Two Perspectives on Data Quality Geographic Knowledge Production Through GIS: Towards a Model for Quality Monitoring By

GIS is a tool for the production of applied geographic knowledge as well as for its wide dissemination and use. This paper examines the problems of quality control and monitoring resulting from the ease with which non-experts can now produce, using GIS, many kinds of documents thus far obtainable only from experts. Because the quality of a GIS product is largely a function of the background assumptions and specific purpose of each application, it is in general not possible to build appropriate product quality controls directly into the system. A conceptual model is proposed, based on a linguistic metaphor, that would allow users to monitor visually the quality of a GIS product at any stage of deriving an application. The model could be implemented as a "metal’ expert system incorporating general rules for the selection of the specific kinds of quality criteria and quality feedback indicators suitable for each application.