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 non-geographic 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.