Unit 5- Geographic Data Visualization

Notes for ready reference:

Shared by Dr. Rupali Taru

Introduction to GIS mapping

From mapping quantities to finding locations and looking through large water bodies, GIS
mapping has you covered in your area of interest (AOI). The system uses the power of
satellites to achieve the desired result, which is far more effective than a traditional 2D or
3D map.

What is GIS mapping?

Geographical information system (GIS) mapping represents quantifiable data visually,
interactively, and dynamically. It combines the strength of a map with the strength of a
database to let users produce, manage, and analyse data, especially data about locations.
GIS mapping transforms real-world geospatial data into maps, colours, and shapes. This
helps businesses make informed and fast decisions. The system ties a geospatial point with
latitude and longitude with a specific data element. The spatial analysis then measures the
distance between these points to find the relationship between them and understand the
geography/terrain.

Types of GIS mapping

The GIS mapping technique you choose depends on the application, such as crops or
population density.

 Heat maps: Heat maps are helpful when the data you want to analyse is extremely
dense. In this case, the heat signature is generally helpful. For example, a warmer
section of the map could represent an area with high population density. The map
provides a rough estimation of density distribution and uses the standard ‘red’ for
dense and ‘blue’ for white.
 Bubble maps: Bubble maps use different GIS points to specify bubble positions and
represent complex numerical data. Compared with rows and columns of data, big or
small bubbles on a map give you a quick understanding and saves time and effort.
 Cluster maps: Cluster maps combine different attributes such as colour, shape, size,
and labels into a single GIS cluster for convenience. If there are too many data points
to analyse, a cluster map packs all the data together into a single representation.
 Quantity maps: Quantity maps use different shades of the same colour to represent
the quantity of a certain attribute on a map. This method helps analyse detailed data
spread over a large area and shows a clear distinction of attributes.
 Category maps: In this technique, the system assigns a specific colour to each
category you want to monitor. This makes it easy to understand which portion of the
map corresponds to which data segment. The result is a map with different colours,
each representing a distinct category. For example, a crop density map showing
different farm produce could be a category map.

Source: Google sites

GIS use cases
A GIS map is usually in layers and comprises of water bodies map, elevation map,
vegetation map, and infrastructure map. Here are some of the use cases of GIS mapping.

 Public services: Emergency response teams such as firefighters use GIS mapping
for quick coordination and strategic planning. A perfect example is a massive
wildfire in Chile in 2017, where the team used GIS to locate equipment and gather
real-time information to deal with the emergency.
 Disease mapping: Geospatial data helps map regions or pockets in a densely
populated area where a certain disease is spreading fast. For example, interactive
mapping can provide sufficient data to quarantine areas where contagious diseases
are spreading fast.
 Water and electric utilities: GIS mapping helps municipalities track and monitor
water and electric utilities and fight corruption and any damage to the infrastructure.
For example, the system helped fight the illegal tapping of electricity in Nigeria.
 Construction planning and safety assessment: Mapping landscapes through GIS
can save peoples’ lives from high-impact natural disasters and economic difficulties.
In an example from the Kivu region in the Democratic Republic of Congo, GIS
mapping helped analyse landslide risk.
 Vegetation management: GIS is a powerful tool for ecology research and
vegetation maintenance. The shoreline of Lake Gaston had a weed infestation, and
the volunteer team needed the best way to fight the invasive species, which was
provided by GIS.
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Visualization of geographical data.

When working with a GIS, most of the time we will visualize the data we work with. Although
certain data, such as satellite images or maps from a map server, include their own rendering

Source: Google sites

and can be visualized as they are, in most cases is the user of a GIS who defines the way
geographical data is rendered. In other words, the GIS user takes the role of the
cartographer and for this reason, must be familiar with the ideas and techniques used by
cartographers.
Along with the concepts and tools from classic cartography, GIS include elements from what
is known as scientific visualization, such as interactivity or multidimensional data
rendering. This approach, richer than the classic one from cartography, is known as geo-
visualization.

Basic ideas about data visualization

When we visualize any kind of geographical information, whether on a computer screen or on
a printed map, we are using a visual language to convey that information. The study of signs
of a language is called semiology. In the case of a visual language, we have a graphic
semiology. This semiology works with the signs of the language that we use to visualize
geographical data and helps us understand why and how visual elements serve their purpose of
correctly conveying the information from which they are created.

Visual variables
Visual elements have several properties that can be used to transmit information. Depending
on the case, some of them might more suitable than others.

Figure 11.1: Visual variables. From left to right: position, shape, size, hue, value, texture and
orientation.

These properties are known as visual variables and are applied to the geometric elements used
to visualize geographical information. Those elements can be differentiated using the following
visual variables, which are shown in figure 11.1: position, shape, size, hue, value, texture and
orientation.
The use of position is rather restricted in the case of a map, since the real position of the
element to be rendered should be respected. It is seldom used.
The shape is defined by the perimeter of the object. This variable is mostly used in the case of
point data, using a symbol of a given shape located at the exact coordinates of the point to be
rendered. It is difficult to apply to linear symbols and in the case of areal symbols it requires
altering the shape of the symbol itself.
Size indicates the dimensions of the symbol. In the case of points, it can be applied by changing
the size of the symbol itself. In the case of lines, changing their thicknesses is the most usual
way of applying this visual variable on them. It is not used in areal symbols, except in the case
of using a texture fill, in which the size variable is applied to the texture and not to the symbol
itself.
Size alters how other visual variables are perceived, especially in the case of small sizes.
Texture refers to the pattern used to fill the body of the symbol. It can be applied to lines, using
dash patterns, but it is mostly applied to areal symbols.
Color is the most important of all visual variables. Two of its components can be used as
individual visual variables themselves: hue and value.
Hue is what we usually call color. That is, the name of the color (blue, red, green, etc.)

Source: Google sites

 Hue can be altered by the hue of surrounding elements, especially in small symbols.
Although human perception has a great sensitivity, it might be difficult to identify in small
symbols, and it can be wrongly identified if the symbol has other larger ones with different
hues in its surroundings.
Value defines the darkness of the color. For instance, light blue and dark blue have the same
hue, but they have different value.
Differentiating two symbols by their value can be difficult depending on the type of symbol. It
is easier in the case of areal symbols, while in the case of linear and point symbols it depends
on their size. Smaller sizes make it more difficult to compare values and to extract the
information that the visual variable is trying to convey.
Orientation is applied to point symbols, unless they have some sort of symetry that makes it
difficult to identify the orientation of the symbol. For areal symbols, it is applied to their
texture. It's not applied in the case of linear symbols.

Properties of visual variables

Visual variables can have four basic properties.
 Associative. A visual variable is said to be associative if, when applied, doesnt change the
visibility of an element. That is, it's not possible to give more importance to an element using
that visual variable.
 Selective. A visual variable is said to be selective if, when applied, generates different
categories of symbols.
 Ordered. A visual variable is said to be selective if it can be used to represent a given ordering.
 quantitative. When, apart from being ordered, it can be used to express ratios.
In the above list, variables are ordered according to the so-called levels of organization. The
associative property is at the lower level, while the quantitative one is at the highest. The level
of organization of visual variables is relevant when combining them, as we will see later. Also,
the level of organization of a variable defines the type of information that the variable can
transmit.
Figure 11.2 shows different renderings of a set of point symbols, explaining in each case, one
single visual variable.

Source: Google sites

 Figure 11.2: Visualization of a set of point symbols using a single visual variable in each
case.
Starting with the associative property, we see that, except for size and value, all other visual
variables do not do not emphasize one element over the others. In other words, one element is
not seen as more important than the rest of them when the visual variable is texture, color,
shape or position.
With size, however, it is clear that a larger one gives symbols a more prominent role. In the
same way, a darker value attracts the attention of the observer much more than a color with a
lighter value.
Regarding the selective property, we can say that a variable has a selective quality if, at a quick
glance, we can easily identify the elements that belong to a given group which is defined by a
visual variable. The clearest example of this is hue. We can quickly separate from a set of
symbols those that are red or yellow. All visual variables, excepting shape, have this property,
although it might not be so as in the case of hue. Shape does not make elements form groups
spontaneously.
The ordered property is found in those visual variables that we can use to define an ordering.
Only position, texture, size and value are ordering properties. For instance, in the image
corresponding to the visual variable hue, we cannot say which element we would place at the
beginning or end of a scale defined by hue itself. With value, however, we can, since that scale
would range between the lighter tones to the darker ones, and we can visually differentiate and
sort them.
Finally, the quantitative property is found in those visual variables that can be used to visually
estimate quantities and ratios. Only position and size have it. For instance, we can see that the
big circles in the image corresponding to the size visual variable are more or less twice the size
of the smaller ones.

Source: Google sites

 Table 1 contains a summary of all these ideas.
Proper Posit Si Sha Val H Text Orient
ty ion ze pe ue ue ure ation
Associa
◊ — ◊ — ◊ ◊ ◊
tive
Selecti
◊ ◊ — ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
ve
Ordere
◊ ◊ — ◊ — — —
d
Quantit
◊ ◊ — — — — —
ative
Table 1: Properties of visual variables.
Visual variables can be combined (for instance, representing objects with different size and
hue). The properties of all the visual variables that are used must be considered, and if a given
property is needed for the information that we want to convey, all those visual variables should
have it.

