Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
information, the cartographic representation can support various repre-
sentations, contingent on a number of parameters, notably scale.
Conventions and Quality: An Example
You can probably think of a number of times when a map wasn't as helpful
as you wished it would be. That may well have been because of quality and
choice issues. Before moving to more specifics of communication and repre-
sentation in the next chapters, you can follow this example to see how frame-
works and conventions in relationship to quality and choices can lead to a
less-than-useful map. This is a very big problem for companies whose busi-
ness depends on maps, so they put great effort into making maps under-
standable, but have to make some important choices that may greatly limit
the quality of their map for some groups of people.
People who travel often have to use rental cars and depend on their maps.
If you arrive in a country with a strong mapping tradition and rent a car at the
city airport, you may receive a very good road map of all of the country; this
map may be perfect for finding the smallest town that your friend's ancestors
originate from, but is probably much less perfect for finding the way to your
hotel. But let's assume that you have been given a pretty good map of the city,
one that even shows hotels. It's no problem to find the hotel you're going to . . .
but wait. The center of the city is on the map, the hotel is there, but where's the
airport? What do you do now? Where is the airport? What's the road to the city
A directional map can be useful for finding some directions, but its geographic
representation will fall short in supporting other uses, such as finding the way from the airport to a
hotel.
From
www.y12.doe.gov/library/maps/OR_KnoxMap.gif
Search WWH ::
Custom Search