BCS President's Bulletin November 2014

The BCS AGM was held at the RAF Club in London on 17^th November and we reflected on another successful year for the Society. The Restless Earth schools' programme is proving to be as popular as ever, the Annual Symposium at Marwell ran jointly with IMIA was a great success, the BCS Awards were rejuvenated and proved to be a highlight of the Gala Dinner and our membership continues to grow, topping 700 at the end of the month. We are also in very good health financially and in response to a question at the AGM the Council will be looking at the reserves that we hold and will be determining ways of investing and using our assets to further develop the Society. We are aware that the BCS website needs updating and we will be offering online access to the Cartographic Journal in 2015, but if you have any specific proposals for how BCS funds could be employed then please get in touch.

The AGM was followed by a talk by BBC weather presenter Helen Willetts, who spoke about the ‘Changing Face of the Weather Map’. It was an excellent talk during which Helen covered a far greater timespan that I had anticipated, from ancient times right up to the modern day. It was a really entertaining and informative talk, sparked many questions from the audience and finally solved the mystery for me of the seven legged spider. Helen confessed afterwards that she hadn’t spoken in public for nearly eight years, but you couldn’t tell and she also confided to me that she had thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

Cartography in the News

You know you’re in trouble when the reigning monarch says that maps have been overtaken by satnavs, although if you read the article the headline is a bit misleading and that’s not what she actually said. What she actually said to one of the pupils who was finding co-ordinates on a map is that ‘Nowadays you probably have a satnav or something’. Yes, Ma'am, that something is a map. On the same page in the paper was a report on proposed changes to the driving test including 'asking candidates to follow directions on a satnav, as an alternative to following road signs'. I’m sorry but isn’t that just plain daft? I never navigate simply by following road signs, if I did getting from my home in Woking to say Leeds could be a bit of a challenge if I was relying solely on road signs as there aren’t too many in Woking that tell you where Leeds is. Edmund King president of the AA chimed in with 'Some still navigate with signs and maps'; useful concept ‘some’ just imprecise enough not to be able to disagree with it too vehemently.

Cartography on the Web

Just to remind us all that paper maps and satnavs are not necessarily mutually exclusive, a web article from HEMA maps, ‘down under’, shows how the two can be used successfully together. Rob Boegheim, the company’s managing director always starts his planning process with a paper map as he argues that its scope is still the best way to get the big picture when planning a trip. The progression from planning at home to discovering somewhere out in the bush, instantly transforms the basic paper map from planning tool into cheap insurance. Though the likelihood of technological failure is rare in most cases, a paper map is always an essential low cost backup that will pay dividends when called upon on the expedition.

http://bit.ly/1B8yke0

Apparently brains and cauliflowers are similar in size and shape but if you have ever wondered what a map of your brain would look like, then we now have the answer. Nico Lambert’s rendering can be found at the link.

http://tweetedtimes.com/search/%23cartography/en?s=tnp

One of the guest speakers from our 50^th Anniversary year, Jack Dangermond, has recently been quoted as saying that he wants top executives to think more like cartographers. Growth of GIS beyond its original boundaries is now making people realise the benefits to analysis and decision making if the geospatial element is fully considered. What is broadly termed as ‘location strategy’ is now a large factor in business allowing those who employ it to gain the competitive advantage.

http://for.tn/1uXn0yQ

I have been showcasing the ICA Map Carte webpage for the whole year (see below) and a new article by ICA President Georg Gartner, looks at cartography in the 21^st century. One of his key points echoes the thoughts of HEMA maps in that there are significant differences in the way we use paper and digital outputs. Using a paper map gives you the broader picture so that you quickly develop a sense of place and can navigate an area comfortably relatively quickly, whereas the convenience of a small screen makes you concentrate on directions without developing that same sense of your surroundings.

http://360.here.com/2014/11/27/future-cartography-21st-century/

The BCS Better Mapping seminars offered the concept that as well as literacy and numeracy, there was a third important skill of ‘graphicacy’, ie. the ability to read and understand graphical images, particularly maps. This point is taken up by Kenneth D. Madsen an assistant professor of geography at The Ohio State University at Newark. Whilst not advocating that we all learn by rote the locations of world countries and their capitals, he does argue that just as use of a calculator does not diminish the need to know basic maths and just as knowing the alphabet is a prerequisite for reading, so it is that knowledge of where to find places is useful for a greater understanding of geographic processes.

