Ford Foundation announced a $294000 grant to the Graduate School of Design to support research on a new technique for computer map-making yesterday.

The money will be used to continue research and to teach the technique to social scientists at Harvard and elsewhere. The technique makes it possible to produce maps showing physical, economic, and social data which are more accurate and less expensive than hand-drawn maps.

A number of specialists from other universities and from private agencies have already agreed to spend two months at Harvard this spring learning the process.

Developed two years ago by Howard T. Fisher, director of the new Laboratory for Computer Graphics, the technique is being used at other universities for work in climatology, oceanography, and oil geology. Harvard, Fisher said, is in the forefront of computerized map-making as applied to urban planning.

He added, however, that at Harvard the new process is not limited to city planning. He explained that the Business School, the School of Education, and the Department of Anthropology, have already initiated projects of their own.

Fisher pointed out that computer-made maps could be extremely useful in nearly every field where visual display of data is possible. He said that researchers often compile mountains of data but limitations of time and money generally prevent them from converting the data into maps. It is practically impossible to comprehend spatially distributed data when it is presented in tables, he added.

With the new technique, the researcher will direct the computer to print a "base map" of the region under study. When the relevant data is fed into the machine, it is automatically displayed on the "base map."

Fisher said the advantage of the be produced in just a few hours for new system is that these maps could about $2. Comparable hand-drawn maps would take several days each and could cost $200 or more, Fisher said.

"Now it will be possible," Fisher continued, "for maps to be used not just as illustrations for a final presentation, but also as aids to researchers in understanding their own material."

The Laboratory for Computer Graphics is assembling a staff of specialists in such fields as urban geography, statistics, computer science, and urban planning.

Next year the Laboratory for Computer Graphics hopes to produce maps of many different varieties, including a map of the world displaying economic data, and a map showing the spread of infection in the human body, Fisher concluded.