Emanuela Casti

Last updated

Emanuela Casti (born 1950 in Mira, Venice, Italy) is an Italian geographer and a cartography theorist. Considered an innovator, she has formalized a semiotic theory for the interpretation of maps in their various forms: from historical maps to cybercartography systems. She was full professor from 2001 to 2020 at the University of Bergamo (Italy) [1] and is currently professor emeritus. In 2004 Casti founded the Diathesis Cartographic Lab, a permanent laboratory devoted to territorial analysis, cartographic innovation and experimentation and, in 2019, designed and activated the interclass master's degree, in Geourbanistica. Analisi e pianificazione territoriale, urbana, ambientale e valorizzazione del paesaggio [2] at the University of Bergamo

Contents

Academic career

Having graduated from the University of Padua with a thesis on the historical evolution of cartography in Mantua, professor Casti started her academic research in 1983, when she was appointed researcher at the same university. Casti became an associate professor at the University of Bergamo in 1992 and full professor in 2001. She also taught courses, lectures and seminars at other academic institution both in Italy (University of Turin) and abroad (EPFL - École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Parigi VII - Paris- Diderot).

She has been involved in research groups both at the national level and internationally. Casti is also a member of many leading Italian societies (AGeI, SGI, RGI, AIIGI) and international workgroups (UGI, ICA).

After starting her career as a specialist on Venetian historical cartography, Casti has widened the scope of her research to embrace various historical periods. She has extensively analyzed the role of maps in the Italian region of Lombardy in the Renaissance and Early Modern times and addressed key issues in Italian and French colonial cartography. Far from being regarded as mere historical artifacts, these cartographic examples provided a solid background for empirical and applied analysis. On the basis of such maps, professor Casti developed her theory of cartographic semiosis.

Concerning territorialist issues, Africa has long been the privileged object of professor Casti's numerous on-site surveys, well over thirty since 1992. In this context, she conducted applied research regarding environmental protection and cooperation with countries in the developing world, working within the framework of EU programs, of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and of UNESCO. In particular, Casti participated in projects for the management of the buffer zones of protected areas in West Africa: i.e. the 2002-2005 collaborative project with the French CIRAD research center of Montpellier involving the W Transboundary Biosphere Reserve of Niger, Benin and Burkina Faso; and the 2006-2009 collaboration with the excellence university center 2iE- Institut International d'Ingéniérie de l'Eau et de l'Environnement di Ouagadougou - Arly Protection and Conservation Unit in Burkina Faso.

In Italy, she has carried out analyses on environmental protection (orobiemap.unibg.it), urban periphery regeneration (rifoit.unibg.it/rifomap) and participatory processes (cittaaltaplurale.unibg.it; bgopenmapping.unibg.it; www.bgpublicspace.it), experimenting with new graphical visualizations of big data. Moreover, in 2020 he set up and directed a research on socio-territorial aspects and spatial spread of COVID-19 contagion in Italy. [3]

Emanuela Casti is currently pursuing her line of theoretical and applied research in the field of cartography, semiotically interpreting the prehistoric maps of Valcamonica (Valle Camonica, Italy).

Main achievements

Theory of cartographic semiosis

Professor Casti elaborated the theory of cartographic semiosis in 1998, when she also published her first theoretical book L’ordine del mondo e la sua rappresentazione, translated into English in 2005 under the title Reality as Representation. The semiotics of cartography and the generation of meaning. Casti's theory was placed (Azócar, Buchroithner, 2014 [4] ) at first, within the research area called "postmodern cartography" inaugurated by John B. Harley in 1989. The basic assumption of postmodern research is a questioning of the objectivity and neutrality of maps, and more specifically the ability of Euclidean metrics to represent the World. Consequently, maps are not seen as mere "mirrors of reality", but rather as tools through which reality is modeled. [5] Casti's innovative contribution lies in having embraced this initial assumption as a springboard for articulating a theory able to investigate the construction and the communicative mechanisms of maps.

