ABSTRACT
Users looking for geographical information would typically access resources from hard-copy materials, discrete media, and via intranets and the Internet. However, this is no longer a simple task, as the amount of information at hand, physically and virtually, has increased enormously. As a result, users have diffi culty in fi nding this information and, once found, have even greater diffi culty consuming that information. Visualizing enormous amounts of geographical information becomes impossible without tools that interrogate databases, synthesize the essential elements of that information, and then display the results in the most appropriate manner for the user and use. Efforts within the international geographical visualization community have resulted in many innovative techniques that build visualizations, contemporary and traditional, upon the opportunities afforded by the creation of detailed, global coverage databases. Users have improved understanding of the geography of the world through the automating of the process of database interrogation, information analysis, and visualization output. This chapter looks at some of the realities of current data availability via contemporary Internet-accessible repositories and the usefulness of such databases. It then provides a snapshot of the chapters in this part of the book and, fi nally, proposes some areas of research that could be considered for evaluating the effectiveness of such visualizations.
