This article is about the French Institut Géographique National; for the similar Belgian institution also called Institut Géographique National see Nationaal Geografisch Instituut - Institut Géographique National. For other countries with similar institutions, see IGN_(disambiguation).
The Institut Géographique National (English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of: National Geographic Institute) or IGN is a French public state administrative establishment founded in 1940[1] to produce and maintain geographical information for France France (pronounced /ˈfrænts/ frantss or /ˈfrɑːnts/ frahnts; French pronunciation (help·info): [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a state in Western Europe with several of its overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, and its overseas departments and territories The French Overseas Departments and Territories consist broadly of French-administered territories outside of the European continent. These territories have varying legal status and different levels of autonomy, although all have representation in the Parliament of France (except those with no permanent inhabitants), and the right to vote in.
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Administrative organisation
The IGN depends on the French Ministry of Equipment, Transport, Town and Country Planning, Tourism and Sea. Its missions are fixed by decrees A decree is a rule of law issued by a head of state , according to certain procedures (usually established in a constitution). It has the force of law. The particular term used for this concept may vary from country to country—the executive orders made by the President of the United States, for example, are decrees (although a decree is not.
State subsidies represent 55% of the budget, and sales 45%.
The IGN runs four laboratories to research geographical information acquisition, production, distribution and applications. It also runs its own school to teach techniques to its staff and other students: École nationale des sciences géographiques (English: National School of Geographical Sciences) or ENSG.
Missions
Specimen IGN bench mark at Saint Goussaud, Limousin, France, by Institut Geographique NationalThe IGN is responsible for the management and updating of:
- geodesic Geodesy , also named geodetics, a branch of earth sciences, is the scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation of the Earth, including its gravitational field, in a three-dimensional time-varying space. Geodesists also study geodynamical phenomena such as crustal motion, tides, and polar motion. For this they design and levelling The elevation of a geographic location is its height above a fixed reference point, often the mean sea level. Elevation, or geometric height, is mainly used when referring to points on the Earth's surface, while altitude or geopotential height is used for points above the surface, such as an aircraft in flight or a spacecraft in orbit networks,
- aerial photographies Aerial photography is the taking of photographs of the ground from an elevated position. The term usually refers to images in which the camera is not supported by a ground-based structure. Cameras may be hand held or mounted, and photographs may be taken by a photographer, triggered remotely or triggered automatically. Platforms for aerial,
- geographical data bases and maps A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes.
It has to lead research, and to take part in the standardization Standardization or standardisation is the process of developing and agreeing upon technical standards. A standard is a document that establishes uniform engineering or technical specifications, criteria, methods, processes, or practices. Some standards are mandatory while others are voluntary. Voluntary standards are available if one chooses to process in the field of geographical information. It has to manage ENSG, and the documentation service about its products, techniques and services.
A group of French public administrations, in partnership with the IGN, establish the Large Scale Reference (Référentiel à grande échelle, RGE): orthophoto An orthophoto or orthophotograph is an aerial photograph geometrically corrected such that the scale is uniform: the photo has the same lack of distortion as a map. Unlike an uncorrected aerial photograph, an orthophotograph can be used to measure true distances, because it is an accurate representation of the earth's surface, having been adjusted, topography Topography is the study of Earth's surface shape and features or those of planets, moons, and asteroids. It is also the description of such surface shapes and features (especially their depiction in maps), cadastral survey A cadastre , using a cadastral survey or cadastral map, is a comprehensive register of the metes-and-bounds real property of a country. A cadastre commonly includes details of the ownership, the tenure, the precise location (some include GPS coordinates), the dimensions (and area), the cultivations if rural, and the value of individual parcels of and address An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used for describing the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along with other identifiers such as house or apartment numbers. Some addresses also contain special databases which can be superimposed on all the French territory, with a 1-meter resolution Image resolution describes the detail an image holds. The term applies to digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail.