By shifting the focus of interest from maps as tools for mediating territory to maps as operators which actively influence territorial action, Casti, in her second theoretical book Cartografia critica. Dal topos alla chora (2013)(trad.: Reflexive Cartography. A Modern Perspective in Mapping, Elsevier, MA, 2015), explores the transition from a topographic mapping, created by government agencies, to open cartography, collaboratively produced by the people (and linked to a new idea of chorography). The latter has the potential to become a highly workable concept, to be used as an operator for assisting citizens in thinking and designing their way of inhabiting and understanding their spatial values. Specifically, Casti argues that, by virtue of its highly interactive features, new digital chorography (specifically WebGIS) opens up new scenarios, and poses cybercartography as a privileged discipline for recovering and promoting the social meaning of the territory in all its configurations (landscape, environment, place).

SIGAP strategy and participatory mapping

The SIGAP strategy (Geographic Information Systems for Protected Areas /Participatory Action) is a research methodology that adopts cartographic semiosis and tests its actual range of application. It takes up concepts presented by international agencies - such as "sustainability", "conservation" participation” - and turns them into operational tools for territorial and environmental planning. Tested in various national and international contexts with regard to a variety of issues (migration, environmental protection, landscape planning, tourism systems, urban regeneration, etc.), the SIGAP methodology deploys the typical range of geography-based competences in the field of applied research. As such it involves all stages of analysis: the adoption of a theory informing land methodology; interaction with local inhabitants for the reading of data; construction of interpretative models and their cartographic visualization. [6] In each of these stages, cartography takes on different capacities depending on the goal to be pursued. [7] The final product is an interactive multimedia system GIS which becomes as an invaluable tool for field research, for the implementation of intervention strategies, for the processing and circulation of data. Participatory mapping systems play an essential role in this context, because they can recover the role of local communities and produce cartographic representations that take account of local interests.

Projects

Environmental protection:

Multimap RBT W – Réserve de la Biosphère Transfrontalière W

Parc National d’Arly (E. Casti, S. Yonkeu, Le Parc National d’Arly et la falaise du Gobnangou - Burkina Faso, L’Harmattan, Parigi, 2009)

Orobiemap

Participatory mapping

BG Open Mapping

BG Public Space

Urban regeneration and land use:

RIFO/it

Restructuring ex-GRES Area, Bergamo

s-Low Tourism:

Centrality of territories. Towards a regeneration of Bergamo in a European network

Publications

Emanuela Casti has over a hundred publications in Italian, French and English. Among these:

Monographs

Curatorships

Journal articles (from 2018)

Book chapters

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cartography</span> Study and practice of making maps

Cartography is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geographic information system</span> System to capture, manage and present geographic data

A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database, however, this is not essential to meet the definition of a GIS. In a broader sense, one may consider such a system also to include human users and support staff, procedures and workflows, the body of knowledge of relevant concepts and methods, and institutional organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Health geography</span>

Health geography is the application of geographical information, perspectives, and methods to the study of health, disease, and health care. Medical geography, a sub-discipline of, or sister field of health geography, focuses on understanding spatial patterns of health and disease in relation to the natural and social environment. Conventionally, there are two primary areas of research within medical geography: the first deals with the spatial distribution and determinants of morbidity and mortality, while the second deals with health planning, help-seeking behavior, and the provision of health services.

Geovisualization or geovisualisation, also known as cartographic visualization, refers to a set of tools and techniques supporting the analysis of geospatial data through the use of interactive visualization.

The history of cartography refers to the development and consequences of cartography, or mapmaking technology, throughout human history. Maps have been one of the most important human inventions for millennia, allowing humans to explain and navigate their way through the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giacomo Gastaldi</span> Italian cartographer, astronomer and engineer (d. 1566)

Giacomo Gastaldi was an Italian cartographer, astronomer and engineer of the 16th century. Gastaldi began his career as an engineer, serving the Venetian Republic in that capacity until the fourth decade of the sixteenth century. From about 1544 he turned his attention entirely to mapmaking, and his work represents several important turning points in cartographic development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Cartographic Association</span> International organization

The International Cartographic Association (ICA) is an organization formed of national member organizations, to provide a forum for issues and techniques in cartography and geographic information science (GIScience). ICA was founded on June 9, 1959, in Bern, Switzerland. The first General Assembly was held in Paris in 1961. The mission of the International Cartographic Association is to promote the disciplines and professions of cartography and GIScience in an international context. To achieve these aims, the ICA works with national and international governmental and commercial bodies, and with other international scientific societies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web mapping</span> Process of using the maps delivered by geographic information systems (GIS) in World Wide Web

Web mapping or an online mapping is the process of using, creating, and distributing maps on the World Wide Web, usually through the use of Web geographic information systems. A web map or an online map is both served and consumed, thus, web mapping is more than just web cartography, it is a service where consumers may choose what the map will show.

