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(VANCOUVER, June 19, 2015) UrtheCast Corp. (TSX:UR) (“UrtheCast” or the “Company”) today announced plans to build, launch and operate the world’s first fully-integrated, multispectral optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) commercial constellation of Earth Observation satellites (the “Constellation”), to be deployed over multiple launches expected in 2019 and 2020.

The Constellation is expected to comprise a minimum of 16 satellites (8 optical and 8 SAR) flying in two orbital planes, with each plane consisting of four satellite pairs, equally-spaced around the orbit plane. Each pair of satellites will consist of a dual-mode, high-resolution optical satellite (video and pushbroom) and a dual-band high-resolution SAR satellite (X-band and L-band) flying in tandem.

The Constellation will provide what the Company anticipates to be unmatched space-imaging capabilities, including high collection capacity, optical and SAR data fusion, weather-independent high-resolution imaging using the SAR, target revisit, and imaging latency. By flying the satellites in tightly-paired SAR and optical tandem formations, the Constellation is expected to offer a number of innovative capabilities, including onboard real-time processing, cross-cueing between the satellites, and real-time cloud imaging on the leading SAR satellites that enables cloud avoidance in the trailing optical satellites. By employing two orbital planes, the Constellation will allow for maximum revisit rates in the mid-latitudes, while providing the Company with global coverage extending to the poles.

UrtheCast has entered into Memoranda of Understanding (“MOU’s”) with multiple customers and partners, including an MOU from a confidential customer to provide US$195 million of funding for the Constellation during the build phase of the program (expected to be 2016-2020). As these MOU’s are successfully converted to binding definitive agreements, these customers will provide further support and funding for the Constellation.

The Company plans to disclose further technical, operational and financial details with respect to the Constellation as the material aspects relating to the build, launch and operation of the satellites are formalized with additional customers.

UrtheCast’s President and COO, Wade Larson said: “We’ve been working on the Constellation for over a year now and we’re delighted by the market reception we’ve had. We’re confident that the Constellation will bring an entirely unique dataset to this industry and, frankly, given the response we’re getting around the world, our customers agree. We couldn’t be more pleased with the progress we’re making.

“UrtheCast’s Strategic Industrial Partners: SSTL (UK) and ElecnorDeimos (Spain)UrtheCast’s strategic implementation partner for the satellite design and build is UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), the world’s leading smallsat manufacturer, owned by Netherlands-headquartered Airbus Group SE. Said Luis Gomes Director of Earth Observation for SSTL, “The design of the Gen-3 constellation is the culmination of a considerable effort on the part of both companies over the past year, working in very close partnership. As strategic partners in this venture, we see this initiative as a perfect marriage of the strengths of both SSTL and UrtheCast.”

UrtheCast’s strategic implementation partner for building out the Constellation’s mission planning system, distributed ground stations, SAR payload integration, mission analysis and flight dynamics is Spain-based ElecnorDeimos Space. As Miguel Belló, CEO of ElecnorDeimos Space noted, “We’re very pleased to be working with UrtheCast, its partners, and its customers in building out the Constellation. Our extensive experience in working with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) satellite missions, integrating complete satellite missions, in addition to working with other customers around the world, makes us an ideal partner for UrtheCast in realizing this ambitious and unique program.”

Precision1 is a rather sensitive subject in geomatics: talk about it to a surveyor or a GIS specialist, and you better be armed with the right arguments to convince him to change his measuring devices!

It’s true that it does not easily spring to mind that the images captured by Earth observation satellites, nowadays with submetric spatial resolution at best, can produce displacement measurements with a precision measured in centimetres or millimetres, as the experts claim. But what exactly does this involve?

Let’s first look at optical sensors such as Pléiades (spatial resolution of 0.5 m) and the precision that can be obtained with this type of images. For example, in the case of an open-pit mining site, two digital elevation models (DEM) generated with photogrammetric techniques using stereoscopic pairs acquired on different dates can be compared with determine the location of changes in elevation corresponding to the extraction or piling of rocky material. It is generally accepted that the DEMs produced using Pléiades images, to use this example, have a precision in the order of decimetres. But this is far from being to the centimetre, not to mention the millimetre. For this reason, we must look at radar technology and a very specific way of processing these data.

