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Commissions on National Atlases

International cooperation on national atlases took institutional form in 1956, when the International Geographical Union (IGU) established its Commission on National Atlases. The history that followed falls into three phases: the IGU commission; the joint Working Group on Environmental Atlases formed by the IGU and the International Cartographic Association (ICA), which carried one strand of the commission’s work forward after 1976; and the ICA Commission on National Atlases established in 1987. Drawing on the reports and publications collected here, this account traces their changing priorities: standardisation and bibliographic survey, environmental mapping, digital technologies, and the renewed emphasis in recent years on practical guidance for atlas production.

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The IGU Commission on National Atlases was established at the International Geographical Congress in Rio de Janeiro in 1956, with the Soviet cartographer K. A. Salishchev as its first chair. Its purpose was to encourage national-atlas production, improve quality, and make maps from different countries more comparable. At its first plenary meeting in Moscow and Leningrad in 1958, it set three basic tasks: systematic study of existing and planned national atlases, a bibliography of national atlases and related literature, and advice to atlas-producing institutions. At the Stockholm Congress of 1960, concrete results had been achieved in all three areas and four new priorities were proposed for the next four years: harmonising the content and legends of key maps in national atlases, studying regional atlases, considering an international series of physical maps, and keeping national atlases up to date.

At the 1962 Budapest session, the commission pushed standardisation further, established four working groups on population maps, systematic reviews, explanatory texts, and industrial statistics, and began work on a minimum programme for developing countries. At the 1964 London meeting, it became a permanent IGU commission and presented its first systematic study of regional atlases. The programme also expanded to agricultural, transport, and water-resource mapping. At the Paris and Lyon meeting of 1966, complex urban atlases emerged as a new field, and working groups on commerce and atlas indexes were added.

Renamed the Commission on National and Regional Atlases at the 1968 New Delhi Congress, it examined social and economic mapping in complex atlases and, at UNESCO’s request, prepared recommendations on the themes, organisation, and methods of atlases of natural conditions and resources for developing countries. At the 1970 Madrid meeting, it called for recommendations on urban atlases and closer cooperation with the ICA. Satellite imagery and computer-assisted mapping also came into view, together with the longer-term idea of a thematic atlas of the world. By the 1972 Montreal Congress, its programme extended to resource assessment, environmental protection, territorial planning, and forecasting, while a major methodological study focused on natural-environment mapping.

After 1972, Salishchev stepped down and was succeeded by Edgar Lehmann of the German Democratic Republic. At the 1974 Leipzig meeting, environmental mapping emerged as a major new concern, alongside proposals for cross-border atlases. A 1976 report pointed toward computer cartography, loose-leaf atlases, a revised guide to atlas preparation, and comparative studies of urban and metropolitan atlases. It also recorded the commission’s rejection of a proposed merger of the IGU and ICA bodies, while supporting closer cooperation between them. The IGU commission ended that year, and its environmental work continued in 1977 through the new IGU–ICA Joint Working Group on Environmental Atlases.

The new working group was chaired by F. Vázquez-Maure of Spain, with Ferjan Ormeling of the Netherlands serving as documentalist. A report covers the group’s first four sessions, held in Madrid, London, Maryland, and La Coruña between 1977 and 1979. Its early activities focused on defining environmental maps and atlases, compiling a bibliography, and studying environmental maps in national, regional, and urban atlases. The group also prepared a collection of cartographic examples for presentation at the 1980 IGU and ICA congresses in Tokyo. At its 1981 meeting in Barcelona, it planned a second volume. After Vázquez-Maure died unexpectedly in the autumn of 1982, David Bickmore of Britain took over, and the volume appeared in 1984.

Under Bickmore, the group shifted toward digital cartography. A 1984 notice proposed holding its next meeting alongside a symposium on geographical data sensing and processing in Zurich. By 1985, its terms of reference had shifted to a pilot global digital mapping project. This developed into the World Digital Database for Environmental Science, conceived as a standardised, topologically structured global data set rather than another printed atlas. Four workshops in Paris, Boulder, Geneva, and Oxford between 1985 and 1987 advanced the project, while pilot work in northern Kenya and north-western Sumatra tested its feasibility. By 1987, the group considered the project technically feasible, but its estimated £1.5–2 million cost meant that implementation would depend substantially on commercial funding. Its final report at the Mexico congress set out proposals for implementation, funding, and distribution before the working group was dissolved that year.

The immediate impetus for a new ICA commission came from a national-atlas workshop organised by Bengt Rystedt of Sweden at the AutoCarto conference in London in 1986. Its success led to an ad hoc working group, and at the 1987 General Assembly in Morelia the ICA established a Commission on National Atlases, chaired by Rystedt. Its terms of reference emphasised information and advice for national-atlas producers, particularly on new production technologies. The first meeting, held in Stockholm and Kiruna in 1989, covered country reports, production techniques and data processing, and electronic and interactive atlases. At the 1990 Beijing meeting, sessions were devoted to electronic atlases and national atlas information systems. At the 1991 Bournemouth congress, the commission extended its remit to regional atlases and became the Commission on National and Regional Atlases. From the 1990s onward, it increasingly held meetings jointly with other ICA commissions and related organisations, a practice that continued in later years.

At the 1992 Madrid meeting, the computer-assisted production of the Spanish national atlas provided a concrete example of the new technology. A 1993 seminar in Visegrád presented recent developments in electronic atlases. By the 1994 Reno meeting, Internet-based atlases had entered the commission’s discussions. Joel Morrison, then ICA president, suggested that the next US national atlas might take the form of an Internet atlas.

Under Timothy Trainor of the United States, who chaired the commission from 1995 to 2007, increasing attention was given to how digital atlases were delivered and used. Digital atlas demonstrations in Prague and The Hague in 1996 were followed by attention to school atlases at Bandung in 1997 and, at Reykjavik in 1998, a new emphasis on focus groups and user testing. The commission’s formative years from 1987 to 2007 were later documented by Ferjan Ormeling and Bengt Rystedt in its early history. Both Rystedt and Trainor later served as ICA president.

Peter Jordan of Austria took over in 2007. At a meeting in Moscow that year, it revived a proposal dating back to the IGU commission in 1976 for a guide to atlas editing, and at a 2008 meeting in Timișoara agreed on a ten-chapter structure. The 2010 Yogyakarta workshop examined how atlases express national and regional identity. In 2011 the commission was renamed the Commission on Atlases, broadening its scope to atlases of all kinds. Subsequent meetings included a 2012 conference in Kiev on national atlases in the formation of the global information space, and a 2013 meeting in Beijing on cross-border mapping.

From 2015 the commission was chaired by René Sieber of Switzerland. The long-running atlas-editing project moved closer to publication, with its layout, contents, and publication plans discussed at Munich in 2019. The same meeting also hosted a kick-off workshop on a United Nations sustainability atlas. The handbook finally appeared in 2023 as the open-access Atlas Cookbook, a practical guide to atlas compilation covering organisation, editing, data management, design, interactive features, and evaluation. In a broader sense, it can be read as a modern echo of the methodological tradition represented by the major works prepared under Salishchev’s direction in 1960 and 1976.

In 2023, Eric Losang of Germany and Vít Voženílek of the Czech Republic took over as co-chairs. The sustainability atlas discussed in 2019 was published in 2025 and received particular attention from the commission’s leadership.

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