http://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/opinion/readers/2014/11/29/column-geographic-literacy-critical-reading/19628347/

We have been bombarded over the years with news that cartography is a dying profession and there aren’t any cartographers any more, yet here we are still going very string. Well, now it would appear that GIS professionals are under threat. I subscribe to GISCafe and a recent article talked about a new breed of Geographer or is it Geospatial practitioner, geospatial developer or location specialist. The author Joseph Berry argues that in getting GIS more widely accepted and used amongst a non-specialist community, “We need individuals, who understand the challenges faced by the wider ‘non-GIS’ community. Who can bridge the divide, and communicate spatial solutions to a new set of problems, targeted at a new diverse group of users.” I think we call them cartographers don’t we?

ICA Map Carte

My first choice this month is really easy, Roy’s map of the Hounslow Heath baseline. Easy because his was the predecessor of the organisation that I now work for. Tracing its history back to 1747, Military Survey (as it was once known) mapped the UK and Ireland to a phenomenal degree given the technology at their disposal. You can still see the ends of the baseline marked by two upturned cannons, one in Ordnance Close and one at Heathrow airport, although the vast majority of people probably don’t know what they signify.

Another place on my bucket list is the Vatican, if only to see The Gallery of Maps, a 120m long gallery beautifully decorated with more than 40 works of art. Dating from the 1580s, their vibrant colours and remarkable detail are from an age when maps where starting to assume an important role in scientific discovery. Celebrating the central importance of Italy before it was a unified country, they were commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII, who wanted the Vatican to be a part of the scientific and cartographic revolution of the day.

My final choice this month is not necessarily the most obvious as it is neither beautiful nor particularly eye-catching. The Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum Visitor Map is very powerful, presenting as the web site describes it 'a poignant and eerily clinical blend…a cold soulless landscape', something which perhaps a photograph could also invoke but something that this map achieves with stunning simplicity.

These and all the other maps that have been chosen throughout the year can be found at http://mapdesign.icaci.org/category/mapcarte/.

And Finally

Well, following last month’s toilet humour picture, for which I got no printable suggestions about what unconventional toilet paper could be, I am really struggling for something to finish this month’s offering. So what I will say is that December’s offering will come out on or about Christmas Eve and will contain exciting news about next year’s Symposium, so think of the next couple of weeks as a kind of BCS Advent Calendar, but without the chocolate.

Pete Jones MBE FBCart.S CGeog

8th December 2014

E-mail: peter.jones991@mod.uk

Twitter: @geomapnut

BCS President's Bulletin September 2014

Well, in the end I suppose it was all a bit of a damp squib with the Scottish independence vote being decisively won by the ‘Better Together’ campaign despite some polls predicting a much closer result right up to the day of polling. So we won’t have to re-draw the map of the United Kingdom although lots of versions were being produced right up to the last minutes to show how things might have looked had the vote gone the other way.

And this wasn’t the only geopolitical issue in the news last month, there was also a little bit of a spat between Russia and Canada over the Crimea, and I quote “when diplomats from Canada and Russia engaged in passive-aggressive cartography on social media.” Apparently Canada’s mission to NATO tweeted a map that was aimed at helping Russian soldiers who kept getting lost and not knowing on which side of the border they were and it also clearly labelled the Crimean Peninsula “not Russian”. Not to be outdone, Russian diplomats tweeted their own map that showed Crimea fully under Russian control. The Canadian Tweet was shared 25000 in one day, the Russian Tweet? Just 400.

The BBC also reported last month on the latest development in the South China Sea. You

may remember in my July Bulletin that I included a picture of Vietnamese models wearing map dresses in what was called ‘soft power’ showing their interpretation of the maritime boundaries. Well it would appear that China has taken an altogether more practical approach and is actually constructing new islands in order to bolster its territorial claims. The appearance of these islands has happened suddenly and is a dramatic new move in a longstanding territorial struggle in the South China Sea. At the beginning of this year, the Chinese presence in the Spratly Islands consisted of a handful of outposts, a collection of concrete blockhouses perched atop coral atolls. Now it is building substantial new islands on five different reefs. Full details can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_8701/index.html

Cartography on the Internet

It’s nice to know that my blog is widely read and thank you to those who have commented

positively on it. This month I have had for the first time, people suggesting stories that I might like to include, so thanks to Mary Spence for pointing out this article, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29330265. Do you play Minecraft? No, me neither, but perhaps I will start as it has now been augmented by Ordnance Survey completing a Minecraft map of the UK. Made from 83 billion blocks, each representing 25m on the ground, It has been designed in such stunning detail, that you should be able to locate your own house on it.

