Created in 1940, Institut Géographique National (IGN) is the French National Agency in charge of geodesy, mapping and geographic information. IGN masters the whole production of maps, from the aerial photographs to the printing. Annual budget amounts over 120M Euro, a part of this budget is provided by the French state and almost half of it comes from commercial returns. Staff amounts to 1800 people including 400 engineers.
the national coverage of topographic maps and aerial photographs,
producing and maintaining maps and geographic data bases.
Other projects / IPs with IGN's participation:
optronics, including laser studies, and digital cameras studies (LOEMI).
geodesy, including satellite positioning and satellite orbitographie, the international terrestrial reference system, and gravimetry. This laboratory cooperates with other European laboratories within framework of the EUREF organisation (LAREG)
image processing, to automate the extraction of geographic information from images (MATIS)
Geographic Information Systems, to develop new concepts for future data bases, and automate the derivation of products, starting with maps, from master data bases (GOGIT)