The perception of visual variables

The perception of visual variables might be altered by the environment. It is important to
study this from two points of view: perceptual constancy (how much we can modify visual
elements and their surroundings before they fail to to convey the same information and can be
misidentified) and perceptive aids (how we can help visual elements to be perceived exactly
in the way that we want).
Perceptual constancy defines how objects are perceived in the same way regardless of the
changes in the environment. For instance, if an object is round, such as a wheel, it will have
a round shape when we look at it from a perpendicular direction. If we now look at it from a
different angle, we will see an ellipse instead of a circle. However, we will read it as round and
will still identify its shape correctly. That is an example of the perceptual constancy of the
shape.
Not all visual variables have such a perceptual constancy. When the perception of an element
changes even if the object itself does not, a perceptual contrast is said to exist. Perceptual
contrast might cause a visual element to be wrongly perceived and the information that it
transmits to be misinterpreted.
The following are some of the main ideas about perceptual contrasts to take into account when
creating a map:
 Size is the visual variable that is more affected by perceptual contrasts. The apparent size of an
object might change if it is surrounded by other elements of a different size. This is particularly
relevant when using point symbols in a map.
 Values is also altered when other elements with a different value appear nearby, specially if
there are a large number of them.
 Hue is altered by the presence of other hues. In a map, we should consider how the background
color might affect the foreground symbols.
 Complementary hues, when put together, might cause a vibration sensation in the border
between them.
Regarding perception aids, the most important factor when creating a map is the correct
separation between the foreground objects and the background. The properties of the
visual variables must be used to create different levels in the visualization, assigning more
relevance to some elements in order to focus the attention on the information that they transmit.
To make certain layers (the most relevant ones for the purpose of the map) more visible,
a correct hierarchy must be established with the help of visual variables. This hierarchy will

Source: Google sites

add depth to the information displayed in the map, and some elements will be perceived as
being more important than others. Layer ordering already defines a structure and a hierarchy,
but that is not enough in most cases and visual variables should be used to reinforce it.
Figure 11.3 shows why a correct hierarchy is needed to create a good map.

Figure 11.3: Comparison between a map without hierarchy (a) and a map with a correct
hierarchy (b).

Maps and cartographic communication

Maps are a method of communication that uses a language with a particular
purpose: describing spatial relations. A map is, therefore, a symbolic abstraction of a real-
word phenomenon, which implies that it has some degree of simplification and generalization.
The visual language that we have just seen becomes a cartographic language when it is adapted
to the particular case of creating maps and knowing its rules is needed to create cartography
that is later useful for the map user. All these ideas related to map production form what is
known as cartographic design.
Cartographic design involves making decisions (in this case, by the GIS user who takes the
role of the cartographer). These decisions must be guided by the purpose of the map and
the target audience and depending on these factors, the cartographer must decide the
projection (which doesn not always have to be the original one of the data),
the scale (depending on the level of detail and taking into account the limitations of the data),
the type of map (we will see more about this later in this chapter), or the symbols to use,
among other things.
There are two main types of cartography: base cartography (also
called fundamental or topographic) and thematic cartography.
Historically, base cartography represents the classic maps that have been created by
cartographers. This type of map serves the purpose of precisely describing what is on the
surface of the Earth.
Thematic cartography focuses on displaying information about a given phenomenon (a
given geographical variable), which can be of any type: physical, social, political, cultural, etc.
We exclude from this list those phenomena that are purely topographic, which are the subject
matter of base cartography.

Source: Google sites

 We can also say that base cartography represents physical elements (a stream, a coast line, a
road, a valley, etc.), while thematic cartography focuses on representing values and
attributes.
Thematic cartography uses base cartography (usually included in thematic maps) to help the
map user to understand the spatial behavior of the variable being represented, and also to
provide a geographical context for it.

Types of information and their visualization

We already know that the thematic component of geographical information can be numeric or
alphanumeric and that numeric variables can be nominal, ordinal, intervals, or ratios. Selecting
a correct symbology according to the type of information that we are working with is key to
producing an effective map. In particular, we must use a visual variable that has the correct
properties (levels of organization) for the variable that we want to visualize.
For instance, the associative property and the selective property are of interest just for
qualitative information, while size is the only visual variable that we can use that has the
quantitative property and therefore, the only one that should be used to represent ratios.
The following are some of the more important ideas about this, referred to the aforementioned
types of information.
 Nominal. Nominal information is correctly represented using the visual variable shape. This
information shows what is found in the different locations of a map, and not how much is
found, and it is more related to base cartography than to thematic cartography. Using different
symbols for point elements and line elements is a common and very effective solution. For the
case of areal symbols, hue and texture are the most common solutions.
Alphanumeric information has similar properties, and the same ideas apply to it.
 Ordinal. Since values of the variable define an order, a visual variable with the ordered
property is needed to correctly visualize this type of information
 Interval and ratio. Visual variables with the ordered property can be used in this case.
However, size is a better choice, as it is the only one which has the quantitative property.
Values are normally grouped into classes so the same value of the visual variable (same size
of the symbols or same color value, for instance) is used for different values of the variable that
we are visualizing. There are different strategies for this, which try to maximize the information
that the map transmits. The most commons ones are equal intervals, intervals using
percentiles or natural intervals (intervals that try to minimize the variance within each class).
Using one or another of these methods can have a noticeable effect in the visualization, as is
shown in figure 11.4.

Source: Google sites

 Figure 11.4: Comparison between different methods of defining intervals.
It is important to remark that, although levels of organization indicate increasing potential (that
is, with a variable such as size or value we can convey all the information that can be conveyed
with hue, since they have properties with a higher level), it is not always better to use visual
variables with a higher level of organization, and it is not true that they will always be better
than those with a lower one. For instance, using the visual variable value for a map with
qualitative information (like using a ramp of different tones of blue for a map with soil type
information) might not be a good idea, because it has the ordered property, and that might cause
the map user to think that there is some hierarchy (that some soil types are ``better'' than others),
which is false.

Map elements. Map composition

A map is not just the part that represents the geographical information, but a set of multiple
elements, for example, the one that contains the geographical information itself.

Source: Google sites

 A correct layout of the map elements is as important as a correct symbology, since these, like
symbology itself, are designed to help the map user to better interpret the information that it
contains.
The following are the main elements that can be used to compose a map (Figure 11.5):

Figure 11.5: Map with its most common elements.

 Name or title. Needed to know what information is contained in the map.
 Author. Creator the map.
 Additional information about the map. For instance, the coordinate reference system used
or its creation data, among others.
 Data frame. The frame which contains the rendered geographical information. It is the central
element and will use most of the space of the map.
 Graticule. On top of the data frame, it locates the content of the map on the Earth and provides
a geographical reference. It serves the same purpose as the scale, helping to estimate distances.
It is usually added at all scales, but it is more relevant in the case of small scales.
 Legend. When designing a map, we should try to use a symbology that is as expressive as
possible. However, sometimes it is not possible to include all the information with just the
symbology itself and a legend is required. The legend has to be clear and easy to interpret as
well. A legend that is too large or difficult to understand is probably telling us that the
symbology that we have selected can be improved. The legend and the data frame form a single
unit and should be together (legend inside the data frame), not separated in different frames or
with boundaries between them, unless the data frame uses all the space of the map and it is not
possible to visually separate both elements clearly.
 North arrow. Although by convention maps have a south-north orientation (north is at the top
of the map), it does not always have to be that way. An arrow pointing north or a compass rose
will help to clarify the map orientation.
 Scale. Map scale should be displayed both numerically and graphically (scale bar).
 Locator map. Allows the user to locate the map in a larger geographical context. It is especially
relevant in the case of map series, to show the relation between the current map and the rest of
them, acting as an index map.
 Detail maps. Used when there is an area that we can show with a greater level of detail. The
area that it corresponds to should be indicated as well in the main map.
It is also important that the map emphasizes its purpose, giving more importance to those
element that serve it better.

Source: Google sites

Types of thematic maps
There are many different ways of visualizing a given variable in a map. Several of them can be
combined in a single map, especially if it includes more than one variable. In this case, the
combination should strive to obtain the maximum possible clarity for all of them so the
rendering of a variable does not overshadow the remaining ones.
In this section, we will describe the following types of thematic maps: proportional symbol
maps, point density maps, isoline maps and choropleth maps.

Proportional symbol maps

A proportional symbol map represents quantitative variables using symbols whose sizes are
proportional to the value of the variable. That is, the map uses the visual variable size (the
only one with the quantitative property) to transmit the value of the variable being represented.
If the symbol used is linear (such as a bar), its length is used to scale the values to render. If it
is areal, area is used. That means that, in case of using circles, a value three times larger than a
reference one will not be rendered with a circle with a radius three times longer, but with a
circle with an area three times the area of the reference circle.

Symbol scaling can be done in a continuous way, but it is usually more convenient to use a
discrete approach, grouping values in classes and assigning a single size for all values in each
class, usually the size that corresponds to the center value of the class.

To avoid problems when perceiving the size of each symbol, it is important to show in the
legend the relation between the different sizes and their corresponding values, as can be seen
in figure 11.6

Figure 11.6: Two types of legend for proportional symbols maps.

