Portrait

The Institute of Cartography was founded in 1925 by Professor Eduard Imhof. It is the world’s oldest university institute for cartography. Eduard Imhof is one of the founders of modern academic cartography. Research at the Institute typically focused on topographic cartography (terrain representation), thematic cartography and atlas cartography (school atlases, national atlases). Although these are still the most important areas of research today, they are being adapted to new requirements, media and technology. The Institute is also responsible for the editing and development of two award-winning atlases – the “Atlas of Switzerland” (national atlas) and the “Swiss World Atlas” (official Swiss school atlas). In 2011, the Institute’s activities were considerably expanded with the introduction of the new Professorship for Geoinformation Engineering, which was also reflected in the renaming of the Institute to “Institute for Cartography and Geoinformation”.

Nowadays, the Institute is striving to uphold its leading position in cartography by further developing its existing knowledge to incorporate new areas of application, particularly interactive cartographic applications. Geoinformation engineering deals with the analysis, representation, modelling and visualisation of spatiotemporal decision-making processes and integrates models like these into mobile geoinformation services and spatial information technologies.

The classes are intended to teach students how to acquire, model and visualise geoinformation, as well as use it for general and domain-specific applications of spatial information systems.