Geographic Visualization in Archaeology

Archaeologists are often considered frontrunners in employing spatial approaches within the social sciences and humanities, including geospatial technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) that are now routinely used in archaeology. Since the late 1980s, GIS has mainly been used to support data collection and management as well as spatial analysis and modeling. While fruitful, these efforts have arguably neglected the potential contribution of advanced visualization methods to the generation of broader archaeological knowledge. This paper reviews the use of GIS in archaeology from a geographic visualization (geovisual) perspective and examines how these methods can broaden the scope of archaeological research in an era of more user-friendly cyber-infrastructures. Like most computational databases, GIS do not easily support temporal data. This limitation is particularly problematic in archaeology because processes and events are best understood in space and time. To deal with such shortcomings in existing tools, archaeologists often end up having to reduce the diversity and complexity of archaeological phenomena. Recent developments in geographic visualization begin to address some of these issues, and are pertinent in the globalized world as archaeologists amass vast new bodies of geo-referenced information and work towards integrating them with traditional archaeological data. Greater effort in developing geovisualization and geovisual analytics appropriate for archaeological data can create opportunities to visualize, navigate and assess different sources of information within the larger archaeological community, thus enhancing possibilities for collaborative research and new forms of critical inquiry

Virtual Inverse Photogrammetry

Inverse Photogrammetry is used as a tool for visualizing projected developments or past situations within an existing environment. Usually traditional photogrammetric practice is followed with respect to data input, processing and output of inverse photogrammetric products. Since the purpose is visual inspection and overview rather than strict metric needs, fast and cheap methods for both the data to be gathered and the photogrammetric processing are favorable. The work is an attempt to meet these requirements by using video recording for data input and user friendly software for data processing. The importance of the final presentation of the results suggests the use of a virtual computer environment with various visualization capabilities, more advanced than the ones used for the purposes of traditional Inverse Photogrammetry

Computer-assisted cartography for monitoring spatio-temporal aspects of urban air pollution

Civil Engineering and Geoscience

Cognitive And Usability Issues In Geovisualization

We provide a research agenda for the International Cartographic Association's Commission on Visualization and Virtual Environment working group on Cognitive and Usability Issues in Geovisualization. Developments in hardware and software have led to (and will continue to stimulate) novel methods for visualizing geospatial data. It is our belief that these novel methods will be of little use if they are not developed within a theoretical cognitive framework and iteratively tested using usability engineering principles. We argue that cognitive and usability issues should be considered in the context of six major research themes: 1) geospatial virtual environments (GeoVEs), 2) dynamic representations (including animated and interactive maps), 3) metaphors and schemata in user interface design, 4) individual and group differences, 5) collaborative geovisualization, and 6) evaluating the effectiveness of geovisualization methods. A key point underlying our use of theoretical cognitive principles is that traditional cognitive theory for static 2D maps may not be applicable to interactive 3D immersive GeoVEs and dynamic representations thus new cognitive theory may need to be developed. Usability engineering extends beyond the traditional cartographic practice of user testing by evaluating software effectiveness throughout a lifecycle (including design, development, and deployment). Applying usability engineering to geovisualization, however, may be problematic because of the novelty of geovisualization and the associated difficulty of defining the nature of users and their tasks. Tackling the research themes is likely to require an interdisciplinary effort involving geographic information scientists, cognitive scientists, usability engineers, computer scient..