PC-Atlasen GIS

The National PC-Atlas of Sweden

Wolter Arnberg; Krysia Rybaczuk; Michael Blakemore · 1991

The new National Atlas of Sweden is a set of 17 books produced during 1990-96 by digital methods. The books will cover various themes, the first being mapping, forestry, population, environment and agriculture. A spin-off from the production of the books is the establishment of a geographical database accessible to a program for personal computer systems running under DOS: The National PC-Atlas of Sweden. A floppy disk version is available in 1991 and for 1992 a CD-ROM version is planned. The PC-Atlas is intended to be an introduction to geographical information systems, to support the digital processing of maps and spatial data in schools and to be a supplement to the Atlas books as well as a stand-alone system. The PC-Atlas features a search system for most of the official maps of Sweden, an index to more than 10,000 place and feature names and an entry to socio-economic and other statistical data at the municipality, county and national level. The users are not expected to know anything about GIS, so simplicity rather than flexibility has been a guideline. The system is structured at three levels: novice, advanced and expert. The first level is simply read and browse. It is based on ready made "pages" which are turned over by clicking a button. The second level is for the more advanced user who can change variables, change regions, select diagram type etc. The advanced level is used to create the scripts controlling the program. This level is used to make one's own PC-Atlas. This paper outlines the contents of the database, the problems met in establishing it, and the programme itself, focussing on interactive mapping and the concept of the user interface of the PC-Atlas.