I am wondering if there is a standard projection if you want to map the neighboring countries of Germany, Switzerland and Austria (known as "DACH" in equal-area?
For Europe there is EPSG:3035 which seems centered on Germany. Would that be the best choice?
In my organisation, we use the ETRS89 Geographic Coordinate System (EPSG:4258) across all of our datasets. This ensures consistency and makes data management processing a lot easier. It is based on the global WGS84 system, however it is focussed on Europe, fixed to the stable part of the Eurasian continental plate and takes into account tectonic plate movement. For more information about this CRS please see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Terrestrial_Reference_System_1989 http://spatialreference.org/ref/epsg/4258/
The ETRS89 LAEA (EPSG:3035) CRS (http://spatialreference.org/ref/epsg/3035/) is a projected system that should be used for statistical mapping and area measurements specifically for 1:500,000 or smaller. This is the go to CRS I use for any area measurements within the Europe, as most of my work is within the marine environment.
If you would like a list of potential CRS systems that cover the specific countries you have mentioned, please use the following website which has a spatial search function which gives you all the relevant CRS: http://www.epsg-registry.org/
Short answer: YES
Long answer:
The LAEA projection EPSG:3035 is based on +lat_0=52 +lon_0=10. You get equal areas everywhere across Europe, but distortion of distance and shape increase from the center point. The DACH region is centered about 50°N 11°E, so you could set up a custom CRS like this:
+proj=laea +lat_0=50 +lon_0=11 +x_0=5000000 +y_0=3200000 +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0,0,0,0,0 +units=m +no_defs
Using predefined EPSG codes is however a bit easier.
This site suggest 52 coordinate system for Switzerland (19 projected, 12 Geodetic, 8 Geodetic 3D, 7 Geocentric, 4 Vertical, 2 Compound). Also it has a measure of accuracy for some of them so you can have look. But I'm not sure if there is any equal area projection specific to that area so you may check those accuracy and find your proper SRS which fit that area and somehow have acceptable distortion effect on the area.
But if you are looking for equal-area projection and conformality of the map is not your main concern, why not simply use the Cylindrical Equal-Area Projection which is defined for all the world.
