THE AUTOMOBILE-ASSOCIATION AND THE DIGITAL MAP

Your car has broken down and you're telephoning the AA for help. You m ay be doing it from a draughty phone box, or with a mobile phone from the comfort of your driving seat. Either way, you'll probably visualis e the controller at the other end of the phone punching some keys on a computer and identifying your location on screen on a digital map; If so, you're more or less right. The AA was in the forefront of the mov e to use on-screen mapping for this quintessential command and control application, and has been doing so throughout the 1990s. Computers ha ve introduced a highly interactive new dimension to the task of managi ng the rescue service.