Atlas of Switzerland Update – July 2024
The first half of the year is already over. It’s time to look back on the developments at the Atlas of Switzerland in recent months and to look at what’s in the pipeline for the coming months.
Team reinforcement: The Atlas of Switzerland team has expanded. A new software developer has joined the team. The working group now consists of six people: a project manager, two editors who are responsible for the content of the atlas and three IT specialists who are responsible for the technical implementation (programming, configuration and deployment).
New maps: New maps on electromobility and climate change in Switzerland have been published. MeteoSwiss has published a blog post about the map showing the development of the zero degree line.
One of the new maps: electric mobility and charging infrastructure
Participation in conferences: Earlier this year, part of the team attended the FOSSGIS conference in Hamburg and presented some partial results of our evaluation of web graphics technologies. In addition, we are pleased to announce that two contributions from the Atlas of Switzerland have been accepted for the EuroCarto conference in Vienna in September.
Technological development: From a technical point of view, various rendering technologies have been analysed for the further development of the atlas regarding their suitability for the presentation of maps in modern web browsers. In the future, 3 different technologies can be used for different types of maps.
Future goals: An important milestone was the definition of concrete steps for the development of the next atlas generation. The next major goal is the development of a web version of the atlas. It will be important that the user interface will also work on mobile devices. By mid-2025, a first version of the new atlas generation “Web” should be available, focusing on interactive 2D maps and showing some of the existing maps. It will be possible to still access the other maps that are not yet supported in the first web version using the current productive version 4 of the atlas. The atlas will be expanded and improved at shorter intervals in the future. The technical basis for this has been created with the rollout of the new web version.
The new strategy for the development of the Atlas of Switzerland was defined in a three-day retreat in Romanshorn (Picture: Marc Folini)
Stay tuned, follow us on our channels and download the latest version of the Atlas of Switzerland to discover the most up-to-date maps!