This involves technology known as “differential radar interferometry”, which uses radar images (at least two) taken on a given study site. This technology makes use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which can operate at different wavelengths, i.e., at 6 cm for the C-band of the Canadian satellite RADARSAT-2, or at 3 cm for the X-band of the TerraSAR-X and COSMO-SkyMed satellites, to name but a few. In addition to their use for studying the distribution of sea ice, the extent of flooding or even mapping wetlands, these SAR images may indeed be used to measure vertical displacements of the Earth’s surface to the centimetre or millimetre.

And how is this possible? It is important to first know that SAR works by transmitting pulses toward the Earth’s surface and recording the portion which is reflected back to the sensor. To be more specific, SAR records the time difference between the transmitted pulse (short sinusoidal signal of centimetric wavelength) and the reception of the reflected energy, its intensity and its phase. In the case of mapping sea ice, floods and wetlands, intensity is of greatest interest. This intensity is based on several factors, including geometry, roughness and humidity of the target on the ground. In interferometry, it is mostly the phase that interests us. Indeed, the phase difference between the two acquisitions taken from different, but close orbits, known as an “interferogram”, provides for each pixel information on topography or ground deformation or displacement. In the latter case, we speak of differential interferometry (DInSAR), since we are interested in the movement that took place between the two consecutive images taken during a given time interval.

“more info”:

(17 June 2015) ESA and Australia’s CSIRO national research organisation have signed an agreement which will give Australia better access to information from Europe’s Earth-observing satellites, while ESA will benefit from Australia’s scientific expertise.

Signed at the Paris Air & Space Show today, the agreement focuses on the collaboration between Australian and European researchers in the evaluation of satellite data for use in Australia, while jointly developing new applications and space technologies for future satellites.

While ESA will greatly benefit from Australia’s scientific expertise, the calibration and validation activities for European satellites will also be improved.

“ESA welcomes this increased cooperation with Australia. It will strengthen scientific links and stimulate industrial opportunities,” said Volker Liebig, Director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programmes.

“The cooperation will also improve the calibration and validation of Earth observation data over Australia and improve the data quality of our missions.”

Australia and ESA have been collaborating in Earth observation for many years, including cooperation on the ERS and Envisat missions in the development of the instruments, calibration and validation activities, and data exploitation.

“The collaboration with the European Space Agency further strengthens Australia’s global position in the space economy,” said CSIRO’s Executive Director of National Facilities and Collections, Dr David Williams, who signed the deal.

“Currently there are over 100 Australian government programmes and hundreds of researchers relying on data from foreign satellites, making Australia one of the largest users world-wide of Earth observation data.”

The agreement is meant to improve Australia’s overall access to data from ESA’s Earth observation missions, benefitting governments, researchers, industry and the general public.

CSIRO and other Australian partners already have various agreements with ESA in the areas of space science and technology, and have been sharing data and expertise for many years.

ESA operates a facility in Western Australia that is used to track its various space science missions, including the Rosetta mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

(source: ESA)

Videos of London, Boston, and Barcelona showcase life on Earth viewed from the International Space Station.

VANCOUVER, June 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ – UrtheCast Corp. (TSX:UR) (“UrtheCast” or the “Company”), the Earth Observation (EO) company aiming to open the world to anyone with an internet connection, today announced that it has released the first-ever, full-color HD videos of Earth, filmed from the International Space Station (ISS) at roughly one-meter resolution.

Captured by UrtheCast’s Ultra HD camera, Iris, from aboard the ISS, the release of the ‘First Light’ video footage reinforces the Company’s mission to democratize the Earth Observation industry — with the vision of providing the world with a new, dynamic perspective on our evolving planet.

Videos of London, Boston, and Barcelona were today released worldwide on the Company’s website, blog.urthecast.com. Showcasing daily life and revealing the diverse nature of our remarkable planet, the videos display the unique utility of UrtheCast’s unprecedented technology.

