The State of Official Statistical Mapping in Switzerland (and Other European Countries)

Abstract

The days are long gone, when statistical publications consisted merely of hundreds of pages full of black & white text pages and tables—usually very dry and hard to read. Easy-to-understand static or interactive charts and thematic maps constitute today a rapidly growing information object within modern statistical publications and have helped with mainstreaming statistical results amongst a large public audience. The Swiss Federal Statistical Office has a 125-year long tradition in applying thematic maps and atlases in its publications, but is has never seen a demand for maps as large as in recent years. From only a few dozen or a hundred maps per year throughout most parts of the twentieth century, the production and dissemination have increased to currently over 15,000 maps p.a. Apart from activities on the national level, also cantonal and city offices, as well as other private and government institutions, increasingly publish their own statistical maps and atlases, esp. on the Internet. While the number of statistical maps is steadily growing and reaching the status of mass media maps, the role and influence of cartography and cartographers have in general decreased within statistical offices over the last decades. Also close collaboration with other cartographic products, e.g. national or school atlases, has fallen off due to a lack of resources and the rise of automation in statistics. Statistical maps for all output formats are nowadays predominantly generated automatically by statistical software packages which are plugged into vast data bases that were—in the best case—developed or selected together with cartographers. This paper gives an overview of the current cartographic products by the national and regional statistical offices in Switzerland. Technical and thematic trends are discussed, which can well be compared to the situation in other European countries. The visible results are reviewed critically from a cartographic perspective, and the role that cartographers (still) play in this environment, was also examined.