Sue Brett pointed me to another BBC article that reported on recent work done at

Stonehenge to map the underground picture around the monument, a process that has revealed a much large network of sites and related activity that had previously been known. Ground penetrating radar and 3D scanning were used to reveal previously unknown detail that indicates that Stonehenge was not as isolated as previously thought being part of a much large set of Neolithic activity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29126854

Here’s one for your Christmas list, a game called Cartography. Its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/cartographygame doesn’t really give much detail and I’m struggling to find more details about it. It would appear that it hasn’t actually been produced yet and is looking for ‘kickstarter’ funding. But is does say on the website “Please share Cartography with your nerd friends!”

And talking of Christmas lists, you might also like to add ‘Maps; their untold stories’, a new book published by The National Archives and authored by Rose Mitchell and Andrew Janes. Chapters highlight how early mapmakers viewed their world; there are military maps and

sea charts, maps showing exploration and settlement overseas; maps for treaties and diplomacy; and even maps which capture the imaginative element of cartography. Available at £25 from TNA.

As someone who has always marvelled at how accurately some ancient charts appear to depict coastlines and continents, I was really interested to read an article on Portolan Charts. These have been described as one of the most remarkable and mysterious technical advances in the history of navigation. The example first presented in the article is a chart of the Mediterranean so accurate that ships today could navigate with it. Most earlier maps that included the region were not intended for navigation and were so imprecise that they are virtually unrecognizable to the modern eye. The person who made this document — the first so-called portolan chart, from the Italian word portolano, meaning “a collection of sailing directions” — spawned a new era of mapmaking and oceanic exploration. That first portolan mapmaker also created an enormous puzzle for historians to come, because he left behind few hints of his method: no rough drafts, no sketches, no descriptions of his work. http://discovermagazine.com/2014/june/14-the-mapmakers-mystery#.VBMIZzg2e41.twitter

Equally as mysterious is this next map. Whilst we are used to seeing maps of the Moon and

Mars, this is another extra-terrestrial object that has been mapped, the catchily named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Comet. Mapped by the European Space Agency’s satellite, Rosetta, the plan is to identify a suitable site for Rosetta’s probe to land on the surface of the comet. Rosetta is the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet, escort it as it orbits the sun, and will deploy a lander to its surface.

By now we are all familiar with ‘Google Street View’, with details captured for a vehicle mounted camera; some may be aware of ‘Google Trekker’, a man-portable system for monitoring anything from hikes to trails and now comes the ‘Google Cartographer’ to capture details inside buildings. As the website reports,

The Cartographer uses a process called “simultaneous localization and mapping” (SLAM), a

technique that’s typically used for mapping new locations and that Google is now putting to use to map anything from hotels to museums.

As the backpacker walks through a building, the floor plan is automatically generated in real time, Google says. The wearer also uses a tablet to add points of interest while walking around the building (say room numbers in a hotel or the exhibits in a museum).

I know that I have been concerned to ensure people that cartography is not dead, but I am not sure that I had this in mind when I was thinking of the modern day cartographer.


 
Restless Earth

It would appear that we are going to have to update some of the information that we provide to the students who attend the BCS Restless Earth workshops. Research carried out by scientists at the British Geological Survey, in association with the University of Rhode Island and the University of Tokyo, has revealed that a submarine landslide contributed to the enormity of the 2011 tsunami in Japan. Research showed that the very high waves recorded along the northern part of the affected coast could not be explained by the earthquake, because the epicentre was located farther south. The high waves, however, could be explained by a submarine landslide located offshore of the Honshu coast. Using sophisticated modelling of the Japan event a location for the possible landslide was found and seabed imagery showed that there was one present. Modelling of the tsunami from the earthquake and landslide together reproduced the waves that had devastated the north Honshu coast.

ICA Map Carte

Image maps are very familiar to us, but in the 1960s they were still a fairly new concept. Certainly photography was used to compile mapping but in its raw form was thought to be

too detailed and difficult to interpret. This composite map of the moon shows how effective it can be when done well. True, there are no features overlaying the topographic base, but it is a stunning image of something we perhaps take for granted and seldom look at in any detail.










I wonder why the compiler of Map Carte chose Nottingham to illustrate John Speed’s work?!

