Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have grown rapidly, motivated by general trends of information technologies in expanding their potential uses. In line with this tendency, GIS must consider the familiarity of new users with Cartography and their traditional way of representing natural phenomena. This paper evaluates the expressive power of GIS relative to their cartographic elements, based on a Semiotic approach, which is concerned with understanding the construction and interpretation of maps as communication activities. Results obtained by comparing Cartographic and GIS semiotic systems show a great difference in the potential of communication for each of the domains.
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