A visual language for GIS querying

Currently, geographic information systems (GIS) are accessible to a large public, in particular to users who cannot be considered as experts. However, the access to geographic information and its overtaking by various users are not easy. Indeed, between the rigidity of the available access languages and the ignorance of the organization of information within the GIS, the user is often facing information which is available but no exploitable. To solve this problem and to facilitate the access to geographic information, in this article we propose ENVIS: a visual environment for the querying of GIS according to a figurative approach based on the definition of a visual language. The following sections in this article will try to identify, by the presentation of the prototype ENVIS, the benefits which can be drawn from this visual dialog which offers to the user a means to formulate a geographical query in an intuitive and simplified way.