Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and Natural Resources 2020 number 1

Socio-economic maps are essential for identification and system analysis of sectoral and territorial imbalances, ensuring the effective organization of productive forces, planning and forecasting of socio-economic development of the territory. This paper presents the authors’ experience in creating and interpreting socio-economic maps in national and regional atlases, ana lyzes current trends in the development of socio-economic mapping of the eastern regions of the country, which have their own characteristic features (a high sectoral and territorial differentiation, weak integration ties, underdeveloped infrastructure and innovation, etc.). Special attention is paid to the creation and practical use of the general economic map as a universal source of spatial information. In this context, an attempt is made to modify the technique of compiling the general economic map. The authors’ scientific developments that have found their practical implementation are presented. We defined the main problems and prospects of further developing socio-economic mapping related to future geoinformation mapping. Results of summarizing and re-interpreting a huge body of theoretical and practical material suggest that socio-economic mapping is in the next critical stage of its development and requires significant changes in many areas. Therefore, this dictates a need for a new view of the concep tual framework and methodology for compilation and use of socio-economic maps, and for switchover to the creation of complex maps (animation, three-dimensional, assessment-forecast and other maps.