Point density maps

Point density maps are particularly suitable for countable variables such as population or crop
yield. These quantities are represented using repeated points whose number is proportional to
the quantity itself. Each point represents a unitary value and all the points within an area add
up to the total value of the variable in it. All points have the same size and shape, unlike what
we saw in the case of proportional symbols.

Source: Google sites

When creating a point density map, three parameters have to be defined: the value of each
point (that is, how many units of the variable the point represents), its size and its position.
The value of each point should be defined based on the range of values covered by the
variable, so points in the resulting map are not too scarce or too numerous. This value will be
included in the legend, usually in text form, writing, for instance, that ``a point represents 1000
inhabitants''.

Size must guarantee that points are visible and at the same time they do not take too much
space in the map. The optimal size is linked to the selected value of each point and both
parameters should be considered together, so as to find the best combination of them.

The position of the points is of great importance, as it should not convey wrong information or
cause the user to misinterpret its meaning. If we do not have any additional information, points
should be regularly distributed, covering the whole area that correspond to the variable value.
If, on the other hand, we have more information about the distribution of the variable, we
should use it to give the points a more realistic position. For instance, if we are creating a
density map with population values for regions, there should be more points in the surroundings
of the cities within the region, since there are more inhabitants in those areas.

Another thing to consider is the meaning of the variable and whether or not the phenomenon
that it represent can appear at a given point. For instance, if the variable that we are representing
is the number of water birds know to nest in each region, it will be wrong to place the density
points in forest areas or city ones, since it might be inferred that birds are found there, which
is likely not true.

Image 11.7 shows an example of a point density map.

Figure 11.7: Point density map.

Isoline maps
Isoline maps are commonly used to represent continuous variables. Containing only lines,
they mix well with other types of maps without being obtrusive.

Source: Google sites

An isoline map is formed by a set of lines, each of them connecting points that have the same
value of the variable being represented. These lines cannot cross with each other, since a point
cannot have two values at the same time. The most common use of isolines are contour lines
in topographic maps which represent points with the same elevation.
Isolines are defined by their equidistance which indicate the difference between the values
represented by any two contiguous isolines. A lower equidistance means more isolines and a
denser map.

Size is the only visual variable used with isolines. It is used to highlight those that represent a
value that is a multiple of a given number, to make the map easier to read. These lines are know
as index lines.

Figure 11.8: Map with isolines and hypsometric tints.

Lines are labeled with their value over the line itself, usually only on the index lines (the value
of other lines between the index ones can be easily figured out knowing the equidistance).
A particular case of isolines are the so called hypsometric tints. Apart from drawing the lines
themselves, the areas between them are colored, each with a different color (usually using a
graduated scheme).
Figure 11.8 shows an example of this.

Choropleth maps
Choropleth maps are a very common type of map in GIS. For instance, maps in
figure 11.4 were all choropleth maps.
In a choropleth map, there is a set of areas, each of them representing a single value of a
variable. This value applies to the whole area, and is normally represented using hue applied
to the areal symbol.
Choropleth maps have some important limitations. One of them is the sharp change in the
boundaries between areas, which might be interpreted as an abrupt change in the variable
value in that boundary. This could hide the continuity of the variable distribution, in case it
exists. Another problem is the homogeneity within each area, which might lead to thinking
that the variable has a uniform distribution, even if that is false.
In many cases, and in order to correctly transmit the information contained in the variable, its
values have to be normalized using the area of each region.

Visualization in a GIS
Now that we know the basic ideas about visualization and how they are applied to maps, it is
time to see how these are used in the context of a GIS. Two ideas are particularly relevant in

Source: Google sites

this contexts: the fact that we work with multiple layers to be represented together, and the
particularities of on-screen rendering and the interactivity it offers.

Combining multiple layers

In most cases, visualizing a layer alone is not the best way of visualizing the information it
contains. In a map, we normally find several types of information, and that is not just for the
sake of space but because it helps the map user to understand and interpret the main
information. For instance, contour lines help to understand the shapes of rivers and lakes,
providing a valuable context.
When combining layers, we should try to create a synergy between them so they complement
each other. This is mostly done by correctly ordering the layers and using a symbology for
each of them that does not interfere with the others.
When two layers have information for the same location, only the information of the layer on
top will be seen. Layer ordering should maximize the information seen in the map and prioritize
the most important layers over those that contains secondary information.
We know that raster layers fill the space and contain values in all of their cells (pixels in the
case of an image). For this reason, they will cover whatever is underneath, and is not a good
idea to place them at the top of the rendering order. Instead, they should be considered as base
layers on top of which the remaining layers are placed.
With a similar reasoning, we can define the best way to order vector layers, placing polygons
first, then lines, and then points at the top of the rendering order.
Sometimes, the rendering order might be imposed by the meaning of layers. For instance, if
we are creating a map with a layer containing streams and another one containing roads, this
last one should go on top of the first, since roads usually pass over streams and not the other
way round.
A common functionality that most GIS have is the use of transparency for layers. It can be
applied to both raster and vector layers. Figure 11.9 was created using this technique. The
polygon that defines the boundary of the watershed has a semi-transparent fill, which allows to
see the shaded relief layer underneath. The result is a map in which the hydrogical meaning of
the watershed is much clearer and easy to understand.

Figure 11.9: Combination of two layers using transparency.

In the case of raster layers, transparency can be applied partially, just rendering those cells that
are within a given range of values. If a variable is divided in many separate layers (horizontal
division), the same symbology must be applied to all of them, in order to have a coherent map.

Source: Google sites

Particularities of on-screen rendering
Apart from the ideas that are applied to printed maps, additional ones must be taken into
account when the visualization occurs instead on a computer screen. A printed map should not
be designed in the same way as a map that is meant to be rendered on the screen. The main
elements to consider are the low resolution of the screen when compared to a printing device
and the interactivity of the visualization itself. When creating a printed map, resolution is not
a problem, since printing devices offer a level of detail that goes beyond what the cartographer
might need. However, screen resolution is much lower and certain elements might not be
rendered with enough clarity. Although these elements can be used in printed maps, they should
be replaced for on-screen maps. Among these problematic element we find fonts with
ornaments such as shades, fonts with serifs (small lines attached to the end of the stroke to
increase readability) or texture fills of small size. Regarding interactivity, we must take into
account that, unlike a printed map, an on-screen map is not a static element, but a dynamic one.
That does not mean that the map changes by itself but instead that the user can alter it using
the tools that we have already seen (zoom, pan, etc.) Since the scale can be changed by the
user, that might cause problem with certain elements such as symbols and text labels. If all
elements are scaled proportionally, reducing the scale will make the labels too small and
impossible to read. On the other hand, if the scale is increased, labels might be too large, as can
be seen in figure 11.10.

Figure 11.10: A scale change modifes the size of symbols and text labels, and it can make
them too small (a) or too large (b).
A solution to that is to use an absolute size for those elements, so they always have the same
size regardless of the scale. With lower scales, however, that might result in maps that are
saturated, as can be seen in figure 11.11.

Source: Google sites

 Figure 11.11: Saturated map caused by rendering elements at a fixed size at a low scale.
The ability of GIS to render layers at different scales can also cause performance issues. At
low scales, the number of elements to be rendered can be too large and painting them on the
screen might take too much time. To avoid these problems, a multiscalar approach can be
adopted, in which, depending on the scale, different layers and elements are rendered. For the
same information, different versions with different levels of detail can be used, each of them
being used only at a given scale range.

 Mapping geographic data using choropleth maps, bubble maps, and heat maps

Choropleths are geographic maps that display statistical information encoded in a color palette.
Choropleth maps play a prominent role in geographic data science as they allow us to display
non-geographic attributes or variables on a geographic map. The word choropleth stems from
the root “choro”, meaning “region”. Choropleth maps represent data at the region level, and
are appropriate for areal unit data where each observation combines a value of an attribute and
a geometric figure, usually a polygon. Choropleth maps derive from an earlier era where
cartographers faced technological constraints that precluded the use of unclassed maps where
each unique attribute value could be represented by a distinct symbol or color. Instead, attribute
values were grouped into a smaller number of classes, usually not more than 12. Each class
was associated with a unique symbol that was in turn applied to all observations with attribute
values falling in the class.
Although today these technological constraints are no longer binding, and unclassed mapping
is feasible, there are still good reasons for adopting a classed approach. Chief among these is
to reduce the cognitive load involved in parsing the complexity of an unclassed map. A
choropleth map reduces this complexity by drawing upon statistical and visualization theory to
provide an effective representation of the spatial distribution of the attribute values across the
areal units.

Source: Google sites

What is a Geographic Heat Map?
A Geographic Heat Map, or heatmap, represents different densities of data points on a
geographical map, allowing you to visualize the intensities of certain phenomena. By using
various colors and gradations, it provides immediate visual insights into the areas with the
highest activity or interest.
According to Wikipedia, the term ‘heat map’ was coined and trademarked by software designer
Cormac Kinney in 1991 to describe a 2D display depicting financial market information,
though similar plots, such as shading matrices, have existed for over a century.
Below are two examples of geographic heat maps created using Maply.

Why Create a Geographic Heat Map?

