Proceedings: Seminar for ICA Commission on National and Regional Atlases, 2001 Beijing

Summary

This proceedings volume documents the Seminar of the ICA Commission on National and Regional Atlases held in Beijing in August 2001 and presents a broad account of atlas development at the turn of the twenty-first century. Jointly organized by the ICA Commission, the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Cartography and GIS Committee of the Geographical Society of China, the seminar brought together specialists from China, the United States, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan, the Czech Republic, Poland, South Korea, and other countries. Its speeches and reports place particular emphasis on the modernization of Chinese cartography and on the compilation and publication of major works such as the National Physical Atlas of China and the National Economic Atlas of China. The contributions review the scientific organization of source materials, thematic design, scale selection, cartographic representation, and integrated synthesis, while highlighting the value of national atlases for understanding national conditions, assessing resources and environments, supporting regional planning, and informing sustainable-development policy. Other themes include the proposed ICA Demographic World Atlas, GIS-based urban mapping, environmental and health or disease mapping, and the construction and application of Chinese datasets for Global Map. A central concern throughout the volume is the transition from printed atlases to electronic, multimedia, and Internet-based atlas information systems. The reports examine the integration of geographic information systems, remote sensing, GPS, databases, telecommunications, and web technologies, with case studies on the electronic and online versions of the National Physical Atlas of China. They also describe EA-World, a Windows-based production environment whose ColorMagic, SymbolMagic, MapMagic, EA-Power, and EA-Viewer modules support color and symbol management, map compilation and editing, integrated processing, visualization, maintenance, and publication. Compatibility with common vector formats, including ARC/INFO coverage, E00, and shapefiles, and raster formats such as BMP, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, and PCX illustrates the growing importance of interoperable digital workflows. The extensive exhibition and appended bibliography of national, thematic, provincial, regional, and urban atlases demonstrate the breadth of Chinese achievements in physical geography, economics, population, ecology, disasters, land use, conservation, and urban development. Overall, the volume records a significant episode of international cartographic cooperation and shows how the atlas was evolving from a static collection of printed maps into an integrated geographic information system capable of retrieval, spatial analysis, dynamic updating, network dissemination, and decision support.