Preface

“The entrance to the hall was barred by a big panel, leaving two meters-wide passageways at either side, on which Jed had displayed a satellite photo taken around the mountain of Guebwiller next to an enlargement of a Michelin Departments map of the same zone. The contrast was striking: while the photograph showed only a soup of more or less uniform green sprinkled with vague blue spots, the map developed a fascinating maze of departmental and scenic roads, viewpoints, forests, lakes, and cols. Above the two enlargements, in black capital letters, was the title of the exhibition: THE MAP IS MORE INTERESTING THAN THE TERRITORY.”

— Michel Houellebecq, La Carte et le Territoire (2010)

As history and archeology teach us, for a very long period of human civilization, maps have been the favorite way of communicating geospatial information. They show things humans can and cannot see, things which have existed in the past, things which might exist in the future, but also things which will never exist. Maps transfer the result of painstaking work of data collectors and analysts from various domains of human activity. They help us orient in the world in which we exist and to manage it. Finally, maps are a powerful tool for showing people our knowledge, and more importantly, our ideas.

The development of modern technologies—by which we mostly refer to digital technologies and the Internet–has dramatically altered the world of geospatial information visualization. Maps have become interactive, scalable, multi-temporal, and three-dimensional. Storing data in digital form and computer technologies have enabled easier and more efficient communication of geospatial data, whereas the Internet has significantly increased the availability of maps to diverse user groups. As a result, the number of map users has skyrocketed and so has the number of map authors. Whereas before, creating maps used to be limited to an exclusive group of scholarly cartographers, today, geovisualization has become an integral part of many disciplines.

An additional stimulus to the development of geovisualization is the emergence of open-source software and open data. Open-source technologies, such as the R programming language to which this material dedicates a lot of attention as a result of collaborative efforts of experts from different fields, provide wide possibilities in the domain of data analysis, generation, and dissemination, as well as significant infrastructure for more complex geovisualization tasks. Furthermore, web cartographic applications based on open-source technologies contribute to the Internet’s role of the world’s most important cartographic medium. In other words, these technologies provide an excellent foundation for realizing unlimited potential in geovisualization. At the same time, open data, such as OpenStreetMap and Copernicus, are free fuel providing a significant boost to the complex machinery of geospatial information production, communication, and exploitation.

This material is equally intended to those who are experts in creating maps and those who have a need or desire to enter the world of geovisualization. The aim is to practically familiarize readers with open-source tools for creating and distributing maps on the Internet, but also to present basic principles of cartographic expression.

We are grateful to the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology of the Republic of Serbia which provided support for creating this book within the scope of the project “Adaptation of Master studies in geoinformatics in line with current industry and job market needs.”

— Authors, Belgrade 2018.