Geographic Heat Maps are powerful visualization tools that represent data concentration across
various regions, areas, and locations. Here are two major benefits of using this tool:

1. Visual Simplicity and Directness: One of the standout benefits of a geographical heat
map is its ability to communicate complex data in an easy-to-understand format. This
makes it accessible to everyone, regardless of their data literacy levels. The ease of
comprehension makes a heat map an excellent tool for building consensus among
diverse groups, as it presents clear, visually compelling evidence that can persuade an
audience.

Source: Google sites

 2. Decision-Making Support: This tool is particularly beneficial in supporting decision-
making for site selection. Whether you’re considering the placement of new stores,
restaurants, clinics, transport hubs, distribution centers, offices, or shopping malls, a
geographical heat map can guide you toward the areas with the most potential.

How to Create a Heat Map?

Creating a heat map in Maply is simple and straightforward. Follow these steps:

1. Register for a free Maply account if you don’t have one yet.
2. Log into Maply and go to “My Maps” and add a new map.
3. Go to your newly added map and add a Location Layer.
4.

4. Download a template from the upload page (advanced template is recommended) and
replace the sample data inside the template with your own data.

5. Upload the template.

6. Switch on the heat map view.

Source: Google sites

 7. Voilà! Your geographic heat map is created.
The heat map feature is available automatically for every location map. Once a location map
is created, you can easily switch between different views to get new perspectives.

Pro Tip
Maply supports weighted heat maps. When weights are unavailable, each location will have a
weight of 1. Applying a weight to a data point will cause the location to be rendered with a
different intensity. The weight is a linear scale. Having a weight of 3, for example, is equivalent
to having three data points at the location.
To create weighted heat maps, Location Layer Excel template (Advanced – with weight and
remarks) should be used.

Heat Map Controls

Maply gives you finer controls on the look and feel of your heat maps through a control panel.
You can adjust the radius, opacity and color gradient schemes to suit your needs.

Source: Google sites

Other Types of Heat Maps Available on Maply

Hexagon Heat Map

A Hexagonal Heat Map uses hexagons of equal size and shape to present geospatial data. This
structure provides a visually appealing and effective method for interpreting complex spatial
information.

Territory Heat Map

Also known as a choropleth map, a territory heat map shades or patterns areas (such as
countries, states, provinces, counties, cities, districts, or zip codes) in proportion to a
measurement representing a geographical characteristic, like population density or per-capita
income.

Source: Google sites

 By understanding and utilizing these various types of heat maps, you can leverage Maply’s
capabilities to gain deeper insights and make informed decisions based on geospatial data.

 Incorporating interactive elements and tooltips for geospatial analysis

What is Geospatial Visualization?

GeoMapping used to develop complex visualizations of large geographically related data.
Maps are only the ways of visualizing data. By visualizing geospatial data, show and correlate
different variables to geographical locations by layer all these variables over maps. GeoMap
can be the map of any country, world, region map which has colors and values assigned to
regions. Geospatial Visualization can be 2D contains latitude and longitude, and can be three
dimensional also.
We create maps using abstract shapes and colors to reveal geographic patterns and tell stories
about human existence. Visualize the maps by giving colors, shapes to understand geographic
patterns and in the form of stories. Follow the below process to create interactive Geospatial
visualizations -

 Data collection
 Data processing
 Exploration with web-based tools as map box, carto, etc.
 To build prototypes, port visualizations into java script with tools leaflet.js, react.

What are the Different map layers or map types use to visualize geospatial data?
The various types of map layers or map types use to visualize geospatial data are listed below:

 Point Map
 Choropleth Map
 Cluster Map
 Heat Map
 Proportional symbol map
 Cartogram map
 Hexagonal binning map
 Topographic map
 Spider map
 Flow map
 Time-space distribution map

Source: Google sites

Point Map
Point map can be used to plot places and locations using latitude and longitude data. It uses
points or dots to locate the data.
Choropleth Map
Choropleth Map shows data in the form of the aggregate sum of geographic regions. Uses
categorical or numerical data and use color scales to assign colors to data.
Cluster Map
Cluster maps represent a large number of data points using a single map. Each cluster labeled
with many points grouped in this cluster.
Heat Map
Heat maps used to visualize a large amount of continuous data on a map using various color
spectrums.
Flow map
Flow maps (Path Maps)- Instead of concentrating on the earth's physical features, they illustrate
the movement of things over time across the earth, like migrating humans or animals, resources,
vehicles, traffic, and weather patterns
Spider map
Spider map a variation of the flow map. Instead of focusing on discrete pairs of source and
destination data points, the spider map focuses on the associations between origin points and
multiple destination points – some of which may be common.
Time-space distribution map
A time-space distribution map is an advanced form of geospatial data mapping that combines
a point map's precision with a flow map's dynamism. The most common use case of the map
is monitoring the locations of vehicles or mobile devices through GPS

How Geospatial Visualization Works?

The Geospatial visualization working is describe below:

Conflict Zones
World Migration Map(2010 - 2015).This map shows the estimated net immigration (inflows
minus outflows) by origin and destination country between 2010 and 2015. Visualize how the
people are migrating, how many migrants are present, from where are they relocating.
Blue circles will show the inflows(positive net migration), red circles will show
outflows(negative net migration), yellow dot or circle will represent the one thousand people.
Hover over circle provides to see country net migration inflows and outflows between 2010
and 2015.

Leaflet.js
A leaflet is an open source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps and has a
vibrant and active community. The leaflet has a lot of features and plugins to support doing
pretty much anything with a map.
Used by the world’s biggest websites, startups, online services with millions of users,
government agencies, the biggest new media of the world.

Features -

Source: Google sites

 Extremely lightweight, weighing just about 30 KB of JS code, it has all the features most
developers ever need for online maps
 Support displaying data in any JSON-based data format not only just GeoJSON
 It can draw points using image-based, HTML-based, and circle markers as well as support
for drawing lines and polygons and styling those features dynamically.
 Enable interactive, infographic style visualizations.
 GeoJSON Layers, Markers (custom markers) and Pop-ups, Pure CSS3 pop-ups and controls
(easy designing and animation).
Benefits -

 Designed with simplicity, performance, easy to use and usability in mind.

 No external dependencies
 Nice default design for pop-ups, markers, layers, and other map controls and tile layers are
well supported.
 Double click zoom, animated markers, events, click, mouse over.
Leaflet Plugins

 BaseMap - Leaflet allows us to use a variety of base maps. Example - basemap formats,
image display.
 Marker Clustering - Clusters required for interactive maps where the user can see the data
points grouped in a cluster. Cluster maps reduce the complexity when there are many data
points in a small area on the map.
 HeatMaps
 Dynamic custom/data loading
Steps to make Customized visualizations in the leaflet -

 Build a Leaflet map layer by adding a map instance with the L.map method to the mapLayer
and add a tile layer from any of base map layer plugin.
 Read data from the json file and add popups.
 Create a new MarkerClusterGroup; it will make clusters and plot them to the map.
 Customize the clustered markers.
 Plot customized clusters as a background image.
Big Data Visualization
Big Data visualization is the presentation of data in a graphical format that makes it easy to
understand and analyze. But it is more than corporate graphs, histograms, and pie charts to
more intricate representations like heat maps enabling C-Suite or decision makers to explore
data sets to identify correlations or spontaneous patterns. Visualize 54,000 data points on map
using marker cluster plugin.
A method of translating raw data into visual forms like charts, graphs, and maps. Click to
explore about, 10 Best Practices for Data Visualization
Customization
Customize the markers by using customized CSS icons and customize clusters using
background images.

What are the benefits of using Maps in Data?

Some benefits of using maps in data visualization include -

Source: Google sites

 A greater ability to more easily understand the distribution of the organization's presence
across the city, state, or country.
 The ability to compare the activity across several locations.
 More intuitive Decision Making for company leaders.
 Contextualize data in the real world.

What are the best tools for Data Exploration?

 Google Maps
 Tableau
 Mapbox
 Polymaps
 Target GIS
You can also read more about Data Visualization Tools in this piece of content.

What are the Libraries used for Visualizing Geospatial Data?

 OpenLayers
 Leaflet
 Google Maps API
 Kartograph

Geospatial data has locational information linked to a dataset, such as an address, city, or ZIP
code. It collects data from Global Positioning System (GPS), telematics devices IoT and
geotagging. Geospatial visualizations are the earliest forms of information visualizations,
historically beneficial for navigation.

Geospatial information science (GI science) is concerned with the development and application
of geodetic and information science methods for modeling, acquiring, sharing, managing,
exploring, analyzing, synthesizing, visualizing, and evaluating data on spatio-temporal
phenomena related to the Earth. As an interdisciplinary scientific discipline, it focuses on
developing and adapting information technologies to understand processes on the Earth and
human-place interactions, to detect and predict trends and patterns in the observed data, and to
support decision making. The authors – members of DGK, the Geoinformatics division, as part
of the Committee on Geodesy of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities,
representing geodetic research and university teaching in Germany – have prepared this paper
as a means to point out future research questions and directions in geospatial information
science. For the different facets of geospatial information science, the state of art is presented
and underlined with mostly own case studies. The paper thus illustrates which contributions
the German GI community makes and which research perspectives arise in geospatial
information science. The paper further demonstrates that GI science, with its expertise in data
acquisition and interpretation, information modeling and management, integration, decision
support, visualization, and dissemination, can help solve many of the grand challenges facing
society today and in the future.

