Frank Canters

I am professor of cartography, GIS and remote sensing at the Department of Geography of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and director of the Cartography and GIS Research Group. My research focuses on the development of remote sensing and GIS driven approaches for spatial monitoring and modelling of the urban environment. My published work covers a wide range of topics, including mapping and monitoring of urban form, modelling of urban form dynamics, inferring urban land use from land cover, mapping of urban green, urban green use and valuation, urban ecosystem services. Developing methods to extract information from remotely sensed data that is useful for local and regional decision making is an important concern in much of the work done by our lab.

Earlier in my career, my research focused on map projection topics. I am the author of two handbooks on small-scale map projection choice and map projection design. One of the best known outcomes of this work is the Canters projection, a minimum-error world map projection launched in the early 90s and still used in geography textbooks today.

My expertise includes:   

• Urban remote sensing
• Monitoring and modeling of urban dynamics
• Urban ecosystem services
• Map projection research