Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy
federal agency in Germany
The Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (German: Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie, BKG) is Germany's national mapping agency. It is located in Frankfurt, with a branch in Leipzig.
It operates the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell.
In July 2024, Germany summoned the Chinese ambassador over a 2021 cyber-attack against the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy attributed to "Chinese state actors" for the "purpose of espionage."
Tasks
The BKG has the following specific responsibilities:
Preparation, updating, and provision of location- and spatial-based data for describing features on the Earth's surface
Provision and maintenance of national, higher-level geodetic reference networks
Participation in bilateral and multilateral efforts to establish and maintain global geodetic reference systems and networks
Coordination of the development, expansion, and maintenance of the federal share of the geodata infrastructure for Germany
Operation of a federal service center for geoinformation and geodesy
Representation of Germany's professional interests at the European and international levels
The BKG develops processes, products, and services that combine topographical geodata with thematic information from specialized information systems, thus making them usable.
In addition to its specialist work, the BKG contributes to coordinating geodesy and geoinformation within the German federal system. These include the Central Agency for Geotopography (ZSGT) and the Coordination Office of the German Geodata Infrastructure (GDI-DE). By coordinating the GDI-DE, the BKG also serves as the liaison office with the European Commission within the framework of the EU INSPIRE Directive, which requires all member states to provide public geoinformation online according to uniform professional and technical rules.
Until 2012, there was no legal basis at the federal level to establish terms of use for the provision of geodata and geodata services. Since the last amendment to the Geodata Access Act (GeoZG) came into force on November 16, 2012, federal geodata and geodata services have generally been available free of charge for commercial and non-commercial use.
“Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy” enters the record as federal agency in Germany. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Federal, Agency and Cartography can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1005454. VIAF identifies the subject as 157972415. The Library of Congress control number is no00017842. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024, 2021 and 2012.
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