Source: Google sites

Strengthening the Capacity on Geospatial Information Technology and Earth
Observation Applications

Geospatial Big Data Platforms: A Comprehensive Review

GIScience from Viewpoint of Information Science

1 Introduction and Motivation

Geospatial information science (in German mostly called Geoinformatik) is concerned with the
development and application of geodetic and computer science methods for the modeling and
acquisition, exchange, management, exploration, analysis, synthesis, visualization, and
evaluation of data concerning space–time-variant phenomena related to the Earth. As a
scientific discipline, it focuses on developing and adapting information technologies to
understand places and processes on the Earth, to support human behavior and decision making,
and to detect and predict trends and patterns in the observed data. Geospatial information
technologies contribute to the mapping and analysis of the Earth and the grand challenges
facing human societies such as climate change, demographic change, sustainable agriculture
and forestry, environmental degradation, energy security, resource efficiency, mobility.
Geospatial information processing integrates research issues and information products of many
scientific disciplines, such as photogrammetry, remote sensing, cartography, engineering
geodesy, and spatial observations in geography and environmental sciences, and transforms
them into structured information as well as into maps and other communication media suitable
for humans. To solve these tasks, besides concepts from mathematics and physics, various
subareas of computer science are adapted and extended in an engineering-oriented manner,
such as computational geometry, artificial intelligence and machine learning, semantic
technologies, databases, and computer graphics (see also Kutterer et al. 2020).
Advances in sensor and positioning technologies in recent years have facilitated unprecedented
growth in the collection of spatially and temporally referenced data. Classical examples of big
spatial data sources include aerial and terrestrial laser scanning, remote sensing imagery, and
weather data. In addition, gigantic amounts of (in many cases low-cost miniaturized) sensors
generate real-time data streams in everyday life in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT)
(for geospatial-IoT see Sect. 8). Millions of people voluntarily contribute to the collection of
geoinformation (for example in OpenStreetMap (OSM) or in citizen science projects) or share
posts with a spatial reference in the social networks and thus create so-called volunteered
geographic information (VGI). Tracks of various objects moving by land, sea, and air will
become more and more available in the context of digital earth, smart cities, humans as sensors,
citizen science, location-based services (LBS),”in-situ” geocomputing, social media, etc. VGI
data encompasses many specific types of data, such as geotagged social media (Twitter,
Instagram, etc.), geotagged Wikipedia pages, news articles, historical archives, location-

Source: Google sites

focused online reviews, geotagged housing posts, and others that contain links between
locations and interpretable information.
Location is always an available and important common property of all of these new types of
information. As Goodchild (2009) already stated: “it will be possible to know where everything
is, at all times.” This will result in new research topics and challenges, as Andrienko et al.
(2017) predicted: “The massive volumes of collected data contain complex, yet implicit spatial,
temporal, and semantic interrelations that are waiting to be uncovered and made explicit.”
Craglia et al. (2012) described the concept of the “Observation Web” with observations
originating from humans, sensors or numerical (environmental) simulations, and others,
moving from an essentially static representation of the Earth to one that is dynamic and
interactive, and more responsive to the grand challenges.
With the advent of the IoT and big data, citizens have increasingly been involved in producing
and using a new type of information useful for analyzing spatial problems, and researchers and
practitioners increasingly have been confronted with the task of developing methods and
approaches for massive data collection, integration, and analysis in spatially explicit formats
(Malczewski and Jankowski 2020). The fundamental (i.e. special) properties of spatial data—
spatial dependence, spatial heterogeneity, and concepts such as location, distance, direction,
connectivity, adjacency, neighborhood, proximity—need to be rethought considering IoT and
big data issues. New solutions for data storage and data processing, for example for semi-
structured data, or technologies for parallelization and distributed computing are gaining
importance. The problem of semantic heterogeneity caused by different meanings of data,
terminologies, and models needs to be solved. The analysis of these heterogeneous data and
the preparation of decision-supporting statements represent an important task for
geoinformatics (Kutterer et al. 2020). The investigation of methods to validate these huge
amounts of data against each other as well as against official authoritative data, knowledge
bases, and simulation results is necessary. The integration of these geo-observation webs with
common earth observation infrastructures, and the dynamic and interactive, as well as
automatic exploitation of spatio-temporal mass data variety and flows from sensors and people
is a future challenge.
In the context of mobility, data from permanently measuring sensors (e.g. floating car data)
plays an increasingly important role alongside 3D city models. In smart cities, measures are to
be derived and implemented automatically from sensor data and social and behavioral
implications need to be taken into account (see also Huang et al. 2018).
The Committee on Geodesy of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (formerly
Deutsche Geodätische Kommission, abbreviated "DGK", https://dgk.badw.de/) represents
geodetic research and university teaching in Germany. The DGK division “Geoinformatik”
initiates and coordinates research projects, discusses future trends and scientific perspectives
in geospatial information science, and maintains professional exchange. The division focuses
on topics such as the acquisition of geospatial data and the derivation of digital descriptions of
environmental objects at different scales and as fully automated as possible. The aim is not
only to record geometric properties but also to provide descriptions of a range of different
object properties (e.g. building function, terrain shapes, movement patterns, land use types,
human behavior) and temporal information by automated merging and integration of geodata
from different sources. The development of common data models to create (semantic) reference
systems and the establishment of modern geodata infrastructures based on spatial information
theory is another topic of DGK. The digital geodata collections that are emerging in large
numbers and growing in size with modern sensor technologies require automatic spatial
analysis methods, for example, to derive heat and energy losses in construction planning, to
recognize movement patterns in mobility, or to determine damages for disaster management.

Source: Google sites

Members of the DGK division “Geoinformatik” have prepared this paper to assess the current
situation and to point out future research questions and directions in geospatial science,
building upon previous efforts by ISPRS (International Society for Photogrammetry and
Remote Sensing) (Chen et al. 2016), ICA (International Cartographic Association) (Virrantaus
et al. 2009; Meng et al. 2020), and others. We identify the scientific research challenges for the
next decade and describe how we will contribute our expertise along the whole information
processing chain in GI technology to tackle them.
The structure of the article is as follows: Sects. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 treat research aspects of GI
science in information acquisition and geometric processing, information interpretation,
information modeling and management, information integration, decision support, geospatial
visualization, and information dissemination. Each step along this processing chain is reflected
with a brief description of the status quo and underlined by a few selected case studies, mainly
from the authors. Then, we look ahead to the most important research trends of the next decade.
Section 9 briefly considers relevant infrastructures and research funding to support these
research issues. Finally, we address the grand challenges, from the point of view of geospatial
information processing, to reach a certain consensus in the scientific community about the
contributions of the GI community to these major societal challenges.

2 Geospatial information acquisition and geometric processing

2.1 Developments in data acquisition and new applications
Recent developments in sensor technology have led to a tremendous increase in spatially and
temporally referenced data. Examples include aerial, satellite, but also terrestrial images, 3D
point clouds from laser scanners and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR),
trajectory data using e.g. portable GNSS receivers, and volunteered geographic information.
Sensors are mounted on satellites, airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and static as
well as mobile terrestrial platforms such as mobile mapping systems. Increasingly, multisensor
systems and geosensor networks are being used for cooperative data acquisition.
In this section, we give a short description of developments in geospatial data acquisition. Since
our focus is on data handling and not on sensor hardware development, we only point out major
trends, without going into detail, primarily to illustrate the fact that geospatial data are big
data—with the related challenges of an enormous increase in volume, variety, velocity, and
veracity. In addition, while we note the tremendous importance of ubiquitous location and
localization (according to Goodchild, 2019 “it will be possible to know where everything is, at
all times”) we will not discuss developments of how to determine sensor position for the sakes
of positioning and navigation in this section, but only to georeference geospatial data captured
by the sensor in question.
Over the years, many national and supranational agencies, e.g., NASA, ESA, CNES, DLR,
ISRO, JAXA, CNSA, developed civil satellite remote sensing systems. The US Landsat
program, dating back to 1972, was the first source of seamless optical Earth Observation (EO)
imagery suitable for certain resource mapping purposes. Since 2014, the European Copernicus
program (Sentinel fleet) provides free-of-charge multispectral imagery with a very high revisit
frequency and a ground sampling distance (GSD) of up to 10 m; it will continue to do so for
the next decades. Other countries such as India and China have similar programs. In addition,
constellations like the Pléiades Neo satellites with a GSD of 0,3 m (the first two of which were
launched in April and August 2021), and the Planet constellation with more than a hundred
operational satellites in orbit with a GSD in the meter range, are currently being launched,
partly by private companies. Some of these satellites can capture motion in short high-
resolution videos. The meter range is also the resolution of currently established radar
constellations, most of which, however, seems to target the defense market (e.g., Iceye, Umbra
Lab, Capella Space). For all these constellations the main goal is a high temporal resolution.

