Abstract

This paper adresses the application of self organizing maps for exploratory porpouses. Self-Organizing Maps allow to explore similarities in a data set collected at different location and/or moment. Two applications of Self- Organizing maps applied to groundwater quality data set are presented: Similary and discriminant capabilities for the identificaction of unknow samples, and the cooperative use with Piper Diagrams for cluster definition. These technique allows a process of exploratory data analysis, knowledge discovery and hypothesis construction rather han hypotesis testing. Also, further applications are discussed.