Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
to be integrated in the various thematic publications or to be made available through
special sources, like the Statistical Encyclopedia.
All maps of the FSO are published either bilingual (German and French) or
monolingual in the four official Swiss languages (German, French, Italian, Rhaeto-
Romanic) and English. And of course, all maps are free of charge, in coherence
with policies by Eurostat and other NSIs to freely disseminate statistical informa-
tion. Maps are made available in almost any type of media, including new dissem-
ination channels like mobile devices. The maps can cover all administrative
geographical levels, grids and special analytical regions for Switzerland, as well
as major regions for Europe or thematic country maps of the World.
FSO
BFS, ThemaKart” are mean-
while well known by many customers as a reliable brand and source for statistical
maps of Switzerland and Europe. The unit is today the second largest official map
distributor in Switzerland. This implies also a good deal of public relations work
and customer service engagement for about 500 enquiries p.a. apart from the core
cartographic business. One example of an important PR contribution are live-
mapping activities on Sundays, when federal elections or popular votes, which
are conducted four times a year, are mapped continuously and interactively
throughout Sunday afternoons as new data becomes available. At 8 p.m. ready-
to-print maps are provided to several important Swiss newspapers (Schulz
2011
).
Other major activities include the provision of a large number of geometric bases
and maps of spatial divisions to customers, which are updated several times a year,
when changes to basic spatial units or their relations occur.
In addition to thematic maps, the unit also provides other regional by-products
from the atlas data base, such as interactive regional profiles for cantons, communes
or European countries. For many years, these popular portraits were usually put
together manually on the FSO website every year from plain tables. Such key data
sets can now be extracted and updated almost automatically from the data base
(Platform Stat@tlas), taking into account also all spatial changes which happened
over the past 12 months. Thus, for the user, the regional data will either be shown
visually in the atlas or in table format on the general web pages, and it will be
provided as download services—just like all other maps. Other products are
automated regional reports (maps, charts, tables, text) in PDF format or interactive
regional indicator systems (charts), cf. Schulz (
2012
).
Regional Statistical Offices contribute also in large quantity to the number of
official statistical maps available in Switzerland. There are 25 cantonal statistical
offices, and 6 larger cities also maintain their own statistical offices, collecting local
data and additional topics which are not covered by the FSO. Looking back 20 years
ago, only half a dozen of these offices produced or disseminated thematic maps at
all. Today, and this speaks for itself and the success of thematic mapping, maps can
be found in the publications of all these offices. Depending on the size of the
territory they cover, often they also show several spatial divisions. Twelve cantons
also had some kind of a statistical atlas on the Internet by this year. Regional
statistical offices cooperate amongst each other as well as with the FSO in regards
of technologies (e.g. atlas platforms, data bases) and map know-how.
s Cartography Unit and its copyright sign “
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©
