Online Resources for Geographic Visualisation

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Introduction

This document provides a report on selected applications using contemporary media to visualize geography. It first provides an overview of the use of the World Wide Web and then it looks at other information-provision systems that could be employed to complement Web-delivered information.

Moving the traditional publishing model to the Internet and the World Wide Web

The traditional publishing model was to produce maps and map-related products within an organisation and, once edited, proofed and approved dispatched for replication at a commercial printing house. This involved the manual transportation of artwork and the final printed maps using a physical transport facility. Artwork, printing plates and the paper products were moved within facilities, across town, nationally and globally.

With the adoption of the Internet the need to physically transport media was eliminated. It became possible to digitally ‘transport’ completed files. The Internet was used before the Web to deliver mapping products and datasets. Using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) files, usually compressed, were distributed in this manner. Once received files were opened with appropriate drawing or publishing software for ‘local’ completion and print. File transfers were quick, but the process was burdened with the overheads of file compression and subsequent decompression and the need to have appropriate display software on the ‘receiving’ computer. Collections of scanned paper maps were constructed and delivered to consumers usually as .GIF files. Whilst an efficient means of providing information almost immediately users still needed to undertake some file manipulations prior to the actual image being displayed. The Web enabled this problem to be eradicated.

With the arrival of the Web, and the use of Berners-Lee’s browser-driven information displays a different, graphical access method to information was made available. The first browser was not all that dissimilar to today’s Internet Explorer or Netscape counterpart, and a current-day user of the Web could easily adapt to this original manifestation. The Web was utilised by the geospatial community for marketing and selling paper maps, as well as giving direct access to maps on screens. Initial products were collections of scanned or pre-composed maps, but, as techniques were developed and communication speeds increased geospatial products were delivered ‘on-the-fly’, using server-side processing initially, and later client-side processing. Direct downloads remained as a companion method for information access, with data files downloaded for immediate use with consumer software, or local printing. Downloads were also made available for use on mobile devices like Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) or mobile telephones.

In a fairly recent report, The UCLA Internet Report - “Surveying the Digital Future” (UCLA, 2003), the extent about how the Internet has been embraced can be seen. This UCLA report, coordinated by the UCLA Center for Communication Policy, is a year-to-year study of the impact of the Internet on social, political and economic behaviour of users and non-users of the Internet. In general, the report noted that:

• Internet access remained generally stable from 2001 to 2002 and online hours increased, as did the use of the Internet at home;
• Use of the Internet spans all age groups;
• The Internet was seen as an important source of information (in 2002 over 60% of all users surveyed considered the Internet to be a very important or extremely important source of information);
• The Internet had widened the number of people that respondents communicated with;
• Use of the Internet for making purchases online had declined, but the average number of purchases made this way had increased; and
• There were growing numbers of people use the Internet for business purposes, from emails to business-to-business and business-to-customer transactions.

• Map and image collections
• Downloadable data storages
• Information services with maps
• Online map-generation services
• Web atlases
• Hybrid products
• 3D
• Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality
• Innovation & Geographical Visualisation Tools
• Developing Areas of Interest
• References

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This document was last reviewed on 07/07/2008.