Cartography and GIS: Facilitating collaboration I

Maps and geographic information systems (GISystems) both encode spatial relationships in structured formal representations. These representations enable shared understanding of geographic phenomena and their interdependencies. This formal encoding makes maps and GIS well suited inherently to facilitating collaboration among human participants in thinking and decision making about the geographic scale environment. Recent conceptual and technical developments in geographic information science (GIScience), and in information technology more generally, suggest we are on the cusp of a substantial increase in the role of maps and GISystems as mediators of collaboration – in a range of contexts that include urban planning, resource management, scientific inquiry, and education (see, for example, the NCGIA Initiative 17 Specialist Report on collaborative spatial decision making, Densham, et al, (1995) and the rapidly expanding literature on Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) -e.g., (Prates et al., 1997, Shum et al., 1997).