Abstract
Introduction.The revolutionary changes in information technology of the last two decades allow the construction of electronic atlases (EA), the capabilities of which are fundamentally richer than the capabilities of "classic" EA.This is achieved through the use of the systemic properties of the new generation of EA, which are therefore named systemic.Systemic EA remain the simplest and most effective spatial information models of territorial systems allowing applying them for the decision of many practical problems.The purpose of the paper is to formulate the need for systemic EA and describe methods for research their systemic properties.These methods will be used to find and describe critical systemic properties without which EA cannot be systemic.The methods are founded on Relational Cartography and Model-Based Engineering.Results.The evolution of "classic" EA is considered: from paper atlases and their images to analytical atlases.It is shown that on the imaginary border of classic and nonclassic EA there are already new generation of EA -systemic EA.Both the theory and practice of such systemic EA have many unresolved problems.Some of them are described in the article.The authors believe that many problems can be solved by implementing the critical systemic properties of EA.Two methods are used to research the problems and to prove the results: Conceptual frameworks and Solutions frameworks.Both the methods themselves and the possibility of their application to find the critical systemic properties of the new generation of EA are described.