Source: Google sites

In addition to the constellations, new high-resolution optical satellites have been announced,
e.g., Maxar Legion with a resolution in the range of a quarter of a meter and up to 15 images
of the same location per day, which increasingly blurs the separation between satellite and
aerial imagery. Novel SAR missions particularly suitable for SAR interferometry like
TanDEM-L (https://www.dlr.de/hr/tdml) as well as hyperspectral sensors such as the recently
launched EnMAP (https://www.enmap.org/) will produce more data.
In aerial data acquisition, one observes an ongoing integration of nadir-looking sensors with
image sizes of up to 400 Megapixel using oblique cameras, and partly also with laser scanners
leading to colored 3D point clouds. Current laser scanning systems increasingly employ full-
waveform digitization or single-photon counting techniques (Mandlburger et al. 2019),
enabling them, for instance, to generate vertical vegetation density profiles in forests as a basis
for biomass change quantification and to capture terrain model data at a rate of several million
points per second. Aerial radar for civil applications is still a niche market.
While for a long time unmanned aerial vehicles in most cases only carried cameras, recently,
laser scanners with sufficient range have become smaller and lighter and, most importantly,
have been integrated with sufficiently high-precision lightweight GNSS and INS sensors. In
addition, thermal and hyperspectral sensors for UAVs are available, although the geometric
resolution is still limited. Concerning the availability of suitable carrier systems, one has to
note that the (semi)-professional area is growing rapidly, e.g., for taking video footage of sports
events or for surveillance purposes.
For several years there has been a trend towards Computational Photography (CP, Nayar 2007)
in terrestrial data acquisition. These cameras often have multiple lenses: images are taken with
different settings and are combined computationally. An example is plenoptic cameras, also
called light-field cameras, the concept of which has been investigated for some time already
(Adelson et al. 1992). Computational photography is particularly being employed in recent
mobile phones. High-speed cameras at frequencies, ranging up to 1 MHz and above, are used
to acquire dynamic scenes in areas such as sports, traffic monitoring, surveillance, robotics,
autonomous driving, crash tests, material testing, and fluid dynamics. For terrestrial sensing
the same thermal and hyperspectral sensors can be used as those mounted on UAVs, meaning
that the geometric resolution is rather limited. In many cases, sensors are combined into a
multisensor platform with various different cameras, laser scanners, and positioning devices
carried by humans or cars; mobile mapping systems traveling in normal traffic are a particular
example of this development. While mobile mapping has become a standard tool for the
detailed acquisition of urban areas, the scope has been considerably widened by the interest in
HD (High Definition) maps for autonomous driving. In this context, the automatic acquisition
of information about the surroundings of a vehicle using sensors such as (stereo-) cameras and
laser scanners is of vital importance.
For moving objects, trajectory data (3D position and 3D rotation as a function of time) are an
additional data source. They are typically captured using GNSS receivers and GNSS/IMU
systems, but also using cameras or laser scanners. Trajectories can be used to analyze and
predict object behavior. They can also serve as an additional information source for the
interpretation of scenes in which these objects are depicted, e.g. using a camera or laser scanner.
Given all these developments in data acquisition, one can expect more detail concerning
geometry, semantics, extent and time in the future. For instance, city models will be fully 3D
and will contain window and door objects for the façades, possibly with mullions and transoms
(horizontal and vertical bars), but also objects for stairs, balconies, dormers, chimneys, air
conditioners, and more generally, street furniture and vegetation objects. Data from all
platforms mentioned before will be fused and used in combined approaches to reach these
goals.

Source: Google sites

Reconstruction for Building Information Models (BIMs) goes further by considering, besides
the interior of buildings, the semantics and the geometry of the parts they are constructed of,
and possibly, also the construction process. Models of interior spaces will become common for
shopping centers, but also for large public buildings such as railway stations, town halls, or
museums. Smooth navigation from indoors to outdoors and vice-versa is a particular problem
in this regard.
In addition to the more detailed geometry and semantics, scenes to be observed and models to
describe these varying scenes will be more and more dynamic, opening up possibilities to also
model, observe and understand processes of all kinds, e.g. landslides and other geomorphologic
changes on the Earth surface, but also in sports or when observing public places. This pertains
to the interior spaces of shopping malls but even more so to information related to traffic and
other applications in which image sequences are commonly used.
Land use is another area where temporal dynamics are important. Utilizing the capabilities of
the satellite constellations, a much higher acquisition frequency and, thus, a much more
detailed analysis of the temporal dynamics is possible, also leading to higher update rates. Such
results are required not only by agriculture and forestry but in particular, also for determining
indicators to monitor progress in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals
(SDG, https://sdgs.un.org/goals). Concerning land use, additional radar missions will be
helpful, particularly for areas that are often clouded such as rain forests. In addition, advanced
radar capabilities will be particularly useful for surveillance applications where all-weather
capabilities are essential and higher geometric and temporal resolutions allow for a more
detailed analysis.
An emerging field is a perception of autonomous driving. Besides ego-motion, the detection
and pose estimation of other road users such as cars, cyclists, and pedestrians are essential for
path planning and accident avoidance and support collaborative positioning of vehicles in
GNSS-denied areas (Coenen and Rottensteiner 2019). It is also important to generate this
information over time by analyzing time series, which involves tracking based on physical
models of the movement of these objects over time, potentially considering interactions
between different road users in a scene (Leal-Taixé et al. 2017).

2.2 State of the Art and Case Studies in Geometric Processing

Geometric processing comprises calibration and synchronization of single sensors and sensor
systems, the determination of sensor orientation (pose), the determination of (potentially highly
accurate) 3D point coordinates, the 3D reconstruction of scenes, and object rendering including
orthoprojection. In our context, we also consider motion models, both for sensor movement
(e.g. when dealing with line sensors) and for temporal changes in object space (e.g., when
determining scene flow), as part of geometric processing. Note that the determination of ego-
motion, as a core requirement in navigation (e.g., using GNSS/IMU systems as the only
sensor), is not treated in this section.
Optical 3D measurement techniques (in the past often referred to as close-range
photogrammetry) have found a huge market potential in industrial measurement tasks, where
they are applied in manifold design, manufacturing, and quality control processes. Herein,
photogrammetry provides, among others, sensor modeling and self-calibration techniques
allowing to achieve measurement accuracies beyond 1:100,000 of the object dimensions using
off-the-shelf cameras. Image engineering techniques such as structured light approaches allow
for real-time 3D measurement systems with high spatial and temporal resolution.

Source: Google sites

2.2.1 Case Study “3D Surface Reconstruction Using Images from the Ground and UAVs”
Images from different sources such as from the ground and small UAVs allow for a detailed
3D reconstruction of the roof as well as the façades of buildings. Michelini and Mayer (2020)
present an approach for the automatic orientation of unsorted images which can deal with the
wide baselines occurring in this study. The orientations are the basis for pairwise image
matching leading to per-pixel depth maps. These maps are combined based on their estimated
accuracy using a probabilistic volumetric approach (Kuhn et al. 2017) leading to a scalable
high-quality 3D reconstruction.
Fig. 1

Images from the ground and from a UAV (top), orientations (projection centers are linked if
the images overlap; left), and 3D model in the form of a mesh with (center) and without texture
(right)

2.2.2 Case Study “Uncertainty Estimation of 3D Surfaces”

While dense stereo matching methods have made great progress over the last few years, there
is a need for self-diagnosis, i.e. to identify erroneous disparity estimates in the results. Based
on probabilistic convolutional neural networks, Mehltretter (2021) presents a new method for
the estimation of aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty (corresponding to stochastic and
systematic uncertainty). Instead of relying on features learned from disparity maps only, the
corresponding 3D cost volumes are employed. For aleatoric uncertainty estimation, a novel
convolutional neural network architecture is presented that is trained with different stochastic
models that follow the concept of Bayesian deep learning. The quantification of epistemic
uncertainty is realized using a Bayesian neural network trained with variational inference.
Figure 2 shows the design of the employed network. The results demonstrate that the models
used to estimate aleatoric uncertainty outperform state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, the usage
of a Bayesian neural network not only allows for epistemic uncertainty estimation but also
supports the task of dense stereo matching itself, reducing the number of errors contained in
the disparity maps.
Fig. 2

Source: Google sites

Deep learning network for the joint estimation of aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty in dense
stereo matching (Mehltretter 2021)

2.2.3 Case Study “Material Testing”

The detection of cracks in probes and the quantitative determination of crack patterns is an
important task in material testing. Compared to conventional techniques such as inductive
displacement transducers, inclinometers, and strain gauges, which deliver only pointwise
measurements, cameras offer the crucial advantage of allowing simultaneous measurements at
many locations in an image. Cracks can be detected in monocular image sequences by applying
a cascaded image sequence processing chain (Hampel and Maas 2009). Herein, a dense pattern
of feature points is tracked by least-squares image matching, yielding subpixel accuracy motion
vector fields. These vector fields are analyzed for significant discrepancies, depicting locations
of cracks. Metric crack width information can be derived from the discrepancies by a thorough
geometric analysis of triangle meshes with the matching points as vertices (Liebold and
Maas 2020). The technique can detect cracks with a width in the order of a tenth of a pixel, and
it delivers full-field measurements of complete complex crack patterns (see Fig. 3).
Fig. 3

Crack pattern of a strain-hardening cement-based composite probe in a tension test, visualized

by color-coding and height of the prism cells for better visual interpretability (Liebold and
Maas, 2020)

Source: Google sites

The spatial resolution of the technique is mainly defined by the sensor size of the camera,
allowing for the detection of complex crack patterns with ca. 100 cracks when using a high-
resolution camera. The temporal resolution may reach 100 kHz and beyond. Liebold et al.
(2020) applied the technique for the determination of crack propagation velocities in a concrete
probe. Image sequences were taken by a high-speed camera at a frame rate of 160,000 images
per second. By applying the cascaded image sequence processing procedure to these datasets,
crack propagation velocities of about 800 m/s could be determined with a precision in the order
of 50 m/s.
A logical future extension of the crack detection and crack characterization techniques shown
here is in a transition from 2D image sequences to multi-temporal 3D micro-tomography data.
As soon as suitable instruments are available, tomography voxel data acquisition may be
integrated into the material testing process.

