Future Directions for Multimedia Cartography

Abstract

As the earlier chapters of this book have illustrated the technological context in which multimedia cartography is emerging is an exciting and rapidly changing one. This chapter will look at some of the future directions for multimedia cartography. It is tempting to look at some of the exciting technological developments, such as those relating to multimedia mapping on the Internet and the World Wide Web but, although these are of both interest and importance, it is argued here that the major challenges for the future are not primarily technological. Spatial multimedia technology is, of course, not without its challenges and Scholten and Locasio (1997) have argued that it “...is basically considered a tool for visualization, simulation, communication and exploration of complex spatial data” (Scholten and Locasio 1997, pp. 46–47). This follows MacEachren’s ideas on the importance of interactive analysis for cartographic visualization (MacEachren 1994). Cartwright has pointed out that the concept of multimedia is not new for cartographers but it offers a new “...ability to integrate picture, sound and movement [and] gives the ability to assemble about almost any combination of presentation package required for a particular spatial data presentation including graphic solutions using space-time data” (Cartwright 1994, p. 63). As with visualization, multimedia cartography can be positioned on a curve similar to that suggested by DiBiase (1990) in his four stages of visualization and the axes suggested by MacEachren (1994) in cartography cubed but despite the potential of multimedia as an analytical tool (Raper 1994, Scholten and Locasio 1997) the field is most likely to grow in the areas of communication and presentation rather than spatial analysis, although these are not mutually exclusive.