Desktop Mapping: Displaying and Integrating Information
by Roberta Brody
Sometimes text alone, no matter how expertly worded, is just not the right way to deliver a message. This may often be the case with location-based information—where the relationships among things can be clearly displayed on a map but may not be easily described in words. Because of the special expertise that was once required to display information in map form, maps have traditionally been a less common way to report and display the results of our research. Despite the common estimates that 75 to 80 percent of the information collected in the business environment has a geographic or spatial component to it, such as a street address or a zip code, mapping of information in real space, as opposed to conceptual mapping of ideas, has been rather limited. This situation is changing as desktop mapping, geographic information systems, and other spatial information management applications enable us to display and analyze information in ways that show the relationships of things or events in their real-world contexts.
Desktop mapping currently refers to software that uses as its base Geographic Information System (GIS) software or related software that has some GIS-like capabilities. These mapping applications most commonly display location-based information using the data from tables, spreadsheets, relational databases, and other internally and externally generated sources and connecting this information to places on a map. The software can also serve as a basis for integration of this same data and any other information relating to the same places. The power and utility of desktop mapping lie in the spatial relationships that are made evident through its use, enabling the user to gain additional insight into already existing information by creating new and different points of access. Events are presented where they occur and relative to where other events happen. Whether it's the location of sales territories, the path of a hurricane, or the location of every street light in a municipality, the issues are the same—what is the impact of the location of these things or events on each other or on their environment?
Your Desktop or Mine?
Much of the information that we already use has a spatial component such as a street address or zip code/mail code. Yet, despite the high ratio of data with a spatial component, until recently these spatial relationships among data were largely the concerns of geographers, environmentalists, urban planners, and military strategists and were not the concerns of others. This has changed with the ability of desktop mapping and geographic information systems software to quickly create dynamic maps—maps that can change their focus and detail. In fact, you may already have used one or more of these applications without realizing it!
You may already be using single-function desktop mapping and other spatial information management applications on the Web. Web sites that provide maps and driving and directions for trip planning are examples of such applications. At these sites, you enter a query that contains the start point and end point of your trip, and the results that are generated are in the form of maps of the area plus driving directions.
Less obvious examples are embedded GIS applications like those at sites that help the consumer locate a store or service center close to their home. At these sites, the consumer specifies the distance she is willing to travel from her home or determines the size of the neighborhood in which the application should operate by completing a form indicating, for example, how far from their zip code they are willing to travel. A list of store or service center locations that meet the criteria specified is displayed in response to the form. Many of these applications do not offer maps as output but simply a list of locations; consequently, the underlying GIS functions are hidden from the user. In contrast, at real estate sites, the underlying geographic information system application gives potential home buyers the option to search the database by zooming in on increasingly more detailed maps of an area. The application also allows direct query without the display of maps. Regardless of the appearance of the deliverable, the answer would not be possible without an analysis of spatial relationships and its underlying GIS.
Using Your Data to Build a Map
These same capabilities—making queries about locations, measuring distances, creating routes and directions, focusing on areas or neighborhoods of interest—as well as others can be found in desktop mapping application software. This software is designed to use data generated by "office suite" or personal productivity applications commonly used, such as spreadsheets like Excel and relational databases like Access. Desktop mapping applications are designed to enable the use of some of the basic spatial analysis and dynamic map display capabilities of GIS without the steep learning curve that accompanies many of the larger multifunctional systems.
The software includes accompanying map data so that you can add your data to existing maps. In desktop mapping applications, you can take tabular data, like the contents of a spreadsheet or relational database, and relate it to points on a map. Let's say, for example, that I have a spreadsheet that includes the name and addresses of approximately 250 pharmaceutical technology companies in New Jersey and I want to "get a picture" of where they are located relative to each other, perhaps to see if I could detect small clusters of related companies within this area which is already well known for its concentration of pharmaceutical companies.
Figure 1 displays some of these pharmaceutical technology companies by zip code. As you can see, a list of the number of companies in a given zip code cannot really show the relative positions of these companies. Endless text, suggestive of the repetitive quality of knitting instructions, would be required to describe how each company's position relates to all the others. But a summary map using colored areas to designate ranges within zip codes shows an overview of the relative locations of these pharmaceutical technology company clusters at a glance (Figure 2). While the table shown here has been converted for use in a mapping environment, most desktop mapping application software, as in more traditional PC based GIS software, allows many data sources to be linked to places on a map while remaining in native form; that is, without converting the data from its current files.
The Wireless Desktop
You may have seen onboard displays of directions and locations in cars or in other vehicles. These systems use satellite-generated navigational data to show you exactly where you are on a GIS-generated map in your car. Of course, similar systems are used by companies to speed deliveries by generating the shortest routes from one place to another while allowing the delivery truck driver to make "on-the-fly" changes in the dynamic maps displayed, when conditions require it. But mobile mapping is more than directions and routing. Mapping and tracking applications are available for handheld devices like PDAs (portable digital assistants) for use in business field data collection and display. These same collection and display devices are being used to track the progress of work at archeological digs and construction sites. Again, the " basemap" is supplied in these applications and the data is added to the map as it is collected. As in all other spatial data management software, the data is exportable back to spreadsheets and databases.
