Cartographically-related research In Birkbeck College 1987–91

Abstract

The Department of Geography in Birkbeck College is rather unusual in various ways. Part of this stems from the College's unique mission to educate students on a part-time basis: only a small proportion of students (normally research students) are full-time. As a consequence, our students attend in the evening and work during the day in their normal occupations. The range of occupations varies dramatically from top civil servants and business staff to much more humble jobs. As a consequence, what we teach goes directly into the 'corporate blood stream' of many organisations; it is often used within days of it being taught. For this reason (amongst others) we see it as essential for our research results to be fed immediately into our teaching; inevitably, then, we seek some applicable results even from the most basic of our research. Birkbeck is generally reckoned to be one of the leading centres world-wide in relation to research and applications of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). This can be demonstrated in various ways. For instance, in a national research competition funded by the Natural Environment and the Economic and Social Research Councils (NERC and ESRC) in 1989, we secured about 25070 of the resources far more than any competitor. Apart from our own inhouse developments (see below), we were also the first site in Europe (in 1983) to install a commercial GIS (ARC/INFO) and now run several systems, using each for what it can do best. Because of this reputation, we are a centre to which many visitors come: recent long-stay researchers have come from China, France, Japan, Spain and Sweden. Overall, we are active in GIS in research of many kinds, much of it funded by government or international organisations, in education and training, in publishing and in consultancy. Given all this, where does cartography fit in within Birkbeck's activities? In the first instance, we exploit Desk Top Publishing and mapping in the cartography which illustrates work published by all departmental staff. More specifically, however, map-making from GIS is an everyday event within many projects and in teaching; the numbers made annually must run into many thousands. Many of our projects (e.g. for British Rail and for the Rural Development Commission) have involved displaying complex data in map form in order to convince non-expert staff about research findings. Maps as archival data stores of historical information are also important as input to our systems. Some projects (notably that on generalisation see below) are heavily cartographic. Overall, however, we see GIS and cartography as intimately linked though we do not subscribe to the view that the former is simply a tool encompassed within the latter. The spatial analysis aspects of GIS, in particular, constitute a distinctive area little explored by cartographers. It would be difficult to describe the 100+ projects carried out since 1987 in any detail. For this reason, a selection is made below and is arranged under distinct headings though most work makes a contribution to multiple areas.