Geo-information reality - Mass user oriented modeling of environment

Topographic maps, both paper and computerized, require specific qualifications in the end users - planners, designers, geodesists, etc. These maps offer the user some simplified information about reality, described in accordance with a meaningful set of cartographic conventions. Overlaid with an orthophoto, such cartographic information becomes a photomap, representing the surface in a more realistic way. A non-expert, used to perceiving environmental reality through landscape images taken from the Earth's surface, faces certain difficulties interpreting images collected from an aircraft or satellite. In fact, modern technologies do not provide the mass user with full-value visual information about the real environment. The mass-user is not generally concerned about using maps for measurements, but rather uses them to search for some semantic information. Thus, a new, mass-user-oriented branch of GIS should be based on a new concept -geo-information reality, i.e., mass-user-oriented modeling of the environment. The key to this concept is an object-graphic basis for GIS, bringing to bear modern methods of acquiring, storing, and representing visual and textual information in digital form. This paper presents the proposed concept in detail.