RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CARTOGRAPHY AND GIS

From a definition viewpoint of cartographyy(10) it seems somewhat difficult to establish a relationship between GIS and Cartography, except when systems include the geographically referenced spatial data concept. However, the concept with cartography is not at all absolute from this perspective as any piece of data can be geographically located and entered in a database without necessarily coming from a map, though maps are a good source and the most common geographically referenced data for GIS. Both cartography and GIS have to deal with geographic information and are communication instruments for decision taking, as both, with different capacities, allow for the treatment and analysis of geographic information. GIS depends basically on cartography for data capture, which in many cases has to be converted to a digital format, structured and put into a database, processed as required and finally given some sort of output. In this presentation are listed some of the concepts used by Geodesy specialists, geographers, informatics specialists, etc., about Cartography, GIS and GIS-Cartography. With regard to the relationship Mapping - GIS, some specialists defined the wrong concepts that nowadays GIS has replaced mapping; others support another wrong concept that mapping represents the technical discipline, included in the GIS structure, whereas many others consider them as separate disciplines but closely related between each other. Defending the wrong concepts means to negatively influence the quantity and quality of communication and information gathered from the maps and other mapping products. The relationship between cartography and GIS can be best visualized from a practical point of view. One of the modes of GIS is the cartographic one, but this is mostly given in the context of applications and not necessarily as an objective reality.