The role of the map in a Web-GIS environment

The World Wide Web has changed the perspective on the role that maps can play. Their traditional function remains, e.g. to represent an abstraction of a selected part of reality to offer insight into geospatial patterns and relations. Additionally the map can be an important part of a search engine, especially in the context of geospatial data infrastructure. Maps can also function as an interface to other geographic and nongeographic information on the Web. The question ‘What are the implications of this expanding role of maps for a WebGIS environment?’ is addressed in this paper.