In Memory of Professor Ferjan Ormeling (1942–2025) Mentor, Scholar, and Cartographer with Boundless Imagination

It is with profound admiration and heartfelt remembrance that I wish to pay tribute to Professor Ferjan Ormeling, a towering figure in cartography, a generous mentor, and a steady guide in my academic life. His passing is a great loss to the global cartographic community, yet his legacy lives on — in the students he mentored, in the ideas he shaped, and in the vision he inspired.

In late 1992, supported by a full Dutch government scholarship, I began my PhD journey at the International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC), now the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. My doctoral research focused on cartographic visualization for facilitating spatial analysis and was initially supervised by Professor J. C. Muller, an authority in cartographic generalization. When Professor Muller left ITC for Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, Professor Wolfgang Kainz took over as my main supervisor. I first met Professor Ferjan Ormeling in 1993 after formulating my research proposal. As ITC did not yet have university status, PhD candidates were required to have an external supervisor – or promotor, as the Dutch call it. Professor Kainz accompanied me to Utrecht University to meet Ferjan, who graciously agreed to take on that role. Given my background in cartography and the nature of my research, Ferjan’s involvement brought both intellectual depth and invaluable perspectives.

Our collaborations spanned from 1995 to 2000 and explored what was then uncharted territory in the field: the visualization of cyberspace, the use of hypermap techniques, and the representation of uncertainty in geospatial data. In one of our earliest joint publications, entitled “Hypermap techniques in fuzzy data exploration” (1995), we investigated how to depict imprecise and inaccuracies. This thread continued in our work on the visualization of uncertainty through modified HLS color models and perceptual analysis. Ferjan had a remarkable ability to see ahead of his time. He was particularly fascinated by the emerging virtual world, and our co-authored works entitled “Cybermap: the map for cyberspace” (1997) and “Mapping cyberspace: visualising, exploring and analysing virtual worlds” (1999, 2000) reflected his curiosity and foresight into how geography, cognition, and technology were beginning to intersect. Ferjan was more than a scholar; he was a generous mentor and a steady guide. He led by example, with humility, precision, and a quiet humor that made the hardest academic puzzles feel like joint adventures. He never imposed ideas; he invited exploration.

His influence continues to guide my work to this day. My current projects – MapGEN, which seeks to automate the generalization or generation of small-scale maps from a single large-scale database, and HDMap4Drones, which aims to build digital mapping infrastructure for low-altitude spaces – are deeply rooted in Ferjan’s vision. These efforts reflect the principles he championed: clarity in complexity, coherence in structure, and a deep respect for the role of cartography in shaping how we understand and navigate the world.

As I reflect on our time and collaboration together, I recognize that Ferjan didn’t just help me become a better scholar, he shaped the way I see space, structure knowledge, and relate to the academic world. For that, and for his trust and kindness, I am forever grateful. Professor Ormeling’s map of the world, and of knowledge, remains etched in our memories, in our work, and in the future of cartography.

Bin Jiang

Professor of Urban Informatics, and Acting Master of Residential College 1

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)