Beautiful historical cartography that as a print would grace any wall, but is probably beyond the means of most. The bold, vivid colours of Speed’s atlas perhaps look a little garish for modern tastes but reflect the opulence that was often part of the process. Often created as prestigious ways of recognising a royal patron, the brighter the better, and they in no way detract from the maps themselves.


And finally

A reminder that the BCS AGM will be held on Monday 17th November at the RAF Club in London. It will be preceded by an Historical Military Mapping Group event at the British Library and followed by a talk by BBC Weather Presenter Helen Willetts on ‘The Changing Face of the Weather Map’. Check out the BCS website for full details of the day.

Pete Jones MBE FBCart.S CGeog

5th October 2014

E-mail: peter.jones991@mod.uk

Twitter: @geomapnut

BCS President's Bulletin July 2014

The summer months tend to be when the news stories dry up and the media outlets are obliged to drag out the funny, the odd, the non-news and frankly the fairly weird news stories. But luckily 'silly season’ hasn’t extended as far as this bulletin which retains its sense of decorum – but let’s face it by the August bulletin I might be running out of ideas. Have you been away on holiday yet? How far did you travel and how long did it take you to get there? My guess is that for most people it will have been less than 12 hours, so just be thankful that you weren’t travelling in 1881 which is the date of this Isochronic World Map. To quote its explanatory text, “Isochronic travel chart for passengers showing the shortest number of days journey from London by the quickest through routes and using further such conveyances as are available without unreasonable cost. It is supposed that local preparations have been made and that other circumstances are favourable”. Europe could still be reached ‘within 10 days’ so as long as you went for a fortnight you’d probably be alright; the east coast of America was between 10 and 20 days and for the long haul to Australia you would need to allow more than 40 days. Which set me thinking and prompted me to issue a challenge. The technology now at our disposal must make it fairly simple to calculate a similar map for today which will show just how much the World has shrunk. We know where the Proclaimers could have travelled from (something that the Commonwealth Games recently hammered home time and time again), so calculating an updated ‘Isochronic Travel Chart’ should be relatively straightforward. Sounds to me like an excellent project for a BCS Award entry.

 

In  what the headline calls ‘soft’ power, the Vietnamese have hit on a new way to push their case for ownership of disputed islands in the South China Sea, map dresses. This latest move by Vietnam has allegedly generated more Chinese media coverage than Vietnam’s naval clashes with Chinese maritime forces in the South China Sea. China and Vietnam have been involved in several rounds of violent maritime clashes in recent months, especially since early May when China surreptitiously installed an oil rig near the Paracel Islands which were taken by China from Vietnam in 1974 after a short but fierce naval battle. The traditional dresses are printed with maps of Vietnamese islands in the South China Sea claimed or occupied by China.

Cartography on the Web

An interesting site that propose a list of “Map vocabulary all kids should know”. It’s by no means an exhaustive list and I think I would probably not agree with all kids having to know ‘Goode’s Interrupted Homolosine’, but everyone to their own. Full details at http://kidworldcitizen.org/2013/06/02/language-of-maps-kids-should-know/

 

Children are obviously very much to the fore as there is also an extensive syllabus produced called the 21^st Century Skills Map for Geography. Whilst it is American it does contain a lot of good material and although Cartography per se doesn’t get much dedicated coverage there is a lot of map work and GIS involved and it’s heartening to see forward looking concepts such as ‘media literacy’ being covered and the cartographic elements are mostly found in the ‘Creativity and Innovation’ section. http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/21stcskillsmap_geog.pdf Altogether a little bit more inspiring than the GCSE curriculum presentation.

 

Those of you who attended the Symposium in 2012 may remember that Georg Gartner, President of the International Cartographic Association, was one of our guests and proposed the toast to the Society at the end of the Gala Dinner. He has recently published an article entitled “Why Maps Matter"The Relevance of Cartography," A Cartographer's Perspective” It makes very interesting reading and underlines what we have been saying at the BCS for sometime, that despite the changes in technology and access Cartography is as important now as it always has been . http://www.esri.com/esri-news/arcnews/summer14articles/why-maps-matter

 

A recent article in Maplines covered the topic of maps of fictional lands, a common cartographic pastime. This website takes it a step further by collecting together some truly stunning examples of fictional cartography, where the creator’s art is allowed to run free resulting in some beautiful images. http://www.cartographersguild.com/content/

