ICA Workshop on Multiscale Cartography and Sustainability

Vancouver, Canada (and possibly online)

17th August, 2025 from 8:00 to 11:30 PST (UTC-8)

The ICA Commissions on Cartography and Sustainable Development, and on Multiscale Cartography, invite contributions to a joint workshop on the role of multiscale cartography in advancing sustainability. The workshop will explore how cartographic methods and data management can support Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by addressing challenges across multiple spatial scales, emphasizing design, production, and data gaps. Special attention will be given to sustainability in terms of energy use and computational efficiency, following recent advancements in green cartography.

Sustainable development seeks to meet present needs without compromising future generations (United Nations). To achieve global SDGs, local action is essential. Mapping at multiple scales is key for localizing global objectives, coordinating actions, and addressing complex sustainability challenges.

The workshop will focus on the intersection of multiscale cartography, sustainability, and data quality, highlighting advancements in AI-driven techniques for generalization and automated quality assessments for both original and generalized data. As geospatial data grows in volume and resolution, developing robust methods to ensure accuracy and fitness for use remains a priority.

We invite contributions on topics including, but not limited to:

  • Cartographic generalization for sustainability and SDGs
  • Mapping service accessibility and data gaps
  • Green cartography and energy-efficient mapping
  • Development and dissemination of multiscale data for sustainability
  • Quality assessment techniques for generalized geospatial data
  • Addressing the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP)
  • AI/ML applications in map generalization and sustainability

Program

To be announced…

Registration

Registration is done via the ICC conference registration system. Please visit the ICC 2025 website

If you only plan to attend online, you just need to use the link above, no need for registration.

Submissions

You are invited to submit a 2-page paper, on ongoing research or position papers, following the general guidelines of the ICA conference abstracts.

The proceedings of the workshop will be published online with the CC-BY licence, on this page. Papers should be submitted to EasyChair.

As the workshop promotes open science, we strongly encourage that the datasets used in the presented research are made available, as well as the code. The code can be deposited in a platform such as Github, while the datasets can be uploaded to Zenodo.org or similar repositories, and the DOI should be mentioned in the paper.

The proceedings will be published openly on this website (CC-BY licence).

The workshop will be open to researchers and practitioners interested in cartography for sustainability, map generalisation and multiple representation, regardless of submission or acceptance of an abstract.

Important dates

  • Submission deadline: 15th April 2025, submitted to EasyChair.
  • Notification of acceptance: by 9th May, 2025
  • Workshop: Sunday, 17th August, 2025

Organizing and Scientific Committee

  • Carolyn Fish, University of Oregon, USA
  • Izabela Karsznia, University of Warsaw, Poland
  • Nicolas Regnauld, Esri, France
  • Britta Ricker, Utrecht University, Netherlands
  • Timofey Samsonov, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
  • Lawrence V. Stanislawski, USGS, USA
  • Guillaume Touya, LASTIG, IGN-ENSG, Univ. Gustave Eiffel, France.