Maps, mapping applications and the usefulness of cartographic products are now widely, and actively covered in today’s press. Once, this was not the case, and the discourse about cartography might have only taken place in academic departments or mapping agencies and companies.
Take for example recent articles. The New York Times, November 2018, ran an article ‘The community now knows what we do, how we do it and what products, analogue and digital, that we provide’, about the use of interactive mapping and television election analysis and reporting in the United States. The article included the statement: ‘On election nights, maps are the stars of the show. They … transform granular data into something viewers can actually see’. In Wired magazine, in March 2018, the use of maps to evaluate the effectiveness of transit systems by using maps was covered, in ‘Intricate maps reveal what US public transit gets wrong—and right’. The Independent newspaper reported on mapping developments - the Google Maps move to 3D, from their sometimes-controversial projection ‘Google Maps is not flat anymore as it finally ditches its problematic maps’ and some of the issues related to the collection of location information in ‘Google stores location data ‘even when users have told it not to’. And, The Guardian, December 2018, in ‘What would a city that is safe for women look like?’ described SafetiPin an Indian mapping app, where users can rate streets and areas with respect to a safety-criteria for women.
Maps, and mapping are now, literally, in the news. The general public are informed, perhaps more than ever before, about what we do, and the usefulness of maps and location-delivered services, and some of the emerging issues related to using these products.
This interest in reporting about the discipline of cartography and GIScience by the global press reflects the public’s acknowledgement of the importance of the provision of accurate and timely geospatial information. What we do, in research, development and production supports the continual advancement of appropriate data sets, products and delivery mechanisms. Communicating about what we do is also important, reflected the championing of the establishment of this Journal, just on five years ago, by the International Cartographic Association. The papers contained herein provide information to our discipline and to society at large. They reflect the important work being undertaken by the international Cartography / GIScience research community.
In this issue Krisztián Kerkovits, in the contribution, Comparing finite and infinitesimal map distortion measures, reports on the investigation into the different methods used to calculate the global distortion of a given area in a map projection using a local distortion criterion that is a function of the infinitesimal semi-axes of the Tissot's indicatrix. What the research wanted to determine was whether there exist significant differences between these methods and, if so, the nature of these differences.
Spinning the wheel of design: evaluating geoportal Graphical User Interface adaptations in terms of human-centred design by Charalampos Gkonos, Ionut Iosifescu Enescu and Lorenz Hurni addresses the Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) of geoportals in an academic environment. The authors provide information about their new GUI for the Geodata Versatile Information Transfer environment geoportal and the results from an evaluation that compared a new iteration of their GUI with a previous version. The research wanted to compare efficiency, usability and cognitive workload in order to further improve the GUI.
Loukas-Moysis Misthos, Byron Nakos, Vassilios Krassanakis and Maria Menegaki provide information about their research on the design of explorative geographic visualizations which dynamically visualize mountain landscapes visible to hypothetical observers as they might move along different topographic features. Using animated maps, they sought insight about the influence of the moving observers’ topographic features and elevation upon the viewsheds’ extent and configuration. They combined a qualitative approach with a statistical evaluation to ensure robust results.
The paper, Automatic derivation of on-demand tactile maps for visually impaired people: first experiments and research agenda, by Guillaume Touya, Sidonie Christophe, Jean-Marie Favreau and Amine Ben Rhaiem, reports on the research conducted to determine the effectiveness of complex automated cartographic creation processes to provide on-demand tactile maps for visually impaired people. This arose from concerns that existing automated derivation processes do not include generalization or advanced stylization steps. The authors undertook this research to raise real research issues and to develop a research agenda related to automatically derived tactile maps.
Dennis Edler, Julian Keil, Lars Kuchinke and Frank Dickmann, in their contribution Correcting distortion errors in memory of object locations: the example of grid line spacing in topographic maps, propose that modern maps should not only consider contemporary visualization techniques and design approaches, but also knowledge on the map user’s cognitive processing. They note that previous research into cognitive cartography and spatial cognition identified grids to be suitable cartographic elements that improve the accuracy of cognitive representations of geographic space. Their research sought to determine the ideal value of grid line spacing for object location memory using a recall-memory-paradigm adopted from experimental studies in cognitive psychology.
As noted earlier, it is important that we inform our community and the general public about what we do. The publication of the outcomes of research endeavors in this Journal contributes to the knowledge about our discipline. What is happening in Cartography / GIScience is important news, and this issue – the first in our 5th year of publication – continues as a conduit of that news.