Relational Geospatial Technologies: Background Theory, Practical Example and Needs in Education

Abstract

In geography and cartography categories, “space” and “time” are considered not only as the main but also influencing the structure and essence of spatial information displayed in cartographic works. The complexity of understanding and displaying certain entities of space predetermines the need to form a special viewpoint, recognizing long-time existence of its substantive and relational understandings. In the authors’ opinion, first of all modern cartography should pay much more attention to the relational interacting processes between the space entities, which will improve the objectivity in its modeling and visualization. The features of the relational space are modeled today by geospatial information systems, which are often integrated systems. Examples of such systems are modern National or thematic atlases that correspond to “large” relational spaces. Thus, National atlases model relational spaces throughout the country and, as a rule, integrate with the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and some other systems. The work consists of three parts: theoretical, practical, and which are shortly applied to education. In the theoretical part, inter-system and intra-system relations are considered. They exist and are repeated in all modern models of relational spaces. The main types of such relations are epistemological, transformational, and evolutional. A well-known example of evolutional relation is the evolution of the atlas base maps of the Web 1.0 formation into the geo-/carto-platforms of the Web 2.0 formation. An example of the latter is OpenStreetMap. Examples of relational geospatial technologies, realizing theoretical results, are examined in the practical part. They were used for the first time in the electronic “Atlas of natural, technogenic, social hazards and risks of emergencies in Ukraine” (AtlasES). In the last part, it is shown how theoretical and practical results can be used in geography and cartography education.