An initial cartographic symbol system specifically adapted to crisis communication.
Recent crisis events worldwide have disclosed many flaws in the existing technologies and policies with regard to crisis management. In the area of cartography they pointed to a lack of guidelines, standards and cartographic symbols required for making maps specifically adapted to crisis communication.
This project lays out a possible design of a cartographic symbol system specifically adapted to crisis communication. Based on official documents and regulations on the organisation and function of the national protection and rescue system in Croatia, the objects of an initial cartographic symbol system for crisis communication are identified. The taxonomy of cartographic symbols into groups and their internal diversification is defined through an analysis of the identified objects. The process of designing a completely new graphic appearance of a symbol and the process of designing a symbol with its graphic appearance based on the visual solution for an already existing symbol have been formalised. A cognitive schema diagram was developed to describe a possible organised pattern of thinking and behaviour of users when interpreting cartographic symbols for crisis communication. Constituent elements and basic geometrical and graphic variables applied to the design of these elements are defined, separately for point, line and area symbols, while the icon making procedure is described in detail in accordance with the requirements set for its optimum realisation.
Map symbols in CRISIS COMMUNICATION MAP SYMBOL LIBRARY have been produced by Ana Kuveždić Divjak, and described in her doctoral thesis (in Croatian):
Kuveždić Divjak, A. (2013): Kartografska komunikacija u kriznim situacijama. Doktorska disertacija, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Geodetski fakultet, Zagreb. https://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/657823.AnaKuvezdicDivjak_DoktroskiRad.pdf
Source SVG files are in the 'svg' directory. PNG renders of all of the SVGs are in the 'png' directory.
In this project, guidelines and rules are proposed for the visual design of the new symbols along with graphic requirements for good readability of the symbols. Also proposed are guidelines and rules for the application of symbols on paper or digital crisis maps, plus criteria for the evaluation of their appearance, efficacy and recognisability.
Please send requests or proposals for new map symbols at [email protected]. Your contributions are enthusiastically welcome.
The map symbols are licensed under CC-BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode).
Copyright (C) 2013, 2018 Ana Kuveždić Divjak (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Geodesy, Croatia).
Please send any problems or comments regarding the crisis communication map symbols to [email protected], they will be much appreciated.