Paper Maps, Desktop Mapping and GIS
As with other information systems, where the original paradigm was some immutable form of display on paper, the output of geographic information systems may be seen by some as nothing more than a map rendered by a computer. Maps, after all, do link pieces of information to places in the real world.
But there is a significant difference between a map and GIS-based software, whether it is a fully functional geographic information system with complex spatial analysis capabilities or desktop mapping software. This difference lies in the ability of these applications to analyze the data behind the map—to address the complex issues of connectivity, adjacency and containment. These issues can be addressed because although its output is most often a map, the map represents a display of underlying data whose primary indexes or entry points are map coordinates, or their equivalent, such as street addresses or county boundaries.
By organizing and retrieving information spatially—relative to coordinates on a map or equivalent spatial orientations—instead of the more familiar linear ways, these applications offer the opportunity to access, examine and analyze data using spatial criteria. Not only can we organize and display our information spatially but we can explore and analyze it spatially as well. Thus, spatial information management combines the functions of automated mapping and relational database management systems using the capabilities of both and enabling the spatial arrangement, display, and analysis of geographically linked information.
Spatial Relationships and Analysis
Spatial relationships—relationships among things set in the real world—are often explained using maps. A quick look at a map of South America will tell us what countries share a border with Chile. With just a glance at a local street map, one can check which roads intersect with each other. Of course the answers can be presented in other forms, but there are many times when ideas that are quite cumbersome to explain and use in terms of text only are easily explained visually. Displaying the locations and relative positions of things are just two examples of the kinds of output that you can create using the desktop mapping applications currently available.
Depending on the features in the various mapping software currently available, various types of data exploration and analysis may be possible. As with the industry clusters described above, there may be patterns and relationships that can be visible on a map yet that may go undetected when information is displayed linearly. Still other relationships, especially the one-to-many and many-to-one of relational databases, might require multiple tables and charts to convey the same information that can be displayed on one or two maps. Analyzing the relationships among objects with real world locations is generally referred to as spatial analysis.
Spatial analysis enables connections among objects, activities, and events based on geographical proximity. It relies on points in real space and their relationships to each other and includes issues relating to:
- Relative Distances
- Dimensions
- Adjacency
- Proximity
- Containment
- Overlap
- Intersection
In everyday terms, this means that spatial analysis addresses questions like:
- How far away?
- How big or how much bigger than . . . ?
- Who shares a common border?
- What is in my neighborhood?
- What is included in an area?
- What overlaps with what?
- What intersects with what?
Because all of the information in the system is ultimately connected to coordinates on a map and real world distances and positions exist in the structure and organization of the information, questions about positions and relationships and questions that derive from these basic notions are addressed. While not the topic of focus here, it is important to note that although desktop mapping software is scaled to address "office suite" type applications; one can easily see how, by using location as an organizing strategy for analysis and display, larger collections of data and information are being organized, analyzed, and integrated along these same principles. Two articles by Angela Lee in the December 1999 and January 2000 issues of Information Outlook describe such systems.
Trying It Out
While mapping and spatial information management offer exciting ways to explore and display information, maps and mapping are not for everyone. It has been estimated that perhaps one quarter or more of the general population cannot read a map. And even if you are comfortable with maps, you must consider both your organizational culture and the immediate audience for your reports and presentations. It might be prudent to add mapping to your deliverables gradually to see if this style of presentation suits you and your audience. Although desktop mapping software and its accompanying "basemaps" are relatively inexpensive when compared to fully functional GIS, some mapping software that includes basic maps and data sets can be obtained for free limited-time trial periods. Different software packages have differing capabilities and you might want to explore some of these free offers. Many of these free offers from various software vendors can be found by following links at popular GIS Web sites, such as www. geoplace. com or www. geocomm. com. The latter site also includes a specialized search engine GeoSearch, which covers news and reviews of desktop mapping and other GIS software.
Map viewers offer other opportunities for trying out some of the dynamic capabilities of desktop mapping. While flat maps generated by desktop mapping applications software can easily be inserted into a document or a presentation, including dynamic maps in a presentation is a little more problematic. Just as there are offline web browsers, document readers for custom formats such as *.pdf files, and presentation software viewers, there are dynamic map viewers. These viewers enable the user to transport a map and its underlying database in a way that allows some limited manipulation of the map when it is being viewed, such as the ability to "pan" and "zoom" or to focus on or highlight an area or neighborhood. Only some desktop mapping and GIS applications include viewers. However, it is expected that user demands for interoperability and other market conditions will create an environment where map viewers will become a standard component of desktop mapping software.
Nearly thirty years ago in talking of the "rise of a new intellectual technology," Daniel Bell (The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society, 1973) said that the "methodological promise of the second half of the twentieth century is the management of organized complexity." GIS and other spatial information management tools have been part of the trend towards managing organized complexity of location-based information. Data integration of spatial information using large scale GIS has been in progress for the last twenty years or so. Desktop mapping has brought these capabilities to a wider audience. It is to be expected that as its usability and accessibility increase, its diffusion will increase and its uses expand.
Roberta Brody is an Assistant Professor at Queens College of the City University of New York, where she teaches courses in both business research and geographic information systems applications. She may be reached at Roberta_Brody@QC.edu.
SLA Home Page | Join SLA Now | Feedback | Search
Copyright © 2000 SLA. All rights reserved.
RSS
Feedback form