Ranging in length from 34 to 47 seconds, and covering areas of up to 1.19 × 0.67 miles (1.92 × 1.08 kms), the Iris camera has captured ‘First Light’ videos of unparalleled data:

  • London, England
  • Boston, United States
  • Barcelona, Spain

“Today, we are continuing our advancement towards democratizing the Earth Observation industry, making timely Earth video and imagery from space accessible to everyone,” explained Scott Larson, UrtheCast Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. “With the ultimate goal of connecting the planet and highlighting what unites us all, we’re revealing a perspective of Earth from space that was previously reserved for a small few. By opening up our API to the web development community, we’re providing collaboration tools that will help people monitor, protect, and benefit our world and will lead to the democratization of Earth Observation imagery.”

Wade Larson, UrtheCast Co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer, added: “We are realizing UrtheCast’s mission to bring something really quite unique to the Earth Observation industry. With today’s video release, we continue to move towards being able to deliver fast, scalable, and affordable Earth Observation imagery to our customers, and ultimately broadening the market appeal and utility of space-based remote sensing.”

The achievement of Initial Operation Capability (IOC) status of the Ultra HD Iris camera is expected to occur in the summer of 2015, and will compliment the existing Medium-Resolution Camera (MRC), Theia, which reached IOC status in 2014 and is actively filling orders for imagery and data.

About UrtheCast Corp.

UrtheCast Corp. is a Vancouver-based technology company that is developing the world’s first Ultra HD video feed of Earth, streamed from space in full color. Working with prominent aerospace partners from across the globe, UrtheCast has built, launched, installed, and will soon operate its Ultra HD video camera, Iris, on the ISS alongside its MRC which reached IOC in 2014. Video and still image data captured by the cameras will be downlinked to ground stations across the planet and displayed on the UrtheCast web platform, or distributed directly to partners and customers. UrtheCast’s cameras will provide Ultra HD video and still imagery of Earth that will allow for monitoring of the environment, humanitarian relief, social events, agricultural land, etc. Common shares of UrtheCast trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange as ticker ‘UR’.

About UrtheCast’s High-Resolution HRC Camera, Iris

The HRC is a multispectral imager mounted on a bi-axial pointing platform that provides a pitch/roll pointing capability to image points between ±52 degrees latitude. This allows it to capture full-color video sequences approximately 60 seconds in length through a wide range of oblique-look angles. Upon reaching IOC, video captured from UrtheCast’s HRC will be made available on an individual basis and also processed and constantly streamed to the interactive UrtheCast web platform.

About UrtheCast’s Medium-Resolution MRC Camera, Theia

UrtheCast’s MRC, Theia, is a conventional linear Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) pushbroom camera. It produces strips of medium-resolution, 4-channel multispectral imagery with a GSD of approximately 5m and a swath width of approximately 50km. Theia’s daily collection capability is approximately 29-million km².

Forward Looking Information

This release contains certain information which, as presented, constitutes “forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information involves statements that relate to future events and often addresses expected future business and financial performance, containing words such as “plan” or “expect”, statements that an action or event “will” be taken or occur, or other similar expressions and includes, but is not limited to, statements about the commissioning of the HRC and the timing thereof, plans to operate camera components on, and stream video footage from, the ISS, proposed image and video product offerings, expectations regarding the growth of commercial operations and expected partners and customers. Forward-looking statements and information are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the ability of UrtheCast to control or predict, and which may cause UrtheCast’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied thereby, including, but not limited to, damage which may have occurred to the HRC and MRC cameras during launch or installation, delays in the commissioning process, , unexpected changes in Russian or Canadian government policies, as well as those factors discussed in the Company’s annual information form dated March 20, 2015, (the “AIF”) and the Company’s amended and restated short form base shelf prospectus dated May 11, 2015 (the “Prospectus”) which are available under UrtheCast’s SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information is developed based on assumptions about such risks, uncertainties and other factors set out herein, in the AIF and Prospectus, and as otherwise disclosed from time to time on UrtheCast’s SEDAR profile.

Forward-looking statements are made based on management’s beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made and UrtheCast undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as may be required by applicable Canadian securities laws. Readers are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements.

SOURCE UrtheCast Corp.
www.urthecast.com

(20 – 21 October 2015, ExCel, London) The world’s largest gathering of the commercial and civilian UAV community

The Commercial UAV Show premium conference brings end users from a range of industries together in one room to evaluate how UAVs can deliver cost and operational efficiencies.

Meet organisations currently using UAVs successfully alongside the company’s supplying the latest technology and decide where and how your organisation can benefit most.

