Barend Köbben

I hold an MSc in Geography, specialising in Cartography, from Utrecht University in The Netherlands. I worked for 9 years as a Lecturer in cartography at that university and then moved to the International Institute for Geo-information Sciences and Earth Observation (ITC) in 1997. Since 2010, the ITC became a Faculty of the University of Twente. Here I am at present Senior Lecturer/Researcher in GIS and cartographic visualisation, in the Department of Geo-Information Processing (GIP). 

My teaching subjects include Cartographic Theory, WebCartography, Geo-webservices and web application building. Furthermore, I coordinate the thesis semester of the Cartography MSc programme, a joint Erasmus Mundus master of the Technical Universities Munich, Vienna, Dresden and Twente.

I participate in the research activities of the departemental Research Theme STAMP (Spatio–Temporal Analytics, Maps and Processing). My main research interest is “automated mapping in a services environment”, combining cartographic visualisation knowledge (with a large visual perception and a design component) with a keen interest in computer science, especially web application development. I specifically design and build visualisation pipelines with middleware services and Open Web clients (using tools such as the D3 library and the Vega/Vega-lite framework).

Activities in capacity development

I have been involved in various consultancy projects in The Netherlands, India, Iran, Italy, Malaysia, Namibia, South Africa, Thailand and Zambia. For a full list see this page.

I am Map Editor and member of the Editorial Board of Geografie (Journal of KNAG - Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, ISSN 0926-3837); Charter Member of OSGEO, the Open Source Geospatial Foundation; Within the International Cartographic Association (ICA), I am chairing the Working Group on Standardisation in Cartography.

Maps & Infographics

Apart from papers, in the last few years I have published over 1000 maps & infographics, mainly in the Dutch journal "Geografie". I have published a database to turn this into a searchable list with PNG previews...