Using Multimedia Surrogate Travel Tools for better understanding Local Geography

Surrogate travel (or sometimes referred to as movie maps) is the term given to the use of interactive multimedia products that allow users to 'travel' through environments. They are built with a variety of multimedia products, but they have in common the goal to provide tools that allow buildings, towns, cities and natural environments to be appreciated and understood without actually 'being there'. This paper provides a brief background to surrogate travel and it gives, by way of background, a brief description of two key surrogate travel cartographically-related products - the Aspen Movie Map and the Domesday project. It also provides brief details of surrogate travel products developed by the author as proof-of-concept prototypes. Finally, the paper provides information about further developments of surrogate travel by the author.