ABSTRACT
The essence of the science of cartography is the combination of different sorts of spatial information on a single map sheet. The traditionally produced paper map has a number of inherent disadvantages:
Because of the limitations of space, it is always an abstraction from a much larger amount of spatial data.
It is necessary to produce many map sheets because of the difficulty of showing everything required on a single sheet at small scale.
Accuracy and clarity must be emphasized, and this often necessitates the elimination or downplaying of some important information.
Once a map is produced, it is hard to extract data from it in a form in which it can be combined with other spatial data.
A map is a static qualitative document, essentially a snapshot of an area seen by one discipline at one point in time.
