Main Aims

Use, user and usability issues are an important part of cartography as a science while it also give considerable opportunities for further research and development.

You might have noticed the slight change in the name of the commission in 2015 – adding a third ‘U’ (Usability) to reflect the increasing importance of user research on interactive, online, and mobile maps. This change in name comes along with the new 4-year term of this commission, which was approved by the General Assembly of the ICA. Usability is identified as one of the 10 main keywords in the ICA’s Research Agenda and herein defined as a range of issues that connect the human user of spatial data with its representation, its processing, its modelling and its analysis.

Our main aim is to maintain the network for the exchange of knowledge, news, and information on use, users, and usability in cartography, geo-information processing, and related fields.

Specific goals are available in Terms of Reference