Prof. Khaled Mohamed Zaky Hassan :: Publications:

In addition to the continuous needs of analog topographic maps, there is now an increasing demands for digital topographic information. Users of topographic data have different requests. The user view is an abstraction of reality which will incorporate the elements of reality considered to be relevant to user's application. The analysis of user requirements plays an important role in the design of a digital topographic database. Questionnaires which are essential step to identify, analyze and investigate the user requirements of topographic maps have been prepared for sending them to any user group. Based on the answer of these questionnaires, map features and attributes are specified and an object catalogue has been made for one of the user groups. All features which should be presented on the topographic map are assigned a unique code with digit locations for qualifying information. A topographic map represents a part from Cairo-Egypt at scale 1:25000 is selected and digitized by Microstation software. Relational database files are created for all feature classes including all attributes that have been specified in the object catalogue for each class. A linkage between the database files and the digital map is done for each object. User menus are created by designing programs using the DbaseIV language and Microstation user command language to facilitate the using of digital topographic information. The user now may has a hardcopy output and by highlighting any object, the attributes related to this object will appear automatically on the screen. This is called the user interface design.