Vol.53-2 CONTENTS

Takaki OKATANI, Hiromichi MARUYAMA, Hisakazu SASAKI, Hidenori YAGUCHI, Toru NAGAYAMA, Shinichi KAYABA, Masatoshi ABE and Noriko KISHIMOTO

The Global Mapping Project arms to develop and update geographic information on global land under the cooperative efforts of the International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM) and the national mapping organizations (NMOs) of the entire world. With regard to activities for the promotion of the project, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD; Johannesburg Summit) in 2002 was the most important milestone in gaining the world's awareness of the project regarding its importance for sustainable development. This paper reviews the outline of the project, summarizes activities mainly implemented after WSSD, and introduces problems the project currently faces and tasks being implemented. Finally, the paper concludes that continuous promotional efforts of the project, hand in hand with NMOs, in the areas of sustainable development, Earth observation and geographic information community, are indispensable for the completion of the Global Map by 2007, the goal set out at WSSD.

1. Introduction
2. Historical overview of the Global Mapping Project
3. Current status of the Global Mapping Project
4. Activities relating to the Global Mapping Project after WSSD
  4.1 Activities of ISCGM in Group on Earth Observations (GEO)
  4.2 Lecture meetings organized by ISCGM
5. Issues around the Global Mapping Project
  5.1 Problems relating to the current vector data format
  5.2 Issues around new raster data development
6. Conclusion
References