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era of multimedia. Multimedia systems spreads into
all computer environments and applications. Their
use ranges from encyclopedia publishing, education
and entertainment to production process monitoring
and control. Multimedia technologies can be easily
adopted into GIS systems. But the most important
problem of current sophisticated multimedia technolo-
gies is lack of proper metaphors for their use.
Future GIS systems should solve two main task: adop-
tion of multimedia for the use in GIS applications as
well as supply of GIS services for other multimedia
applications. But the solution of these problems need
not be limited to technological part, but it should be
concentrated on questions:
e Why use multimedia in GIS?
e How should be multimedia used in GIS?
e How should be digital map used in other multi-
media applications?
It is quite clear that new media (photographs, sound,
video, etc.) can increase information value of GIS
data. These media are in many cases the most nat-
ural way of communicating information. Multimedia
enables people to accept various information (e.g. mu-
sic, actions) in its natural state and in familiar man-
ner. But large amount of information increase poten-
tial danger of perception, mind and memory overload-
ing. Multimedia information in GIS systems should be
structured and presented very carefully with the help
of user-oriented and thematically-oriented data orga-
nization.
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B3. Vienna 1996
On the other side adoption of digital maps like new
media in common multimedia applications can in-
crease their quality and potential. It is quite clear
that people are used to describe positional relations
on Earth by maps and in this way maps represents
natural media for communication positional informa-
tion. We can found maps incorporated in many cur-
rent multimedia applications (such as encyclopedia).
For example, they provides information about states
which includes not only statistical data, but also sim-
ple maps. But these maps are usually closed into
this application and cannot be linked with data in
other systems. Methods for data exchange and cre-
ation of new links to data outside of application (e.g.
economic or environmental databases) are important
tasks which should be solved in future GIS systems.
5 Hypermap environments
Current era of information technologies has also intro-
duced notion of hypertext and hyperlinked informa-
tion within large data structures. World Wide Web
(WWW) represents a real hit in network environment
which provides easy-to-use access to large information
databases and big amount of information, data, soft-
ware and media resources within world-wide Internet
network system. This technology brings unconceiv-
able amount of information to screens of computer
users. But new methods for information access, search
and queries should be introduced to improve these en-
vironments, as mind and perception overloading is im-
minent.
This technology allows to incorporate images (such
as maps) into documents. It is also includes simple
