Cartography is the total of scientific, technical and artistic activities focused on map making and the use and interpretation of maps. A map is a graphical representation of objects on the earth's surface in a spatial context. Map making is more than just drawing some lines, points and symbols on paper, it requires a great level of skill.
The technological evolution has not only had a huge impact in changing the production of maps, but also on the different ways of presenting them. The latest technological trend is mapserving in which maps can be consulted via the internet. This has lead to an interactive approach, which enables users to extract relevant information directly upon querying the map servers

Cartography for World Heritage sites

According to the regulations of the World Heritage Convention, each country shall provide, when proposing a site for nomination, precise information indicating the boundary of the site as well as the boundary of the ‘buffer zone’ surrounding the site. The Convention also requests that both of these areas (site-boundary and site-buffer-zone) should be protected by an appropriate legislation.
Unfortunately many countries do not have accurate maps available. This makes that sometimes the provision of the site-boundaries information is of very poor quality.

Adequate maps of the sites are a basic tool for any conservation activity: starting with the exact location of the site that needs to be protected!
Additionally the creation of adequate cartography for World Heritage sites can be a tool for strong capacity building activity through which the less developed countries learn to use cartographic information in the development of site-management-plans.

Cartography for Natural World Heritage sites

For the management of natural sites, basic maps are needed that have as main layers: simple topography, cities, towns villages, main water bodies (rivers and lakes), main road structure and vegetation. In addition the site-boundary and the site-buffer-zone-boundary are important features.
For many natural sites a scale of 1 to 1 000,000 is appropriate. Obviously this may vary if the site is extremely large, but in general the mentioned scale is adequate.
The suggestion is to use georeferenced satellite images to be given to the developing countries a tool that can help them to delineate the associated site-boundaries on the satellite image.
At a later stage, when the information is returned, the basic maps are created making use of DCW layers as well as the site-boundaries provided.
This method is not always secure. A Large number of natural sites are fortunately not yet isolated in the surrounding vegetation and thus the boarders can not be noticed. Even if they can be detected, this method risks to exclude encroached sites that are in the park. However, the tool is very usefull to monitor the boundaries and encroachment.

Cartography for Cultural sites

In the case of cultural sites we suggest to divide the needs for cartography in three different categories:

a) Where is the site located? Here, similar as natural sites, the main required cartography consists of basic maps that have as main layers: simple topography, cities, towns villages, main water bodies (rivers and lakes), main road structure. In addition a point indicating the location of the cultural site should be emphasized.
A scale of 1 to 1 000,000 is appropriate.

b) Detailed information surrounding the site. Here the main information could be a simple map of a whole city (for the case when a cultural site is an old town inside a city). The map should provide detailed basic layers of information about the location of the site. A scale of 1:50,000 is suggested, but we must be flexible in order to adapt to the various types of cultural sites.

c) Information about the site itself. Here we are not more (necessarily) in the domain of geo-referenced information, normally what is required is the cadastral plan (architectural plan) of the site itself indicating the main monuments, main entrances, etc. However, when a cadastral plan is not available, a GPS could be used to obtain such basic information. The use of GPS is also one of the topics for the Strasbourg meeting.

The suggestion is to use satellite images in order to produce (a) and in particular high resolution (SPOT, IKONOS, and CORONA) to produce (b).

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