Cartography and GIS: extending collaborative tools to support virtual teams

Geographic research, decision-making and education are, more than ever before, group activities. The methods and tools of cartography and geographic information systems (GISystems), however, have been developed for use by individuals. As noted in my report last year, this individual focus is starting to change – but slowly. That report introduced a space-time typology borrowed from the literature of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). The typology relies on spatial and temporal distinctions to characterize the context of collaboration as being same or different place and same or different time. Last year I focused on same-place geospatial collaboration (geocollaboration) at both same and different times. Here, I pick up where that report left off, considering research to delineate the potential and challenges of different-place geocollaboration. The challenges include technical hurdles associated with implementing visual geospatial data analysis methods in a distributed setting, development of representation and interaction concepts and their implementation that can facilitate distributed group work, and understanding the cognitive and social issues involved in mediating that work through visual interfaces. Research on different-place collaboration, in geography as elsewhere, builds on a relatively large body of literature that has addressed same-place (face-to-face) group work and computer tools to facilitate it. For a review of the same-place group work literature in geography and pointers to a wider literature, see MacEachren (2000). Different-place group work adds to the other requirements of group work the need for a mechanism to share data and ideas at a distance. Asynchronous different-place work has occurred for centuries (e.g., through use of postal and messenger services to exchange information and perspectives). Synchronous different-place work has been possible since the advent of the telegraph and telephone. The primary difference today, Progress in Human Geography 25,3 (2001) pp. 431–444

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