The premium conference will enable you to:

  • Analyse the current and future impact of UAVs in various commercial sectors with specific end users showcases
  • Hear in-depth technical presentation on the most significant new UAV technologies including: Data capture and analysis, flight control and navigation, payload technology, power systems and interconnected robotics
  • Join the debate and help influence regulators like the CAA and FAA as they map out the future of UAV regulation

The Commercial UAV Show exhibition brings 3000 people including UAV end users, platform manufacturers and component suppliers will benefit from seeing the latest technology displayed across 100+ stands and put to the test in our demo zone. 3 on-floor seminar theatres will host technical talks from the most innovative technology suppliers and interesting end users.

The free to attend exhibition will enable you to:

  • Get up close and personal with the latest UAV platforms displayed by industry leaders like Aerialtronics, Textron, Airware, UTC Aerospace and BAE Systems
  • See live demonstrations of the most innovative UAVs at our demo zone
  • See the full range of available commercial UAV technology at 100+ exhibition stands
  • Attend 2 days’ worth of seminar content taking place over 3 on-floor theatres
  • Hear seminar presentations from the full UAV value chain including end users, platform manufactures, component and service suppliers
  • Hear case studies from the most interesting UAV end users in Search and Rescue, Agriculture, Oil and Gas, Surveying, Policing and Infrastructure
  • Visit 20 end user exhibition stands in our End User Zone demonstrating the latest applications
  • Network with 3000 people from the commercial UAV industry

“The show far exceeded my expectations”
Cyberhawk, Commercial UAV Show 2014

Book your free place today via the show website at www.terrapinn.com/uav

Source

Hamburg – UASympEx will take place on September 18th and 19th 2015 in Hamburg, on the initiative of Christian L. Caballero Kroschel and Jan Hesselbarth from Caballero & Hesselbarth Consulting – together with the Northern Business School (NBS) and supported by the city of Hamburg.

The market of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and its economical impact is developing rapidly. In comparison to international development Germany stays behind its possibilities. There is a need of standardization, integration and security of implementation in order to support and secure market growth.

UASympEx shall establish an informative platform, as a combination of scientific conference and networkevent. Well known experts such as Martin Sperber from TÜV Rheinland Industrie Services GmbH, Dieter Bode, chairman of the Association for Security in Business of Northern Germany (VSWN e.V.) or Olaf Rohnberg, Head of German-Franco Air-Ground Operations School at Bundeswehr, will provide insights into recent development and efforts to standardize, integrate and secure UAS. The event will point out the opportunities and risks of standardization, protection against misuse of drones and possible application in the agriculture or wind energy sectors. Together with Kristofer Proll from DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V. the participants will work on a standardization roadmap – in order to directly influence further growth in Germany and Europe.

Another important part of UASympEx is the start-up session at the end of day 2. Young start- ups will have the chance to pitch their ideas in front of a wide audience of experts, talk to business angels and acquire possible investors.

„UASympEX addresses manufacturers of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and service providers offering UAS-based applications as well as public authorities, companies and start- ups, who seek for information and personal exchange about integration mechanisms and security of this new technology“, say the initiators, who both have 13 years of experience in the integration and defense of UAS. After 2015 the initiators plan to continue UASympex as an annual industry event.

For further information on the event, program and speakers visit the event website www.uasympex.com. Until July 15th EARLYBIRD-TICKETS will be available with a discount up to 230 €.

Press Contact
Caballero & Hesselbarth Consulting GmbH Jan Hesselbarth, Initiator UASympEx/CHcon fon: +49 40 33377259 hesselbarth@chcon.de
www.chon.de

Marketing
mediaperlen UG
M. Fernandez-Steeger/K.Tiedgen fon. +49 40 673 88 555 uasympex@mediaperlen.de www.mediaperlen.de

BlackSky Global has revealed its plan to provide high-resolution images of the globe at an unparalleled cost and frequency. The company plans to deploy six satellites in 2016 and have a full 60-satellite imaging constellation by 2019, bringing “satellite imaging as a service” to those businesses, organizations and governments that cannot or do not wish to capitalize their own constellations.

