User interfaces for environmental information systems - interactive maps or catalog structures? Or both?

The development of user interfaces for environmental information systems (E IS) can be a complex task due to heterogeneous data, including factual as w ell as geographic data. An easy-to-use user interface can be designed by pr ojecting multi-dimensional catalog structures onto well-known tree structur es. On the other hand, georeferenced objects lead to the increased use of m aps. Catalogs and maps are two different navigation paradigms. They can be used exclusively or together. This paper discusses which of the two paradig ms is useful in which case and what are the implications of joint use. The discussion is based on the results of two projects and gives insights for r equirements in the future. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserv ed.