Based on the 'Maps Connecting the World' theme, the 27^th International Cartographic Conference (ICC 2015), of the International Cartographic Association, will be held for the first time in Latin America on August 23-28, at the SulAmérica Convention Center,
 Cidade Nova - Rio de Janeiro (RJ).
Organized by the Brazilian Society of Cartography, the conference will gather about 800 persons from more than 60 countries. It will also present the International Cartographic Exhibition, organized by the IBGE, the Barbara Petchenik Children´s World Map Competition and the International Technical-Commercial Exhibition, which will include an IBGE booth. Exhibitions of historic maps (National Library, National Archive, Naval Museum, Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute and Historic Archive of the Army) and an orienteering race in the surroundings of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), at the Fundão Island, are among the events associated with the conference.

The President of the IBGE, Wasmália Bivar, and the acting Director of Geosciences, João Bosco de Azevedo, will participate in the opening ceremony of the conference on August 24 at 9:30 AM, which will also present the IBGE choir. Registration and other information about the ICC 2015 can be found here.

In this edition of the conference, the lectures and round tables will focus on a number of themes, like Maps and Internet: Dynamic and animated cartography; Arts, culture and cartography; Digital cartography; Cartography for vision-impaired persons; Voluntary and participative mapping:  Crowdsourcing; Geo-marketing; Global, regional and national atlases and Cartography for children, among others.

As part of the pre-conference, the IBGE organizes the Symposium on 'Atlases, Topography and the History of Cartography', from today, August 19, to August 21 at the Corporate Intelligence Center. Experts from the IBGE and other national geosciences organizations, researchers from foreign and Brazilian universities and representatives from the Ministry of the Environment, National Library and the National Institute of Industrial Property will participate. This meeting is for guests only.

On another pre-conference, the IBGE will host the international meeting “Workshop on spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source and open data for geospatial” (SDI-Open 2015) on August 20-21, at the auditorium of the Center for Information Documentation and Dissemination (CDDI). The workshop will gather 60 researchers from 16 countries. Among them, representatives from the Commission on Geo-information Infrastructures and Standards, Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies, International Cartographic Association, OSGeo Foundation - responsible for free software projects for geosciences -, as well as from the OGC, standard body in the geospatial area.

The Interregional Adviser for the Management of Global Geospatial Information of the Statistics Division of the United Nations (UNSD), Gregory Scott, will speak on “Positioning Geospatial Information to Address Global Challenges” in the opening conference on August 24 at 11 AM, at the SulAmérica Exhibition Center.

Organized by the IBGE, the International Cartographic Exhibition will be open to the public on August 24-28, also at the SulAmérica Exhibition Center. It will show a comprehensive collection of paper maps, atlases, digital cartographic products, educational cartographic products, digital services, two globes, one terrestrial an one lunar, and tactile maps. During the conference, the best cartographic products will be awarded in five categories, selected by a technical jury and also by the participants. The exhibition schedule will be from 12 PM to 5 PM on Monday, August 24, from 9 AM to 5 PM from Tuesday to Thursday, and from 9 AM to 12 PM on Friday, August 28. The SulAmérica Exhibition Center is located at Avenida Paulo de Frontin, 1 - Cidade Nova.

A biennial event, the International Cartographic Conference aims at showing the role of Cartography as a science, tool and technology able to contribute to the social, technological and scientific development, in which the geospatial information becomes the key element for the integration of today´s world. The next International Cartographic Conference will be held in 2017, in Washington, United States of America.