From the editor: Opening access
By Antti Jakobsson, chair of the Cartographic Society of Finland
Pdf-file of the article, from Positio ICC Special Issue 2011
You are reading the third edition of the special issue of Positio magazine. It reports some of the progress made in Finland in the geoinformation field.
The previous issues were published in 2007 and 2003. This issue is also our national report to the International Cartographic Conference in Paris 2011 which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. The Cartographic Society was responsible for editing this issue and it is published in co-operation with the National Land Survey of Finland (NLS). I would like to thank the NLS and the advertisers for their financial support.
The main trend you notice reading the articles is that access to geoinformation has improved and government policy on its data is going towards open and even free access. I read today in a Finnish newspaper that a geographic app has taken the number one place in the Apple’s App Store, and this application is using free data from the NLS.
Another much used application in Finland is the Journey Planner of the Helsinki Region Transport. It is promoting the use of public transport by making it easy to find the routes and connections and it even supports the planning of cycling and walking.It includes information on steep hills, coffee shops and users can add new information. This is a good example of using the power of social networks.
Loisto (in English sector light), software of Karttakeskus offers automatic routing along waterways.It combines marine charts with topographic data offering a clearer visual experience for both professional and leisure users. If you never have experienced the archipelago of Finland, I would strongly advise you to do so, it is an unforgettable experience.
An important aspect of “opening access” is ensuring that people have skills to utilize new technology. PaikkaOppi service is bringing GIS to the Finnish schools promising users aware of geographic data resources in the future.The research on GIS maturity model for the first time provides organizations with a systematic means to evaluate whether they utilize GIS in full extent and what are the disabling factors in their case.
Last but not the least importantly, there is strong ongoing work on implementing the Spatial Data Infrastructure in Finland. The Finnish Geoportal has been opened and it received the innovation prize from Excellence Finland in their public sector series. It is built up with open source code and therefore is available to others as well.
Understanding the history is important, and we also include an article of Swedish military mapping in Finland just before the war between Sweden and Russia in 1808. Finland will be hosting the International Conference on History of Cartography in July 2013 (www.ichc2013.fi) with the theme “Four elements – the Essentials of the History of Cartography”. There will be many exhibitions, one including the Nordenskiöld map collection. This collection is in the list of the UNESCO world heritage.A. E. Nordenskiöld was the first man to complete the Northeast Passage.
We hope you find the articles in this issue interesting and inspiring in opening access to geoinformation.
6.8.2011 09:54