Matjaž Geršič (Slovenia), matjaz.gersic@zrc-sazu.si

Matjaž Geršič is the chair from the ICA side of the Joint ICA/IGU Commission on Toponymy, a joint venture of ICA and IGU committed to fostering cartographic and geographical research in toponymy supplementary to UNGEGN with its focus on standardization; reports to UNGEGN on the activities of this Commission and other toponymy-related activities of ICA as well as back to ICA on UNGEGN's activities and eventual needs for complementary cartographic research.

Peeter Päll (Estonia), peeter.pall@eki.ee

Peter Jordan (Austria), Peter.Jordan@oeaw.ac.at

Peter Jordan is vice-president of ICOS responsible for cooperations and chair of its Working Group on Toponymy. ICOS is the global umbrella organization of onomasticians concerned with proper names of all kinds and looking on them from the perspectives of all relevant sciences. Toponyms are a major field of its activities, and it is the aim of ICOS to foster research on them in a most comprehensive way. The liaison officer reports to UNGEGN on ICOS' activities in the field of toponymy as well as back to ICOS on UNGEGN's activities and eventual needs for complementary research.

Cosimo Palagiano (Italy), cosimo.palagiano@uniroma1.it

Cosimo Palagiano is the chair from the IGU side of the Joint ICA/IGU Commission on Toponymy, a joint venture of ICA and IGU committed to fostering cartographic and geographical research in toponymy supplementary to UNGEGN with its focus on standardization; reports to IGU on UNGEGN's activities and eventual needs for complementary geographical research.

Trent Palmer (USA), trent.c.palmer@nga.mil

The International Hydrographic Organization is an intergovernmental organization that works to ensure all the world's seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted. The IHO cooperates with UNGEGN on issues related to the naming of maritime features and helps support any actions that may be required to further enhance safety at sea and the protection of the marine environment.

Pier-Giorgio Zaccheddu (Germany), pier-giorgio.zaccheddu@bkg.bund.de

ISO/TC 211 is a standard technical committee formed within ISO, tasked with covering the areas of digital geographic information (such as used by geographic information systems) and geomatics. It is responsible for preparation of a series of International Standards and Technical Specifications. The ISO/TC 211 work is closely related to the efforts of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). A Category A-liaison was established with UNGEGN in 2002 in order to make an effective contribution to the work of the ISO/TC 211 for questions dealt with geographical names standardization.

Sergio Rodríguez (USA), srodriguez@usgs.gov

The Pan American Institute of Geography and History (PAIGH) is a technical and scientific body of the Organization of American States specializing in the areas of cartography, geography, history and geophysics. UNGEGN and PAIGH cooperate to help promote geographic name standards and best practices through presentations and trainings among other activities.

Catherine Cheetham (United Kingdom), ccheetham@pcgn.org.uk

The Unicode encoding standard provides the basis for processing, storage and interchange of text data in any language in all modern software and information technology protocols. The liaison between Unicode and UNGEGN dates from 2002 and was set up to provide a mechanism to ensure that characters required by UNGEGN members' national geographical names were included in the Unicode standard.