Let's get digital

As a child, I could happily spend entire afternoons perusing maps and atlases. I remain an avid map lover and recently bought two large atlases. One of them depicts the history of the Netherlands in a hundred old maps – it’s absolutely stunning. The other takes you on a journey back in time to the Dutch Zuiderzee, a former inlet of the North Sea: wonderful hand-drawn maps dating from the 16th century onwards. Not surprisingly – we’re talking about the Netherlands, after all – a large part of the former Zuiderzee was reclaimed as land and turned into ‘polders’... and I was born, raised and still live on one of them. But when it comes to cartography, much has changed since my younger days. Almost everything in our daily lives has become digitized, and maps are no exception. Besides having my nose stuck in old atlases, I also spend much of time with my eyes glued to a screen nowadays, as there is a lot about digital maps that fuels my curiosity and captures my imagination. The introduction and rise of digital maps has opened up a whole host of new possibilities – many more than we could ever have dreamed of before the digital era. Think of geoanalysis in all its forms, for example. We use map-based apps every day, and as for the good-old cartographers with their breathtaking craftsmanship, they can now benefit from innovative technology such as processed data from satellite images or ‘big geodata’. The digital transformation has radically changed surveying methods and tools, and it goes without saying that this is set to continue. Our brand new edition of the GIM International Business Guide zooms in on the opportunities that digitalization encompasses, especially in connection with various application fields such as construction and infrastructure.