Critical cartography is a set of mapping practices and methods of analysis grounded in critical theory, specifically the thesis that maps reflect and perpetuate relations of power, typically in favor of a society's dominant group. Critical cartographers aim to reveal the “‘hidden agendas of cartography’ as tools of socio-spatial power”. While the term "critical cartography" often refers to a body of theoretical literature, critical cartographers also call for practical applications of critical cartographic theory, such as counter-mapping, participatory mapping, and neogeography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irene Fischer</span> Austrian-American mathematician and geodesist

Irene Kaminka Fischer was an Austrian-American mathematician and geodesist. She was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and inductee of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Hall of Fame. Fischer became one of two internationally known women scientists in the field of geodesy during the golden age of the Project Mercury and the Apollo program. Her Mercury datum, as well as her work on the lunar parallax, were instrumental in conducting these missions. "In his preface to the ACSM publication, Fischer's former colleague, Bernard Chovitz, referred to her as one of the most renowned geodesists of the third quarter of the twentieth century. Yet this fact alone makes her one of the most renowned geodesists of all times, because, according to Chovitz, the third quarter of the twentieth century witnessed "the transition of geodesy from a regional to a global enterprise."

Counter-mapping is creating maps that challenge "dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals". Counter-mapping is used in multiple disciplines to reclaim colonized territory. Counter-maps are prolific in indigenous cultures, "counter-mapping may reify, reinforce, and extend settler boundaries even as it seeks to challenge dominant mapping practices; and still, counter-mapping may simultaneously create conditions of possibility for decolonial ways of representing space and place." The term came into use in the United States when Nancy Peluso used it in 1995 to describe the commissioning of maps by forest users in Kalimantan, Indonesia, to contest government maps of forest areas that undermined indigenous interests. The resultant counter-hegemonic maps strengthen forest users' resource claims. There are numerous expressions closely related to counter-mapping: ethnocartography, alternative cartography, mapping-back, counter-hegemonic mapping, deep mapping and public participatory mapping. Moreover, the terms: critical cartography, subversive cartography, bio-regional mapping, and remapping are sometimes used interchangeably with counter-mapping, but in practice encompass much more.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Lévy</span> French geographer and university professor (born 1952)

Jacques Lévy is a professor of geography and urbanism at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He is the director of Chôros Laboratory and of the Doctoral Program in Architecture and Science of the City. He is the cofounder of the scientific journal EspacesTemps.net. He published in French, along with Michel Lussault, the dictionary of geography and space of societies, Dictionnaire de la géographie et de l’espace des sociétés.He has contributed to in the epistemological and theoretical reform of geography as a science of the spatial dimension of the social, open to the social sciences and philosophy. Starting from political geography, he has most notably explored the city, urbanity, Europe and globalization. He works also for the introduction of non-verbal languages, especially audio-visual languages, at all levels of research. In 2013 he made a feature film, Urbanity/ies, which is intended as a manifesto for scientific film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gilles Palsky</span> French geographer

Gilles Palsky, is a French geographer and Professor at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris, France from 2007 to 2015. He is a member of the editorial board of Cybergéo and Imago Mundi, and known for his work on the history of statistical graphics and thematic mapping in the 19th century.

Menno-Jan Kraak is a Dutch cartographer and professor of Geovisual Analytics and Cartography at the Faculty of Geoinformation Sciences and Earth Observation at the University of Twente. He is known for his work in cartography and his activities in the International Cartographic Association.

