The book contains private views of experts from various countries on the role of geological mapping in sustainable development. New technologies and concepts are presented, which are either awaiting for recognition by Geological Surveys, or are gradually applied in some survey. The target of the book is well worded in the "Summary and recommendations" elaborated by the Ad Hoc Committee at the Advanced Research Workshop on Innovative Geological Cartography, held under NATO sponsorship in Poland in November 2003. After the "Summaries" were issued by the end of 2003, the authors who presented their views at the Workshop, gave a revised version of their papers with more new ideas and material. Generally, the book is addressed to cartographers in Geological Surveys, geologists and geographers co-operating with landuse planners, ecologists and decision makers, who may learn about the state-of-the-art and the enormous information potential of the modern information technologies in Geosciences. The book, however, gives no methodological recipes but, as it was the authors' intention, may and shall be used as a guide-book in modernizing Information Technologies at the local, regional and national levels in Geosciences.

This book, entitled Advances in Spatial Data Handling, is a compendium of papers resulting from the International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH), held in Ottawa, Canada, July 9-12, 2002. The SDH conference series has been organised as one of the main activities of the International Geographical Union (IGU) since it was first started in Zurich in 1984. In the late 1990’s the IGU Commission of Geographic Information Systems was discontinued and a study group was formed to succeed it in 1997. Much like the IGU Commission, the objectives of the Study Group are to create a network of people and research centres addressing geographical information science and to facilitate exchange of information. The International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, which is the most important activity of the IGU Study Group, has, throughout its 18 year history been highly regarded as one of the most important GIS conferences in the world.