The development of a spatial data explorer for an environmental hyperdocument

In this paper attention is drawn to the rapidly increasing use of hyperdocuments to archive and access environmental data resources, and the spatial extensions required to explore and link together these data sets are discussed. To illustrate how such environmental hyper documents can be created, a prototype system called the Scolt Multimedia Project (SMP) is introduced and the tool used to explore it, called SMPviewer, is described. Also, the uses and applications of environmental hyperdocuments are presented and their merits vis-à-vis geographical information systems are discussed.