2.3 Research Perspectives

This section focuses on problems for which the process of solving a problem and finding a
solution is not only difficult but also conceptually unclear. This is true for images produced by
computational photography, which are usually generated for visual inspection by black-box
algorithms. It is currently not known how and even if they can be used for higher accuracy
photogrammetric reconstruction, especially if different viewpoints are used. Another challenge
is the combination of low-resolution data such as hyperspectral images with high-resolution
data in the form of images or 3D point clouds. This is already done for satellite data, but much
more high-resolution data from UAVs or the ground lead to additional complications due to
the detailed 3D geometry with the associated occlusions.
While traditional flight planning for aerial acquisition is based on regular structures such as
grids, a number of challenges come with automating detailed 3D acquisition by means of UAVs
in urban areas: as data are more and more acquired in fully autonomous mode, they can be
processed in real-time and on-board, opening up possibilities for a more flexible, yet physically
feasible, planning of flight paths considering obstacle avoidance, and for online checking of
the completeness of the resulting 3D models despite occlusions, incl. instantaneous acquisition
of missing image data. A related topic is that of parallel geometric processing, e.g. for bundle
adjustment (Mayer 2019).
A particular challenge arises in the overlap between photogrammetry and robotics, i.e., when
results are required in real-time, e.g., for docking maneuvers, in autonomous driving, in traffic
monitoring, or surveillance. Here, cooperative approaches (Molina et al. 2017; Schön et
al. 2018) and swarm processing are considered promising.
Finally, finding robust solutions from image and sensor orientation, as well as dense 3D
reconstruction, also as a function of time, remains difficult in scenes with poor or repetitive
texture, critical geometric configurations, and/or large depth discontinuities. Examples for
challenges in image orientation include the determination of image overlap, e.g., for image sets
downloaded from the internet, images taken with a significant temporal difference, or in
different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum (e.g., optical and thermal data). Progress has
been made for orientation (Kendall et al. 2015) as well as 3D reconstruction (Kendall et
al. 2017) by learning matching functions for points (Jin et al. 2021) and shape priors for
surfaces. One can expect that the separation between geometry and interpretation (discussed in
the next section) will be slowly eroding and at least implicitly more and more information about
the specific situation and, therefore, semantics will be included in the up-to-now purely
geometric part of photogrammetric image processing. This could be particularly helpful for
dynamic scenes and very different viewing directions, whereas for fast-moving objects it might
be difficult to track and/or match individual points or patches due to distortions and (self-

Source: Google sites

)occlusions while the objects stay the same. In this respect, also the introduction of motion
models to regularize the solution will be helpful.

3 Geospatial Information Interpretation

3.1 State of the Art and Case Studies
The core task of automating interpretation lies in the mathematical modeling of topographic
or, more generally speaking, scene information, as well as its behavior over time, in
combination with its appearance in the data. Topographic information comprises objects such
as buildings, roads, and vegetation but also broader categories like land use. Considering other
applications, all kinds of objects such as cars, bicycles, pipelines in industrial plants, animals,
and persons are of concern. Data range from color to thermal and hyperspectral images to
LiDAR and Radar acquired by any of the platforms mentioned before.
While object and scene knowledge necessary for automatic interpretation has been directly
encoded by humans for a long time, in recent years there is a strong tendency towards
employing methods based on learning by examples. It should be noted that in satellite image
classification such machine learning approaches have been used from the beginning; the
examples to learn from are training data, which encode the main body of object and scene
knowledge, albeit in implicit form. The main advantage of this strategy is that by providing
new training samples these methods can be transferred to new datasets or new geographic areas
relatively easily.
Concerning methodologies and strategies for learning, there is a strong trend from traditional
statistical methods, particularly, graphical models such as Markov Random Fields (MRF) and
Conditional Random Fields (CRF), which are now often only used for post-processing, towards
all kinds of neural networks. Having been initiated by the large success of convolutional neural
networks (CNN) for classifying images just showing one object of relevance (Krizhevsky et
al. 2012), they have also been demonstrated to outperform other classifiers in remote sensing
applications, partly by a large margin, if a sufficient amount of representative training data is
available (Zhu et al. 2017b).
For data with a regular topology such as images, different variants of CNN have been devised,
leading to strongly improved results for certain areas. Multiple general ways to improve
learning and, particularly, to make better use of the training data have been proposed. For
instance, one can focus the acquisition of training data with reinforcement learning, making
clear where deficits exist in the results. While this can be efficient, the success depends on the
availability of the human operator generating additional intended results, and such approaches
are hard to benchmark as the performance can always be improved by another round of training.

3.1.1 Case Study “Generation of LoD3 3D Shell Model”

Images from the ground and small UAVs, as well as the derived orientations and 3D mesh (see
Fig. 1), allow for a consistent reconstruction of whole buildings on the Level of Detail 3
(LoD3): The roof is reconstructed from images from the UAV and the façades including
windows and doors from images from the ground. The shell model (Huang et al. 2019) consists
of surfaces with a thickness and integrates the roof including overhang and the façades
semantically and geometrically (see Fig. 4). This description is derived from the 3D mesh;
windows and doors are added as holes. The former is determined from images from the ground
projected on the façade planes using a CNN. While the 3D mesh consists of half a gigabyte of
data, the shell model just needs a couple of tens of kilobytes.
Fig. 4

Source: Google sites

Untextured 3D mesh model (left; see also Fig. 1) and derived LoD3 shell model with roof
overhang and holes for windows and doors (right)

3.1.2 Case study “Scene Flow”

Scene flow estimation provides valuable information about the dynamic nature of our 3D
environment. In particular, the 3D scene flow field comprises all 3D motion vectors of a
densely reconstructed 3D surface model, which is moving with respect to the camera. In their
method termed object scene flow, Menze et al. (2018) propose a unified random field model
which reasons jointly about 3D scene flow as well as the location, shape, and motion of vehicles
in the observed scene. The problem is formulated as the task of decomposing the scene into a
small number of rigidly moving objects with attached motion parameters. The inference
algorithm then estimates the association of image segments and object hypotheses together
with their 3D shape and motion. Figure 5 depicts a sample result of the work.
Fig. 5

Result for object scene flow (Menze et al. 2018). The reference image is superimposed with
optical flow results and the reconstructed objects

3.1.3 Case Study “Domain Adaptation for Image Classification”

Wittich and Rottensteiner (2021) address domain adaptation for the pixel-wise classification
of remotely sensed data using CNNs as a strategy to reduce the requirements with respect to
the availability of training data. The method is based on adversarial training of an appearance
adaptation network (AAN) that transforms images from the source domain such that they look
like images from the target domain. A joint training strategy is proposed for the AAN and the

Source: Google sites

classifier, which constrains the AAN to transform the images such that they are correctly
classified. A specific regularization term for the discriminator network required for adversarial
training helps to prevent the AAN from learning trivial solutions. Using high-resolution digital
orthophotos and height data the method on average improved the performance in the target
domain by 4.3% in mean F1 score. Sample results of this method are shown in Fig. 6.
Fig. 6

Result of deep domain adaptation using the method of (Wittich and Rottensteiner 2021). From
left to right: Classification of source domain image, source domain image, source images
transformed to the target domain by the AAN, target domain image, classification of target
domain image

3.1.4 Case Study “Urban Tree Recognition in Airborne Laser Scanning Point Clouds with
Deep 3D Single-Shot Detectors”
To apply CNN for airborne laser scanning (ALS) data processing, often in the first step the
irregularly spaced 3D point coordinates and their features are mapped into a voxel grid.
However, usually, large parts of the volume are occupied by free space. In addition, due to the
sensor principle, ALS data are restricted to capture echoes of those object boundaries which
can be reached by the laser signal, whereas the interior volume cannot be accessed.
Consequently, such a voxel space is in general only sparsely populated. Therefore, standard
convolution schemes are not efficient and lead to a blurring of details, because each 3D point
is spread by the filter’s impulse response. Remedy are so-called 3D submanifold sparse
convolutional networks that avoid such undesired widening by omitting certain parts of the
input (Graham et al. 2018). Schmohl et al. 2021 use such a network as a sparse 3D backbone
for feature extraction in a framework tailored to detect single urban trees (see Fig. 7). This
vegetation class enjoys steadily rising interest, for example, for purposes like improvement of
locale climate or enrichment of biodiversity. Unfortunately, official tree cadasters are often
limited to the public ground only, ignoring the large share of urban trees in backyards and
private gardens. To detect as many trees as possible, the mentioned 3D backbone is followed
by a detection approach, which eventually delivers the height and crown diameter of individual
trees.
Fig. 7

