Certificates for High-Quality Cartographic Products

Abstract. The study is inspired by questions that students and teachers ask during past experiments that the authors have carried out. The users who represent Bulgarian and Croatian schools are invited to evaluate existing maps and draw their own maps. This research focuses on cartographical mistakes and how they impact user’s understanding of the map. We don’t aim to show or explain all cartographic mistakes. The examples are chosen arbitrarily and do not claim to provide an exhaustive list of the problems.

Online maps which hold a significant market share provide cartographic information in various thematic areas for different kind of users. Producers of all world map platforms try to cover all necessary information in a similar way and do not consider user’s age, cultural, professional and knowledge diversity. Similar behaviour is observed with the production of traditional maps where various cartographic mistakes can be pointed.

To respond to these observations, Bulgarian and Croatian cartographic associations created rules and conditions under which a cartographic product can receive a Certificate for high-quality map / atlas / other cartographic product.