Traditionally it takes days or weeks to receive a commercial satellite image due to limited imaging opportunities and priority constraints. With 60 satellites in unique orbits, BlackSky’s constellation will shorten this time to a couple hours or less, enabling customers to observe and monitor basic infrastructure across multiple industry sectors. BlackSky is developing a Web-scale software platform that will allow customers to request, receive and interact with its satellite imagery via the Internet.

“The launch of BlackSky Global marks a major leap forward in opening up access to images from space and enabling constant global awareness,” said Peter Wegner, BlackSky Global’s chief technology officer and former director of the U.S. Air Force Operationally Responsive Space Office. “By operating the infrastructure to view our planet in near real-time, we envision an open future where enhanced Earth observation leads to positive change and a better understanding of our world.”

BlackSky Global’s competitive pricing, rapid revisit rate and user experience will enable a new suite of businesses while supporting the growth of existing ones. It will offer one-meter-resolution color imagery at a dramatically lower cost and also provide premium services for priority tasking and other capabilities.

The company follows a “pay-per-picture” business model and can capture images of single sites or larger areas, as well as provide video at a speed of one frame per second. Existing customers include satellite imagery providers and data analytics companies looking for more “pixel capacity” to grow their revenues.

“Satellite-imaging constellations have historically been designed to provide very high-resolution, precise imagery, resulting in small numbers of relatively expensive satellites in orbits offering only one view per day of a given location,” Wegner said. “BlackSky Global will complement these existing service providers by placing its satellites in orbits capable of rapid revisit rates over 95 percent of the Earth’s populated area, providing persistent imaging capability.”

The company’s services will support a variety of applications across industries such as agriculture, forestry, civil government, non-governmental organizations, defense, finance, engineering, energy and others. Governments and organizations can leverage its imagery to monitor the worldwide environment, trends and the global economy which totals around $78 trillion annually.

By offering more flexibility and capacity in commercial space imagery, its services also have applications for protecting U.S. national security and competitiveness in the commercialization of space.

Source

An Invitation to partner 30 July 2015, Milan Italy (Room 4-5, level -1)


The RASOR Consortium will host a one-day SME Workshop, together with EARSC and IGARSS.

Click for large view

The purpose of the workshop is to develop partnerships in the development and application of the RASOR platform.

RASOR is a multi-hazard risk analysis software platform to support the full cycle of disaster management. RASOR uses the 12m resolution TanDEM-X Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of RASOR partners DLR/Airbus Defence and Space as a ground layer for risk management applications, on which RASOR users superpose data sets and develop specific disaster scenarios. RASOR overlays archived and near-real time very-high resolution optical and radar satellite data, combined with in-situ data for both global and local applications.

A scenario-driven query system allows users to project situations into the future and model multi-hazard risk both before and during an event. RASOR is an open source, freely available tool, but selected RASOR partners offer add-on products and provide targeted value-added services.

The RASOR Consortium welcomes new RASOR Associates and hopes to forge new alliances in the application of innovative technologies to risk assessment and management.

For more information, contact: christiane.maasburg@athenaglobal.com

[Via Satellite 06-16-2015] BlackSky Global, a rising Seattle-based satellite imagery startup founded in 2013, plans to launch a constellation of 60 Earth observation satellites to enable revisit times of a few hours or less.

The company has already raised capital to fully fund its first six spacecraft, which are planned for launch in 2016 and will pave the way for the rest of the fleet.

The first two satellites, Pathfinder 1 and Pathfinder 2, are in the process of final testing and checkout. They will precede the rest of the constellation as experimental satellites. After the first two satellites, BlackSky Global plans to launch the four additional funded satellites, which would start generating revenue by the end of 2016.

By 2019, BlackSky Global aims to have its full constellation in orbit, providing 1-meter resolution color imagery of the planet to a myriad of different customers. The satellites would be able to provide video as well at a speed of one frame per second, and the company is also planning to offer premium services. BlackSky Global has satellite imagery providers and data analytics companies as customers today, and uses a pay-per-picture business model for service from its satellites.

“BlackSky is really about providing satellite imagery as a service just like we’ve become accustomed to satellite communications as a service,” Peter Wegner, chief technology officer at BlackSky Global and former director of the U.S. Air Force Operationally Responsive Space Office, told Via Satellite. “There are a number of companies out there that lease satellite transponder time, and we are essentially doing the same thing — we are just capitalizing the constellation and we’ll lease out to our customers the telescopes on the systems.”

