Geographical Reference in Multimedia Cartography

Abstract

A typical characteristic of cartography is that although one of the oldest disciplines on Earth, it is also one among the first to adapt to new technological developments and make use of their methods and techniques. The case of multimedia is a relatively recent example of this: use of multimedia in cartography has increased during the last decade. A rapid survey of this trend shows that initially cartographic multimedia applications were viewed as presentational tools intended for public use; probably this could be attributed to the new types of means available (that is picture, video, sound) and their strong communicative nature, suitable for clarifying and/or enhancing the abstract nature of map representations. In the meanwhile, however, it has become clear that cartographic multimedia has the potential to develop along the whole spectrum of the map-use continuum. Furthermore, there is a rapidly growing demand for multimedia geographical products in other geoscientific areas related to cartography, such as photogrammetric applications for 3D city models and urban object reconstruction, 3D GIS database and its applications etc. (See for example Arikawa (1998), Asche and Herrmann (1994), Gruber (1998), Jiang et al. (1995), Dbouk and Boursier (1995), Fonseca et al. (1995)). Thus, apart from a public communicative tool for presenting known facts and data, multimedia mapping also constitutes powerful means for data exploration, analysis and visualisation, directly due to the capabilities of displaying the multiple aspects of reality via a variety of means. Nevertheless, this theoretical potential can be effectively fulfilled if a number of capabilities and functionality are built in the cartographic applications that make use of the new medium. To begin with, if multimedia are meant for more than presentational tools, some elementary GIS functions have to be present.