Geographical Information Systems and Computer Cartography ee by CHRISTOPHER B. JONES 8 LONGMANPearson Education Limited te De PORMBATO Edinburgh Gate, Harlow (Me. DE EJEMPLARES Essex CM20 2E Cuave 3B England re eae ‘and Associated Companies throughout the World © Addison Wesley Longman Limited 1997 ‘The right of Dr Christopher B. Jones to be identified 4s author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1998. All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without either the prior ‘written permission of the Publishers or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Lid., 90 Tottenham Court Rosd, London WIP 9HE. First published 1997 Reprinted 1998, 1999 ISBN 0 58204439 1 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data ‘A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog entry for this title is available from the Library of Congress. Set by 30 in 9/11 Times Printed in Singapore (COS)CHAPTER 15 Introduction The profusion of computer packages for GIS and for digital mapping now mean that maps of some sort can often be created in minutes by anybody capable of operating the program. Assuming that the package contains the relevant digital map data, then the draft- ing process is highly automated in the sonse that the program will plot out the locations of selected map features, at a selected scale, and with whatever sym- bols the user has chosen. As was pointed out in Part 1 of this book, computer graphics technology enables map data to be plotted faster and with greater preci- sion than is possible using manual methods. Map projections can easily be changed, schemes for sym- bolisation of data can be modified very rapidly and, once very demandigg, visualisations of 3D data can be created with ease, Automation in cartography has not just speeded up traditional cartographic procedures. It has led to new \ways in which to exploit cartography for purposes of communicating information and of visualising — and hence gaining greater understanding of - the spatial relationships inherent in mapped data. Perhaps most importantly, computer graphics technology has pro- vided the opportunity to interact directly with graphic displays, so that the content of the display is changed in response to the user’ interests Although considerable progress has been made in computer cartography, the automation is only com- plete in a mechanistic sense that relates to the plotting of graphical symbols: The computer pack- ages provide little or, more usually, no guidance on decisions regarding the design of the map. It is for the Cartographic communication visualisation user to decide what data should be plotted, and with what projection, symbols, colours, typography and accompanying titles and legends. Cartography is potentially a very powerful means of communication and to be so it depends in general upon the right choices being made regarding the selection of these various parameters. ‘The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the facilities provided by GIS and mapping packages for displaying spatial data, and to provide some awareness of issues in cartographic design. In the next section, we introduce the basic types of carto- graphic symbols. We also review issues in map design, which concern the ways in which map symbols can be manipulated to affect the impact of the map. A section then follows on the subject of text placement, which is one of the few areas of cartographic design in which considerable progress has been made in automation: The following section deals with the display of 3D data, with some mention of techniques for helping to achieve realism. This includes issues of hidden surface removal, shading of terrain models and the creation of viewshed maps based on intervisibility analyses, The final section of the chapter reviews briefly some meth- ods available for interactive exploration and retrieval of spatially referenced information. Graphic symbology Graphic symbols can be classified according to the type of spatial objects that they represent. In two dimensions this leads to the familiar division in