GSDI 15 announced that Professor Menno-Jan Kraak, President of the International Cartographic Association for the period of 2015-2019, will be joining in Taipei. Dr. Kraak is a Dutch cartographer and professor of Geovisual Analytics and Cartography at the Faculty of Geoinformation Sciences and Earth Observation (ITC) at the University of Twente. ITC is a valued member of the GSDI Association.
Dr. Kraak’s participation in GSDI 15 is especially welcome, with ICA being a fellow member of Joint Board of Geospatial Information Societies. JBGIS is a coalition of the leaders of recognized international organizations involved in the coordination, development, management, standardization or regulation of geospatial information and related matters. GSDI and ICA will take the opportunity to explore how the two organizations can collaborate, particularly relating to their respective SDI capacity building efforts.
Dr. Kraak has written more than 200 publications on cartography and GIS. His most visible publications are books on aspects of cartography: Cartography, visualization of geospatial data (with Ormeling) and published by Routeledge and Guildford Press (translated in 5 languages), Web cartography, developments and prospects (editor with Brown) published by Taylor & Francis, and Exploring Geovisualization (edited with Dykes and MacEachren) published by Elseviers. Recently, a new book titled ‘Mapping time, illustrated by Minard’s map of Napoleon’s invasion into Russia 1812,’ was published by Esri Press.
GSDI 15 is being held in Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China) from 28 November to 2 December 2016, under the theme “Spatial Enablement in the Smart Homeland”. The Conference is being jointly hosted by GSDI and its Taiwan-based members, the Taiwan Association of Disaster Prevention Industry (TADPI) and the Taiwan Geographic Information System Center (TGIC), with strong support from Ministry of the Interior (MOI), Government of Taiwan.