Demographic Atlas of Albania: Pilot project for a National Atlas Information System in a South East European transformation country. Mapping approaches into a changing world

Summary

Albania, one of the least known South East European transformation countries, has undergone profound political, economic and social changes since its political turnaround in 1990, yet the country still lacks a national atlas providing fundamental information on its physical, economic, societal and political structures. To investigate the feasibility of compiling a national atlas, an international research team conducted a pilot project by developing and producing one thematic segment—the current demographic situation. The Demographic Atlas of Albania is a cartographic work on the structure and dynamics of the Albanian population during the transformation period of the post-socialist reform state. Targeting a wide public in politics, economy, education and society, the atlas seeks to gain the interest of laypersons in the demographic fundamentals of the country. This paper discusses basic conceptual considerations for a national atlas as one NAIS product and their application to the pilot atlas, dealing in greater detail with central issues of database design, cartographic visualisation and workflow. The atlas is based on a geographic information system (GIS) to allow for the subsequent creation of a digital national atlas information system (NAIS). The project employed a multinational cooperation model involving geographers and geoinformation scientists from Albania, Kosovo, Romania and Germany. Paper maps serve as the primary form of geodata presentation, with trilingual lettering (Albanian, English, German) and complementary development of screen maps. The results of the pilot project demonstrate that high-quality atlas production is feasible under the problematic conditions of Albania's transformation process, and the printed product can be compared with similar regional and national atlas products without any problem. The positive experience of multinational cooperation has led all participants to continue their collaboration by developing a second atlas focusing on economic structures and development, with plans for an electronic version to be made available on the internet in 2005.