and while the original crime is not properly reported it is, worse, attributed to another location altogether.

This sort of utterly inept mapping is precisely what enrages cartographers. Representing data effectively to report geography properly and communicate reality is what we do. It is also what any basic GIS course or cartography course would teach. The annoyance is borne of the frustration of seeing a site that will now be viewed widely be completely misinterpreted because of erroneous mapping techniques. Not everyone is cognisant of cartographic theory but the least anyone should do when preparing a map is keep this fact in mind and design the map/map service so that it will be read and understood as accurately as possible by the uninitiated. The basic tenet of good design is to ensure you take account of the potential user and design accordingly to remove uncertainty and the potential for mis-communication.

The use of totals and a single point is poor to say the least. If the desire is to build in fuzziness to deal with the privacy issue then use rates or proportions; use areas instead of points; or use some form of road-based linear symbol that varies by thickness or colour. Instead, the UK Police have been lazy and taken a nice standard base map service and contrived to make up points where crimes didn;t exist, then sum the crimes locally to give a value to that location. Utterly meaningless in cartographic terms so pointless and dangerous to show it as such.

Unfortunately the new Police maps' use of points, when far better representational techniques are available, is such a fundamental error it beggars belief. It is indeed a crime in its own right. X does not mark the spot as any reader of Treasure Island knows. Now, the national map of crime perpetuates this myth by illustrating a nation of criminal locations that never actually existed.