A Set of Tools for Map Use in a Digital Environment Barbara Hofer Institute for Geoinformation

January 2004Barbara Hofer2 Research Question  Motivation: GEORAMA project  „A set of tools for map use exists, which covers the main operations people want to perform with maps and provides an implicit user support.“  How to determine and specify the set of tools?

January 2004Barbara Hofer3 Outline  Methodology Determination of Tools Modeling of Operations Demonstrator Creation  Next Steps  Research Impact

January 2004Barbara Hofer4 Methodology 1.Determination of the set of tools: Analysis of operations performed with analogue maps -Basic set of operations defined 2.Demonstrator creation: Formal specification -Specified tools  Implementation

January 2004Barbara Hofer5 Determination of Tools  Map operations performed with analogue maps (Campbell, 1993) : Measurements from maps -Distance measurement, area determination Navigation and Route selection Terrain interpretation -Height interpolation, profiling, slope determination

January 2004Barbara Hofer6 Modeling of Operations Map scale Short distance mark starting and ending point Error sources: 1)measurement error 2) smoothing 3) slope Map accuracy result calculation of distance Distance Measurement:

January 2004Barbara Hofer7 Determination of Tools (2) Navigation Process : Landmark recognition Map orientation Position determination Route selection Translation Direction Distance, Profile

January 2004Barbara Hofer8 Demonstrator Creation modeling specification demonstrator  Modeling: Based on map operations  Specification: formal specification technique  Demonstrator: Implementation of specification Qualitative, quantitative methods

January 2004Barbara Hofer9 Formal Specification  “Formal specification is the expression, in some formal language and at some level of abstraction, of a collection of properties some system should satisfy“ (van Lamsweerde, 2000).  Here: System: model of map use tools Abstraction level: specification of tools Properties: functional requirements Formal language: algebraic specification

January 2004Barbara Hofer10 Formal Specification (2)  Algebraic Specification: Tool for software engineering Independent from implementation Components: -Types -Operations -Axioms  Haskell

January 2004Barbara Hofer11 Next Steps  Refinement of the map use operations Low level, high level tasks  Specification with Haskell  Implementation Selection of programming language

January 2004Barbara Hofer12 Research Impact  Specification: Independent of technology Basis for implementation(s)  Software engineering applied: Motivation Guidelines for future extensions

January 2004Barbara Hofer13 References  Campbell, J. (1993). Map Use and Analysis. Dubuque, Iowa, Wm. C. Brown Publishers.  Catarci, T., F. d'Amore, et al. (2001). Interacting with GIS: From Paper Cartography to Virtual Environments, Unesco Press (in Press).  Frank, A. U. (1999). One step up the abstraction ladder: Combining algebras - from functional pieces to a whole. Spatial Information Theory - Cognitive and Computational Foundations of Geographic Information Science (Int. Conference COSIT'99, Stade, Germany). C. Freksa and D. M. Mark. Berlin, Springer-Verlag. 1661:  Software Engineering Center (2000). URL:  van Lamsweerde, A. (2000). Formal Specification: a Roadmap. The Future of Software Engineering. A. Finkelstein, ACM Press.