And then we come to spatial organization, the system that arranges things by where they are.
We can organize knowledge taxonomically by category or hierarchically in some kind of ranking. We can arrange it by time, chronologically, but that has its limitations. We can alphabetize it, but that’s not very much fun. One way to think about it is to consider that as information publishers, we actually have relatively few ways to organize information. With today’s cloud-based mapping platform, the fusion of maps and stories has finally come of age.įor most people, sight is the dominant sense, so when it comes to information delivery, most like it served visually. These are information products that reward exploration. (Go to to see them come alive.) As you click through to the various story maps linked in this chapter or at the story maps website, take the freedom to immerse yourself in the various narratives. This has resulted in a veritable explosion of story maps. They use the tools of GIS, and often present the results of spatial analysis, but don’t require their users to have any special knowledge or skills in GIS. While many story maps are designed for general, nontechnical audiences, some story maps can also serve highly specialized audiences. They combine interactive maps with other rich content-text, photos, illustrations, video, and audio-within intuitive user experiences. They tell the story of a place, event, issue, trend, or pattern in a geographic context. Story maps use geography as a means of organizing and presenting information.