Cartographic data manipulation and utilization

Abstract

As all the natural resources which are available to mankind occurs in or on the Earth, all of these resources are spatially constrained. The effective utilization of such natural resources thus depends primarily on the fact that the knowledge of these resources exists and the fact that such knowledge is available to mankind. Over the last 2 000 years man has found that spatial knowledge is best recorded, documented and presented in a map format where almost no limit on the amount of presented information exists. In order to document the various resource parameters in a cartographic format a large number of parameter-specific map products have been developed and are regularly published by many nations to serve as the basis for all economic and cultural development. In South Africa, as is the case in most industrialized countries of the world, these different map products cover a broad spectrum of parameters, natural resources and are published in a variety of formats.