D. R. Fraser Taylor, is Chancellor's Distinguished Research Professor of International Affairs Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Taylor studies applications of cartography to development, including international development. He is best known for his work on Cybercartography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Aslanikashvili</span> Georgian geographer and cartographer (1916–1981)

Alexander Aslanikashvili was a Georgian cartographer. Doctor of Geographical Sciences (1969). Corresponding member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences (1979). Professor of the Tbilisi State University and the Chair of Cartography and Geodesy (1973–81). Director of the Vakhushti Bagrationi Institute of Geography (1980–81). He developed his theory of cartography, which is called Metacartography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet GIS</span> Internet technologies regarding spatial data

Internet GIS, or Internet geographic information system (GIS), is a term that refers to a broad set of technologies and applications that employ the Internet to access, analyze, visualize, and distribute spatial data. Internet GIS is an outgrowth of traditional GIS, and represents a shift from conducting GIS on an individual computer to working with remotely distributed data and functions. Two major issues in GIS are accessing and distributing spatial data and GIS outputs. Internet GIS helps to solve that problem by allowing users to access vast databases impossible to store on a single desktop computer, and by allowing rapid dissemination of both maps and raw data to others. These methods include both file sharing and email. This has enabled the general public to participate in map creation and make use of GIS technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web GIS</span> Technologies employing the World Wide Web to manage spatial data

Web GIS, or Web Geographic Information Systems, are GIS that employ the World Wide Web to facilitate the storage, visualization, analysis, and distribution of spatial information over the Internet. The World Wide Web, or the Web, is an information system that uses the internet to host, share, and distribute documents, images, and other data. Web GIS involves using the World Wide Web to facilitate GIS tasks traditionally done on a desktop computer, as well as enabling the sharing of maps and spatial data. While Web GIS and Internet GIS are sometimes used interchangeably, they are different concepts. Web GIS is a subset of Internet GIS, which is itself a subset of distributed GIS, which itself is a subset of broader Geographic information system. The most common application of Web GIS is Web mapping, so much so that the two terms are often used interchangeably in much the same way as Digital mapping and GIS. However, Web GIS and web mapping are distinct concepts, with web mapping not necessarily requiring a Web GIS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qualitative geography</span> Subfield of geographic methods

Qualitative geography is a subfield and methodological approach to geography focusing on nominal data, descriptive information, and the subjective and interpretive aspects of how humans experience and perceive the world. Often, it is concerned with understanding the lived experiences of individuals and groups and the social, cultural, and political contexts in which those experiences occur. Thus, qualitative geography is traditionally placed under the branch of human geography; however, technical geographers are increasingly directing their methods toward interpreting, visualizing, and understanding qualitative datasets, and physical geographers employ nominal qualitative data as well as quanitative. Furthermore, there is increased interest in applying approaches and methods that are generally viewed as more qualitative in nature to physical geography, such as in critical physical geography. While qualitative geography is often viewed as the opposite of quantitative geography, the two sets of techniques are increasingly used to complement each other. Qualitative research can be employed in the scientific process to start the observation process, determine variables to include in research, validate results, and contextualize the results of quantitative research through mixed-methods approaches.

References

  1. "Casti, Emanuela (1950-...)". idref.fr. IdRef (Identifiants et Référentiels pour l'Enseignement supérieur et la Recherche). Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  2. "GEOURBANISTICA | UniBG". ls-geou.unibg.it. Retrieved 2022-01-26.
  3. "Modern Cartography Series | Mapping the Epidemic - A Systemic Geography of COVID-19 in Italy | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier". www.sciencedirect.com. Retrieved 2022-01-26.
  4. Azócar Fernández, Pablo Iván; Buchroithner, Manfred Ferdinand (2014). Paradigms in Cartography. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-38893-4. ISBN   978-3-642-38892-7. S2CID   132588924.
  5. Boria, Edoardo (2015). "Good Practices in Geography: Reading 'Cartografia Critical by Emanuela Casti". Bollettina della Societa Geografuca Italiana. 8: 629–638. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  6. Smith, Mike J (2016-07-28). "Holocene book review: Reflexive Cartography: A New Perspective in Mapping". The Holocene. 26 (8): 1341–1342. doi:10.1177/0959683616653058. ISSN   0959-6836. S2CID   132184428.
  7. Gemignani, Carlo A. "Emanuela Casti, Reflexive Cartography. A Modern Perspective in Mapping, Amsterdam-Oxford-Waltham MA, Elsevier, 2015, 288 pp". Rivista Geografica Italiana. 1: 64–66.