Wegner described BlackSky Global’s early satellite strategy as a balance between starting with enough satellites to validate the technology and making the best use of existing funding. The first two satellites are primarily for experiments, and though some customer have shown interest in doing studies with them, Wegner said they are not commercial imaging systems. Pathfinder 1 and Pathfinder 2 will influence the next four satellites, which will be commercial in application. Wegner said the company reached the number 60 for the size of the constellation because of the revisit time it would enable.

Each BlackSky Global satellite has a mass of 50 kilograms and is about the size of a mini-fridge. The company contracted a division of Spaceflight Industries known as Spaceflight Systems, which was formerly Andrews Space, to build the satellites. Similarly, Spaceflight Services is facilitating launches and Spaceflight Networks is one of the main third-party partners for ground stations.

BlackSky Global’s satellites are designed for a three-year mission life at a fairly low altitude of 450 kilometers. The spacecraft will include propulsion systems to reach this service life at such an orbit. Wegner said the satellites are designed with pre-planned obsolescence in mind, as the lifespan of each spacecraft offers enough time to provide services and then rapidly refresh with new technology.

“That’s really a sweet spot for us because we want to be able to upgrade this constellation over time with the latest technologies that are coming out of the electronics sector and with imaging updates to the system. That gives us a natural path. We can keep the satellite costs pretty low by using single-string redundancy in most of the systems,” explained Wegner.

The satellites also leverage atypical orbits compared to other Earth observation spacecraft.

“What we are doing is putting our satellites in orbits that are inclined at lower inclinations with the Earth between 40 and 55 degrees. At those orbits the satellite comes over a spot multiple times a day but never revisits at the same time. The benefit is that it gives you a number of passes; in some cases six passes a day,” he said.

BlackSky Global is targeting customers in markets such as agriculture, forestry, government, finance, energy and more. Wegner said other satellite imagery providers could also be potential customers that could purchase “pixel capacity” by leasing time on the company’s satellites. BlackSky is also creating a Web-scale software platform for customers to request, receive and interact with its satellite imagery online.

Wegner said BlackSky Global has put a considerable amount of thought into the number of satellites it needs, and that this number could rise based on the level of demand.

“We are base-lining 60 in all of the analysis that we are doing. At the end of the day the number could be significantly more than that. It’s really going to be based on the amount of demand that’s out there for satellite imagery as a service,” he said.

Source

(IGSNRR – Chinese Academy of China, Beijing, 3 June 2015) The Workshop on Ancient Chinese Maps and Exchange of Chinese-Western Cartographical Culture was held in Beijing on 3 June 2015 in the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Workshop was organised by the Commission of Cartography and GIS of the China Society of Surveying & Mapping and Geoinformation under the sponsorship and support of the Zhengzhou University of Information Engineering, the IGSNRR and the State key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System (LREIS).

Invited academicians, professors, scientists, researchers and graduate students coming from Research Institutes and Labs of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, from Universities, the National Library of China and other Institutions, presented their research on the issue and participated in discussions for future work and cooperation. Academicians Gao Jun and Zhou Chenghu and Profs Qi Qingwen, Sun Qun, Liqiu Meng, Bai Hongye, Gong Yingyan, Lu Liangzhi, Liang Qizhang and Evangelos Livieratos, spoke about the long Chinese cartographic legacy and the echoing of Western cartographic heritage, focusing also on the case of Matteo Ricci’s Chinese World Map in the late 16th and early 17th cent.

After a laborious day, a closing round table discussion on the possibilities of Chinese – European cooperation on relevant issues was concentrated, among various alternatives, on the principles based upon and on the models followed in the European project initiative GRATICULE for transforming cartographic heritage ecosystems for the modelling and transmission of novel cultural assets in the networked digital world, the initiative represented in the Beijing Workshop by Profs Liqiu Meng (TUM – Technische Universität München), Evangelos Livieratos and Chrysoula Boutoura (AUTH – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) .

The International Cartographic Association was represented in the Beijing Workshop by the Chair of the ICA Commission on Digital Technologies in Cartographic Heritage (E. Livieratos), the Chair of the ICA Commission on Theoretical Cartography (Qingyun Du) and the Vice Chair of the ICA Commission on Atlases (Qingwen Qi)