ABSTRACT
Most aspects of human experience may be regarded as having a geographical dimension. Thus everything that we do usually takes place somewhere in the vicinity of the Earth’s surface and communication between people frequently requires that we refer to particular places. A consequence of this is that many types of information either have, or else need to be given, some explicit geographical context. The last couple of decades has seen great advances in the development of technology referred to as geographical information systems (GIS). In practice these systems are typically concerned with handling digital maps in which location is recorded primarily by geographical (latitude and longitude) or map grid coordinates. For the most part, individual GIS are domain specific, often project-based, serving the needs of organisations that have traditionally relied upon mapbased recording of information.
