Making maps in Powerpoint and Word : why do regional scientists not map their results?

Cartography has commonly been used in regional science and Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis is regularly applied to visualise the distribution of the variable of interest in space. Articles often contain several maps of administrative areas showing the values of a certain variable. However, and despite the benefits of such maps, they are nothing more than spatial catalogues of data. Their usefulness for regional scientist is beyond questioning, but the communicative value is limited. The rise of GIS has rightly been welcomed by many scientists, however, critical cartographers often pose the question if ‘GIS has killed cartography?’. Moreover, this discussion about maps in regional science can be more than a trivial item since it can reveal the fear of scientists to draw a conclusion. The chorematics approach, as developed by Brunet, considers maps as ‘vitrines’, and not as catalogues. In this paper we show that such an approach can enrich regional science by delivering a methodology to visualise spatial structures and dynamics using geometric figures. Finally, we argue that powerpoint and word are better cartographic tools than common GIS packages

GEO-VISUALISATION AND VISUAL ANALYTICS FOR SMART CITIES: A SURVEY

Geo-Visualisation (GV) and Visual Analytics (VA) of geo-spatial data have become a focus of interest for research, industries, government and other organisations for improving the mobility, energy efficiency, waste management and public administration of a smart city. The geo-spatial data requirements, increasing volumes, varying formats and quality standards, present challenges in managing, storing, visualising and analysing the data. A survey covering GV and VA of the geo-spatial data collected from a smart city helps to portray the potential of such techniques, which is still required. Therefore, this survey presents GV and VA techniques for the geo-spatial urban data represented in terms of location, multi-dimensions including time, and several other attributes. Further, the current study provides a comprehensive review of the existing literature related to GV and VA from cities, highlighting the important open white spots for the cities’ geo-spatial data handling in term of visualisation and analytics. This will aid to get a better insight into the urban system and enable sustainable development of the future cities by improving human interaction with the geo-spatial data

Learning Geography with underground maps

Underground maps have become so popular and widespread that they have transcended the function for which they were created about a century ago. These maps fulfill faithfully the duty of guiding us across the metropolitan transport network. In addition, they have become iconic elements, merchandising and brand images of many of these cities. In this paper, we propose the use of these maps in order to be applied as a teaching methodology with a dual purpose; on the one hand, for learning about cartographic design and, on the other hand, as a tool for understanding the territory through cognitive maps

From GeoVisualization to visual-analytics: methodologies and techniques for human-information discourse

2010 - 2011The objective of our research is to give support to decision makers when facing problems which require rapid solutions in spite of the complexity of scenarios under investigation. In order to achieve this goal our studies have been focused on GeoVisualization and GeoVisual Analytics research field, which play a relevant role in this scope, because they exploit results from several disciplines, such as exploratory data analysis and GIScience, to provide expert users with highly interactive tools by which they can both visually synthesize information from large datasets and perform complex analytical tasks. The research we are carrying out along this line is meant to develop software applications capable both to build an immediate overview of a scenario and to explore elements featuring it. To this aim, we are defining methodologies and techniques which embed key aspects from different disciplines, such as augmented reality and location-based services. Their integration is targeted to realize advanced tools where the geographic component role is primary and is meant to contribute to a human-information discourse... [edited by author]X n.s

Visual Summaries of Geographic Databases

National audienceFor several applications, it is interesting to have an idea of database contents. For instance in geo-marketing, a decision-maker could be interested in knowing the places where his products are not well sold. In other words, the summary of a database must include only the important items.The goal of this paper will be to present an international project aiming at generating visual summaries of geographic databases based on chorems. From years, chorems – as schematized representations of territories invented by a geographer named Brunet – are used to represent the more salient aspects of a territory. But in this methodology, the designer is supposed to know everything and to propose a schema. In contrast, in our project, the starting point is a geographic database representing information over a territory for which one wants to generate a drawing emphasizing only the salient aspects called patterns. So, two main problems exist, first to extract the salient patterns from spatial data mining, and the second visualizing the results after having done both a geometric generalization of the territory boundaries, and a semantic generalization of the contents.This paper will first present the problems of discovering patterns and selecting the more important ones (5 2). Then, we will explain how to make the geometric and semantic generalizations. After having presented a model of patterns, we will present the ChorML language used for both for storing and visualizing them

Visual Summaries of Geographic Databases

National audienceFor several applications, it is interesting to have an idea of database contents. For instance in geo-marketing, a decision-maker could be interested in knowing the places where his products are not well sold. In other words, the summary of a database must include only the important items.The goal of this paper will be to present an international project aiming at generating visual summaries of geographic databases based on chorems. From years, chorems – as schematized representations of territories invented by a geographer named Brunet – are used to represent the more salient aspects of a territory. But in this methodology, the designer is supposed to know everything and to propose a schema. In contrast, in our project, the starting point is a geographic database representing information over a territory for which one wants to generate a drawing emphasizing only the salient aspects called patterns. So, two main problems exist, first to extract the salient patterns from spatial data mining, and the second visualizing the results after having done both a geometric generalization of the territory boundaries, and a semantic generalization of the contents.This paper will first present the problems of discovering patterns and selecting the more important ones (5 2). Then, we will explain how to make the geometric and semantic generalizations. After having presented a model of patterns, we will present the ChorML language used for both for storing and visualizing them

Visual summaries of geographic databases by chorems

La cartographie traditionnelle est un moyen essentiel pour décrire les faits et les relations qui concernent un territoire. Elle associe à des concepts géographiques des symboles graphiques qui aident les lecteurs à comprendre immédiatement les données représentées. Les utilisateurs experts sont habituellement satisfaits du pouvoir d\u27expression de la cartographie traditionnelle, quand il s\u27agit d\u27affaires simples. Mais, dans le cas d\u27affaires complexes qui comprennent un grand nombre de données, les utilisateurs experts ont besoin d\u27une carte qui souligne les aspects les plus saillants plutôt que d\u27avoir une carte avec un haut niveau de détails. L\u27objectifs d\u27un projet de recherche, conçu par trois instituts de recherche, est de définir des solutions cartographiques capables de représenter convenablement les informations extraites d\u27une base de données géographiques. La solution proposée se fonde sur le concept de chorèmes et sur leur capacité à synthétiser des scènes qui comprennent des objets géographiques et des phénomènes spatio-temporels, en leur associant des notations visuelles schématisées. Cette thèse, née de ce projet international, propose une définition et une classification des chorèmes afin de standardiser la construction et l\u27usage. En outre, un système pour résumer visuellement le contenu des bases de données géographiques en utilisant les chorèmes a été conçu et mis en uvre. Finalement, l\u27objectif d\u27un langage de type XML multi-niveaux a été de stocker les données des chorèmes et de permettre la communication entre les modules du système proposé