Are Cartographic Expert Systems Possible? Peter F. Fisher Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 44242. William A. Mackaness School of Geography, Kingston Polytechnic, Penryhn Road, Kingston Upon Thames, KT1 2EE, UK. ABSTRACT One of the major current thrust areas for computer software development is artificial intelligence and particularly expert systems. Several attempts have been made to implement cartographic design expert systems. None of these, however, can either understand why particular decisions are reached, or explain the reasoning to the user. This self-knowledge is one of the principle properties of any expert system and so it is doubtful whether any of the systems reported to date deserve the epithet "expert". This omission is not the fault of the system developers, but is caused by a lack of any systematised and accepted methodology for cartographic assessment. The cartographic community is urged to address this problem expeditiously. INTRODUCTION There can be no doubt that artificial intelligence and its associated programming techniques have made a major and increasing contribution to the field of computer science in recent years. A brief perusal of the shelves of any academic bookshop stocking computer science textbooks will reveal any number of tomes, too many to list here, with titles varying on the theme of Artificial Intelligence and related areas. Equally there is an increasing literature on the application of these programming techniques, particularly expert systems, to many science subjects. In the area of Geography and Geology, a recent review by the authors and others revealed eighteen expert systems of which details are published, while Waterman (1986) identifies some sixteen systems and any number of other systems are in preparation. These could all be described as experimental, to a degree, but have proved most successful and are in day-to-day use in the oil and mineral extraction industries (e.g. PROSPECTOR Cambell et al. 1982, MUD Kahn and McDermott 1984) and in environmental management (FIRES Davis et al. 1986). 530