Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy
Prof. Dr. Grünreich
Dear Sir / Madam,
With this website I should like to present you the Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie (BKG) (Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy), which is a federal authority assigned to the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
The special fields cartography and geodesy may not be well-known for a number of readers, so let me give you a short overview of them. The subject of Cartography is to collect, harmonize, and process geospatial information and to visualize and communicate them as maps and map-related representations. Cartography can therefore be seen as the interface between geospatial information and its users. Geodesy is the science and technology of how to determine the geometrical shape of the earth, its gravity field and its orientation within the space (earth rotation). These activities lead to build the fundamentals for a uniform georeferencing of geospatial information within the local, regional and global frames.
The tasks of the BKG consist in providing the geospatial reference systems and the basic geoinformation on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany, in developing and using the necessary techniques and know-how, in advising the federal institutions in the fields of geodesy and geoinformation as well as in safeguarding the special relevant interests of the Federal Government at an international level.
The demand for geodata has risen enormously over the last years as a consequence of the growing importance for applications with geospatial reference and of the fast-developing modern information and communication technologies. To satisfy this demand for user-oriented quality, the BKG employs the most recent geodetic and cartographic technologies and high-performing information and communication techniques. In addition, the BKG contributes substantially in technical and organisational way to build the national geodata infrastructure (GDI-DE) for a continuous and area-wide supply with up-to-date and reliable geoinformation.
Dear Reader, if I have arisen your curiosity and you now like to learn more about the tasks and the range of products and performances of the BKG, you are welcome to visit the rest of our web sites. I should be glad if in this way the dialog between the BKG and the users of its geoinformation products could be furthered.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dietmar Grünreich
President and Professor
© 2010 - Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy. All Rights Reserved.