About the emotional requirements of map users

Cartography is a bridge that brings together geodata and their users. Two interfaces need to be designed for this bridge role: one between geodata and their maps, and the other between maps and their users. As shown in Fig.1, the more or less “raw” geodata collected from diversified sources (e.g. field survey, remote sensing, map digitization, news agency, statistic study etc.) must be harmonized and value-added in a way that geo-objects, their dynamic processes and relationships along with their metadata can be flexibly visualized at various granularity levels. So far, much work has been focused on geodata compression, standardization of data structure, distributive data warehouses and geoportal for the purpose of efficient and ubiquitous retrieval of geodata. However, issues on the transformation of the available geodata to cartographic presentations that must balance the constraints concerned with content generalization, symbolization, interaction, display size, cross-media output and interoperability of graphic format have not yet been systematically addressed. Also, cartographers often find themselves presented with data sets that are insufficient or redundant for visualization tasks. Although new technologies may overcome certain technical limitations, the complete removal of the bottleneck between geodata and their maps involves much higher cognitive processes that must be modeled and formalized as well.