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. The ITC is an international school providing courses on GIS and Remote Sensing to students from all around the world, ranging from short courses, to 2 year MSc degree courses, as well as a PhD graduate school.

Since 2010, ITC is 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). I also teach in ATLAS, the Honours BSc programme of the University College Twente. 

My teaching subjects include Cartographic Theory, WebCartography and WebGIS, Geo-webservices, web application building and 3D visualisation. 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 Assiociation, I am member and Publications Chair of the Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies, member of the Commission on SDI and Standards and the Commission on Maps and the Internet.

Maps & Infographics

Apart from papers, in the last few years I have published over 500 maps & infographics, mainly in the Dutch journal "Geografie". I have published a database to turn this into a searchable list with PNG previews...