Products
Covering the whole French territory:
- topographic maps A topographic map is a type of map characterized by large-scale detail and quantitative representation of relief, usually using contour lines in modern mapping, but historically using a variety of methods. Traditional definitions require a topographic map to show both natural and man-made features on the 1:25,000, 1:50,000 and 1:100,000 scales The scale of a map is defined as the ratio of a distance on the map to the corresponding distance on the ground. If the region of the map is small enough for the curvature of the Earth to be neglected, then the scale may be taken as a constant ratio over the whole map. . For maps covering larger areas, or the whole Earth, it is essential to use a
- road maps on the 1:250,000 and 1:1,000,000 scales (this last one covers metropolitan France on one sheet).
- maps of foreign countries
- ICAO The International Civil Aviation Organization , a specialized agency of the United Nations, codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation and fosters the planning and development of international air transport to ensure safe and orderly growth. Its headquarters are located in the Quartier International of Montreal, Quebec, aeronautical maps on the 1:500,000 scale for visual flying Visual flight rules are a set of regulations which allow a pilot to operate an aircraft in weather conditions generally clear enough to allow the pilot to see where the aircraft is going. Specifically, the weather must be better than basic VFR weather minimums, as specified in the rules of the relevant aviation authority. If the weather is worse (VFR).
The IGN is also in charge of the Géoportail.
History
The IGN is the successor to the geographical Service of the Army (SGA), which was founded in 1887 1887 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar) and disbanded in 1940. The old maps produced by the SCA were divided into two batches: one which remained at the Institute and one which joined the military files of Vincennes Vincennes is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 6.7 km from the centre of Paris. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe. The general Louis Hurault, who was at the origin of these modifications, was the first director of the IGN. He tried, in vain, to recover the material shared by the Germans. A law in ten articles is signed the 14 in order to define the functions of the IGN. The statutes had been signed the 8. This established the national School of geographical sciences in order to train Cartographical engineers.
During the Second World War Albania · Australia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Belgium · Brazil · Bulgaria · Burma · Cambodia · Canada · Ceylon (Sri Lanka) · Channel Islands · China · Czechoslovakia · Denmark · Dutch East Indies · Egypt · Estonia · Finland · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Greenland · Hong Kong · Hungary · Iceland ·, the IGN became famous for its counterfeiters. The cartographers are indeed experts in penmanship and the material necessary to the production of fake identity papers was available to the Institute. Certain engineers of the IGN were in contact with the services of allied information based in London. In secret, they brought a complete set of maps to London covering France and North Africa in order to replace maps destroyed in a bombardment.
The agents of the IGN took an active part in armed resistance in 1943. Several agents were shot by the Germans or died in action. Between September 1944 and on May 8, 1945, the IGN was under the control of the “provisional government” and most of its personnel and of his services are transformed into “military geographical Service”. At the end of the war, the IGN received the thanks of Generals Bradley and Eisenhower.
Between 1945 Year 1945 was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) and 1946 1946 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar, the debate is intense concerning the future of the IGN, last creation of the Third Republic. A law is finally signed the 8. It confirms the membership of the IGN to the Ministry of works and create the “geographical Section of staff of the Army”, new section in charge of the military map.
In 1947 1947 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1947 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar, the IGN receives the mission of covering the whole France, but also all the dependents’ territories, like North Africa, Western Africa, Madagascar, the countries associated with Indochina and the departments and overseas territories. The task is considerable with more than 12 million km ² being covered. The independence of these countries will have as a consequence the creation of national services in each country (examples: DTGC in Senegal, IGN-N in Niger).
The IGN then initiates a period of active co-operation with the majority of these organizations by providing some engineers of the IGN and also receive the students of the ENSG who intended to become the executives of the cartographic services of new independent countries. The activity of the IGN apart from the French territory also develops by the control geodesic project(Ecuador 1975, Libya 1979, Saudi Arabia 1981), of cartography (Saudi Arabia, Burundi, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin…).
1982 to 1988, the control of a large topometric project and numerical cartography in Riyadh is the occasion to massively introduce digital techniques into the processing production; in parallel, the idea of a topoland data base emerges at meetings of the “national Commission of the geographical information” chaired by Guy Lengagne; this commission returns his report in 1983 and outlines numerical geographical information then in agreement with the period of the basic map with 1:25 000.Publicly-owned establishment related to administration since the January 1, 1967, it is placed under the supervision of the ministry for Transport, the equipment, tourism and the sea.