Society of Cartographers

As part of the celebrations of their 50^th Anniversary the Society of Cartographers arranged a talk at University College London by Ed Parsons, the Geospatial Technologist of Google. Entitled ‘Celebrating Cartography’ the talk was a fascinating review of the use of maps and geographic information today and the way that it has grown over the last ten years into a multi-billion pound industry. Now that it is so familiar, it is sobering to note that Google Earth recently celebrated just its 10^th birthday. We have adopted what was ground breaking technology remarkably quickly and it is easy to forget that with the rapid technology advances things that we take for granted haven’t actually been around all that long. Google Maps has undergone a similar ‘mass adoption’ and there are now one billion users, with one third of all internet users accessing Google maps every month. The improvements that have been made to Google Maps have moved it from being a functional if rather ugly product to something which now embodies much that is good in modern online cartography and it was duly recognised as such in the ICA Map Carte selection a couple of months ago. I think the key point that Ed made, however, was the way in which everybody is now using maps on the web. We are not just looking at maps on the web, we are using them much more to support our day-to-day activities, be it journey planning, finding the nearest Indian restaurant or checking out areas to buy a house, which are just a few examples of how they are being used. As Ed mentioned in his closing remarks, Maps are now being used more widely than at any point in history.

 

ICA MapCarte

 

My selection from the Map Carte nominations this month starts with a classic from the 1840s, a birds eye view of China, which appears to be years ahead of its time. We are now very used to perspective views as a means of portraying geographic information, but this was produced at a time when the producer’s imagination and vision played a large part in the composition.

 

 

Topographic maps of Switzerland are an art form and have long been recognised as probably the best topographic maps in the world for design, consistency and presentation. I don’t think I can improve on the description as on the MapCarte website, so here it is:

“The new range of 1:25,000 scale maps by Swisstopo, of which the Hauenstein sheet is one, shows that they have not lost their eye. Building upon the legacy of elegant maps that have gone before, this updated design shows clear lineage with contemporary flair. The lines are cleaner, the marks almost more deliberate. The text is so well placed it looks as if it sits perfectly at home amongst the other map features. The density of information is almost unbelievable and to achieve such a well balanced product without recourse to more omission and simplification is astonishing. The classic Imhof-inspired hillshade lends a clarity and brightness to the topography and gives it the unmistakable look of a Swiss topographic map

I am currently reading 'One Summer: America 1927' by Bill Bryson. In one chapter he describes the huge changes that the building of so many high rise buildings had on New York. It’s ‘population’ swelled immensely although most of it was daytime working population, where a single skyscraper could hold 50,000 people. Joey Chedarchuk has taken a similar theme and show New York, or more specifically Manhattan, as a ‘breathing’ city reflecting its population throughout the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BCS Awards

 

The Awards are now open for 2015, so I hope you are all planning on which categories you are going to enter. One additional ‘bonus’ this year is that the winner of the Stanfords Award, which also took the overall BCS Award, currently has pride of place in Stanfords Shop window in Covent Garden. So if you really want to get your map in the public eye, what better way than to enter it for the Awards next year?

 

Restless Earth

 

I mentioned earlier the level of attention that cartography for children and students is getting on the web and the interest in our Restless Earth workshops certainly backs this up. We circulated all schools who have expressed interest in Restless Earth and we now have 28 workshops arranged for the academic year 2014/15. We have almost become the victims of our own success as resourcing these is becoming a challenge and we discussed at Council the possibility of appointing an Education Officer. We are currently seeking sources of funding for this to see if is feasible as we can’t really continue to rely on volunteers for what has become such a large programme. If you know of any charitable trusts who may like to support this please let me know as we would like to target our appeal. Similarly if you feel you could offer to support a workshop by coming along on the day to help that would be great, the current programme is available on the Restless Earth page of the BCS website.

 

And finally

 

Well, as it is the ‘silly season’ I thought I’d include a silly map. This one apparently shows what each nation leads the world in. The website is no more specific than “They collected the information from various sources and sprinkled in some quirkier rankings” The fact that Myanmar (Burma) leads the world in speaking Burmese is perhaps not surprising, but that the UK leads the world in ‘Fascist Organisation’ is at best surprising and at worst downright libelous. The full zoomable version is at http://www.eyeopening.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/world-map1.png

 

 

 

Pete Jones MBE FBCart.S CGeog

8th August 2014

E-mail: peter.jones991@mod.uk

Twitter: @geomapnut