Cartographic interpretation of the “meta” notion in the cultural heritage context

Abstract

The monograph [Aslanikashvili, 1974] does not define the term “metacartography”, although the notion itself is described in sufficient detail to be understood. A. Aslanikashvili’s metacartography has proven to be very useful in considering the relations between modern systematic cartographic phenomena, which are often relate to Web 2.0 cartography. The article offers a practical interpretation of the “meta” notion in such phenomena as National Atlases, National Spatial Data Infrastructures and OpenStreetMap. This is done using the Conceptual Frameworks (CoFr) method and the Atlas Extender (AtEx), which allow extending atlases in the classical sense to extended atlas systems. AtEx implements a CoFr method of relational cartography based on patterns (hereinafter RelCa), among which are relational patterns of “meta”. CoFr describe the structure of spatial information systems in an extended sense, and relational cartographies are defined as the coordinated art, science and technology of making and using relations in (extended) cartographic systems and between (extended) cartographic systems. Due to this we can consider relational spaces that have a lot in common with the specific spaces of A. Aslanikashvili. To apply the RelCa methods, the understanding of “metacartography”, “map meta-model” and “map language” notions have been updated. For this purpose, Model-Based Engineering (MBE) has been used, an area of computer science that is evolving in our century. The analogies between BMI constructions, modern systematic cartographic phenomena and A. Aslanikashvili metacartography are shown. It has been proved abductively that in modern conditions the field of cartography research needs to be extended by relational spaces or to a system of spatial systems of a certain epistemological structure. Important in this structuring is the relation of “meta” that A. Aslanikashvili began to explore. The abduction proved the presence and necessity of using the “meta” relation when constructing cultural heritage maps. In particular, the interpretation of the “meta” relation for choropleth maps is proposed, modeling the saturation assessment of the country by the entities of the material cultural heritage. The results obtained will be included in the Atlas of Cultural Heritage of Ukraine.