In 1971 1971 was a common year that started on a Friday (link will display full calendar) in the Gregorian calendar, the IGN and the CNES form the “Group of research of geodesic space”. This collaboration between the IGN and the CNES continues with the launching of the program SPOT the 5. The launching of satellite SPOT-1 takes place the 22.Six days after take SPOT-1 in orbit, the IGN create its programme of “data bases launches”, the “data bases”. The data base of the cities, the data base of leveling distribution, the data base of geodesic distribution , the aerial missions data base and the toponyms data base were progressively establish . The “Topo data base”, bases of topographic data digitized, covers from now on the whole France and include nearly two million toponyms .
Its activities abroad begin into 1986 within a new subsidiary private company IGN France International.
From 2000, the IGN develops the concept of Reference frame on a Large Scale (référentiel à grande échelle = RGE); it is a question of completing within a deadline short digitalization the cartography of the French territory with a meter scale and according to four components: topography, land registry and address. This RGE is entirely completed at the end of 2008. Then it enter in a cycle of maintenance In June 2006, the IGN opened the service Géoportail allowing the cartographic visualization of the French territory on a Web navigator and using on one hand funds of air photographs and on the other hand the digitized maps to the 1/25 000. “Phase 2” of Géoportail was put on line one year later, with a new ergonomics.
At the end of 2006, the IGN was implied in the production of a receiver GPS The Global Positioning System is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides reliable location and time information in all weather and at all times and anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. It is maintained by the United States government and is freely, for the excursion and automobile navigation, called Evadeo. The software of navigation Navigation is the process of reading, and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks. The word navigate is derived from the Latin "navigate", which is the command "sail". More literally was provided by BCI navigation (replaced in 2008 by CompeGPS), the road data are of Navteq NAVTEQ is a Chicago, Illinois-based provider of Geographic Information Systems data and is a dominant company in providing the base electronic navigable maps. The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nokia but operates independently and it puce GPS of SiRF SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. is a publicly traded company that manufactures a range of patented GPS chipsets and software for consumer navigation devices and systems. The chips are based on ARM controllers integrated with low-noise radio receivers to decode GPS signals at very low signal levels (typically -160dBm), and the IGN provides a part with extracts of its maps at various scales.
In June June (help·info) is the sixth month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with a length of 30 days. The Roman poet Ovid provides two etymologies for June's name in his poem concerning the months entitled the Fasti. The first is that the month is named after the Roman goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter and equivalent to the Greek goddess Hera, whilst 2007 2007 was a common year that started on a Monday. In the Gregorian calendar, it was the 2007th year of the Common Era, or of Anno Domini; the 7th year of the 3rd millennium and of the 21st century; and the 8th of the 2000s decade, the IGN started offering a service whereby it is possible to have a map printed centred on any location in France. This is similar to the service offered in Great Britain Great Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 61.8 million people in mid-2009, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1,000 smaller islands and islets. The island of by the Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey is an executive agency of the United Kingdom government. It is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, and one of the world's largest producers of maps. The name reflects the original military purpose of the organisation in mapping Britain during the Napoleonic Wars when there was a threat of invasion from France, and its.
In July July (help·info) is the seventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. It is, on average, the warmest month in most of the Northern hemisphere (where it is the second month of summer) and the coldest month in much of the Southern hemisphere. The second half of the year commences 2007 2007 was a common year that started on a Monday. In the Gregorian calendar, it was the 2007th year of the Common Era, or of Anno Domini; the 7th year of the 3rd millennium and of the 21st century; and the 8th of the 2000s decade, Géportail - an online map service - began offering 3D movable views in a similar style to GoogleEarth. To use this function, it is necessary to install the plugin TerraExplorer.
External links
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- (French) Official site
References
- ^ Dictionnaire général pour la maîtrise de la langue française, la culture classique et contemporaine. Larousse. 1993. p. 779. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 2-03-320300-X.
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