AN INTERACTIVE SOCIAL-ECONOMIC ATLAS OF TUNISIA

(ASEIT)

Mohsen DHIEB

Professor of cartography,

Faculty Letters of Humanities and, "SYFACTE Laboratory", Sfax, Tunisia,

The Tunisian cartographic context is characterized by the lack of national atlas ; it could only corroborate the project of the Laboratory SYFACTE of a complete socioeconomic Atlas of Tunisia with constitution of an updatable and available data base to the demand, creation of a Web site, creation of an atlas more simplified for educational or educational needs....

An essential component of the project consists in producing an interactive version of the Atlas (ASEIT) that can be facilitated a lot by a Tunisan-French cooperation between the Laboratory SYFACTE and the team of Research RIATE that already developed the HYPERCARTE application, either a tool of cartography and spatial multiscalar analysis finalized initially on an international space, the regions of the European union and that could be tested and validated on a national space, Tunisia.

Indeed, the functions of basis of the HYPERCARTE application to study the European regions could be adapted to the Tunisian case that, at the end of the account, will oblige to finalize a more general computer solution than the initial solution.

This ASEIT program calls on complementary two types of approach : the approaches " numeric", with a specific work on the geographical and cartographic systems of information (SCAO, SGBD, SIG.) and on their modules of interactivity, and them " thematic approaches" with an exam and an investigation of the territorial administrative units and the socioeconomic data.

It is important to notice that Tunisia that will shelter the International Convention of the International Geographical Union in 2008 present an interactive ATLAS like most developed countries. The product may be shown to the international coommunity f geographers and cartographers.