Some Observation on the limitations of Current GIS Technology
By and large, GIS development has ignored an extremely important dimension
namely the intellectual (cognitive) interaction between map reader and map as
an efficient qualitative analytical process. In the GIS environment, management
of the information is achieved by the decomposition of the information into
elementary units that can be recombined through a variety of quantitative
analytical models under control of the user.
Present GIS capabilities are a logical consequence of the so-called quantitative
revolution mentioned before. It took place in Geography when electronic
computing power was deployed on statistical geographical information in the
early and mid 1960's. The speed by which optimization models could be
computed was such that in comparison the production of high quality maps
seemed Neanderthal. As a consequence, map use lost a great deal of credibility
with geographers while they made do with the primitive outputs of such statis
tical graphics packages as SYMAP. Today's GIS capabilities are really extensions
of this philosophy. They have become quantitative analytical systems supported
by graphics. This misses the point of the extremely rich, creative, and cognitive
interaction of a map reader with a map or a set of maps. In an electronic envi
ronment, this can be a very efficient tool in understanding geographic space and
in gaining efficient access to and use of geographic information resident in
multiple sources.
A New Role for Maps and Atlases
The reaction from the world of cartography was a serious attempt to better
understand the character and process of this resonance between map reader and
map. Some fine research has been published on this but apparently it did not find
its way yet into cartographic practice and certainly not into GIS practice. In the
design of the Electronic Atlas of Canada (EA) however, we have always main
tained the cognitive strength in the system's design criteria. Based on this we
extended the functions needed by the map reader to browse through the map
material, make visual spatial correlations and, qualitatively, detect geographic
patterns of interest. This EA also contains references to directories of the
geographic data sources and thus supports efficient access to source informa
tion for GIS applications to carry out subsequent quantitative analysis for
example. The definition of Geomatics makes reference to "...infrastructure to
support the optimal utilization of the geo-informationM. Therefore, as a tool for
efficient and well-informed reference to source information an Electronic Atlas
becomes an integral part of the Geomatics infrastructure, and thereby gives new
significance to national atlases.
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