Source: Google sites

Deep learning network for scene classification and subsequent single tree detection (Schmohl
et al. 2021)

3.2 Research Perspectives

Geospatial data interpretation has recently profited significantly from artificial intelligence
methods in general, and deep learning methods in particular. This development has opened up
unprecedented possibilities for new applications, e.g. in combining human interaction and
computing performance for active learning, in fusing drastically different images such as
terrestrial and aerial views and integrating deterministic physical models with neural networks
(Tuia et al. 2021). At the same time, several problems which await sound solutions have
become apparent.
A general issue is that the internal decision-making process of deep learning methods is not
well understood; they behave very much like black boxes, and there is no theoretically sound
strategy for designing deep learning methods for specific applications; instead, mostly adhoc
design methods are employed today, starting from some existing architecture that has proven
to work well for similar problems. How to explain the behavior of deep learning methods is,
thus, an important research question (Roscher et al. 2020).
Another question is how to infer causality from correlation (Pérez-Suay and Camps-
Valls 2019). The challenge consists of combining advanced learning methodologies and
strategies with a good understanding of the objects, spatial and semantic relations as well as
interactions over time, to provide a capable but also ideally provably robust system for
interpretation. The problem is aggravated in remote sensing applications due to the large
variability of sensors that are used.
A major challenge for the approaches based on learning by example is to provide knowledge
via training data, which is suitable for the problem. To improve the generalization capabilities,
one has to make sure that the major aspects necessary for interpretation are included in the
training data, e.g., the complete spectrum of objects to be interpreted. This all means that there
is a new basic challenge: How can one provide training data which contains the relevant
variation of the objects and their interactions?
There are large databases of annotated terrestrial RGB images such as ImageNet (Russakovsky
et al. 2015) which form a good basis for training classifiers that generalize well for a large
variety of applications but are restricted to the object types shown in these images and to the
type of sensor used for acquiring them. No datasets of a comparable size exist for remote
sensing data, let alone for sensors such as airborne laser scanners or hyperspectral cameras. A
new ISPRS benchmark sheds some light on this matter.

Recent research, therefore, focuses on making better use of self-supervising approaches. A

particularly promising way is to employ generative adversarial networks (GANs) for the
generation of realistic training data to extend the coverage of the natural variations of objects
or scenes. GANs can also be used to learn from non-matching input and output. For instance,
mappings between maps and images of the same region can be learned without one-to-one
relations.
In particular, in topographic applications, one can make use of existing maps to generate the
training labels for new images. In this context, the training technique has to cope with erroneous
labels (e.g., due to changes in land cover), so-called “label noise”. Kaiser et al. 2017 have
shown that using large amounts of such partly wrong training samples can reduce the
requirements for high-quality hand-labeled data in training a CNN. For label noise, robust
methods for training can provide good results even without any hand-labeled data, which has
been shown for random forest classifiers (Maas et al. 2019). These principles are currently
being transferred to the domain of deep learning (Voelsen et al. 2021).

Source: Google sites

Another very promising strategy is multitask learning (Kendall et al. 2018), where several tasks
of possibly different complexity can support each other. In transfer learning and domain
adaptation, one learns from previous applications, even when these are only weakly related
(Tuia et al. 2016); one of the challenges is to understand how similar the different domains
must be for a successful application of domain adaptation, and how this similarity can be
measured. In this context, GANs can also be applied to learn a representation of the images so
that the resultant features have similar distributions for images from different domains (Wittich
and Rottensteiner 2019), or to learn how to adapt the appearance of images from one domain
so that they look like images from the other domain (Wittich and Rottensteiner 2021; cf.
Sect. 3.1).
The availability of satellite data with high revisit times, e.g. Sentinel-2, has triggered interest
in the processing of time series. In this context, recurrent neural networks (RNN) have been
used, e.g. for building detection (Maggiori et al. 2017). Long short-term memory (LSTM)
architectures were developed to avoid common problems in training, e.g. vanishing gradients
(Hochreiter and Schmidhuber 1997), and they have been adopted for the classification of
remote sensing data from multiple epochs, e.g. for change detection (Mou et al. 2019) or for
crop classification based on time series (Rußwurm and Körner 2018). An alternative is to
employ self-attention mechanisms, typically embedded in transformer architectures (Vaswani
et al. 2017), which is a more general representation than convolutional network layers
(Cordonnier et al. 2020). Such architectures can help to suppress irrelevant observations in time
series, as was shown by Rußwurm and Körner (2020): They also reach competitive results in
other computer vision tasks (Dosovitskiy et al. 2021; Liu et al. 2022). The achievable
geometric accuracy and the amount of supervision required for learning such models, in
particular if a pixel-wise classification is to be determined for every time step, still seems to be
unclear.
An additional basic question consists in how far geometric and physical modeling is still
appropriate. In principle, everything could be learned by just linking the acquired input data to
the intended result. While this could be helpful in certain areas with a weak understanding of
the problem, such as how to model a tree as seen from the ground with different levels of
mutually occluding branches and leaves with a very complex reflection function, experience
shows that using proven models as priors tends to improve and stabilize results (see Tuia et
al. 2021 and the references therein for examples).
It also has to be noted that learning approaches focus on a semantic interpretation of the input
data, but in general do not aim at a 3D reconstruction of the geometric shape of the objects.
Some recent examples have tried to support 3D reconstruction by machine learning, e.g., for
roof reconstruction (Wichmann et al. 2018) or cars (Coenen and Rottensteiner 2019). It is
anticipated that this common treatment of semantics and geometry will increasingly be used
and will yield better results.
Similar arguments hold true for dynamic scenes. A general question relates to the usefulness
of explicit motion models for objects to be detected and tracked, incl. models for object
behavior, which are necessary to predict future situations, e.g. in traffic scenarios, and the
interaction between different objects. Also, it is unclear, what the benefits are of modeling not
only the behavior of individual objects but the whole scene, in general, as a function of time.
In contrast to raster images, 3D point clouds are irregularly distributed spatial data. To extract
implicit neighborhood relations for each point, usually, local features are calculated to enable
subsequent segmentation or classification (Weinmann et al. 2015). In addition, for point
clouds, substantial progress has been achieved based on deep learning (Griffith and
Boehm 2019) employing one of the following processing strategies: (i) use of hand-crafted
features in a single- or multi-branch 1D CNN, (ii) projection of the point cloud onto planes
which are fed into a standard 2D CNN for images, and (iii) discretization of the point cloud to

Source: Google sites

3D voxel space, where 3D convolutions take place. A general bottleneck is the lack of sufficient
labeled ground truth data for training and validation of such approaches. Furthermore, there is
also progress for neuronal networks based on general graph structures (Nassar et al. 2020), also
for the direct segmentation of 3D point clouds.
Finally, it will always be necessary to optimize functions. While classical least-squares
adjustment or Kalman and Particle Filters allow for a high precision, sampling strategies such
as RANdom SAmple Consensus (RANSAC) or Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and their
many variations are more robust but need to be chosen in a way reflecting the error structure
of the problem. The training of CNNs requires the minimization of a loss function. For that
purpose, variants of stochastic gradient descent are usually applied. The impact of the chosen
optimization procedure on the results has hardly been investigated so far. More work has been
spent on designing task-specific loss functions to be optimized, but problems remain, for
instance, the way to deal with extremely unbalanced class distributions of the training data,
which frequently occur in land cover classification or the development and application of
appropriate strategies for regularization to avoid overfitting. Finally, the question arises if and
how a combination of robust sampling strategies and CNNs could lead to considerably more
robust approaches for automatic interpretation.
4 Geospatial information modeling and management
Goodchild (2009) already formulated the goal “imagine the possibility of a world of real-time
geographic information”. Today, due to IT and sensor developments during the last decade, we
are on the way towards realizing this vision. The challenges presented in the former sections
and their consequences to geospatial information modeling and management – driven by
expected more data and extremely detailed representations concerning geometry, semantics,
extent and time for all kinds of sensors – will lead to new challenges for information modeling
and management. In the coming decade, geospatial information modeling and management
will have to be adapted to these new requirements.

4.1 State of the Art

A common approach in geographic data science is the integration of multiple data sets
characterized by different spatial and temporal references, at multiple scales and resolutions
(Andrienko et al. 2017). This means that information integration is a central issue bringing
together different “dimensions” such as space dimension (2D, 2.5D, full 3D objects: maps and
digital terrain models as well as full 3D geological subsurface models and full 3D city models),
spatial scale (resolution), and temporal scale (resolution). We will focus on different levels of
information integration in Sect. 5. Before integrating data, however, data has to be modeled
and managed in a formalized way. A typical example, showing two different ways of spatial
data modeling which have been established for decades, are the domains of geographic
information systems and Computer Aided Design (CAD). In the following, these are generally
referred to as geospatial information modeling (GIM) and Building Information Modeling.
Geospatial information modeling denotes the digital modeling method for space-related
phenomena of the real world. It is characterized by multidimensional descriptions of geospatial
features by location and orientation in a spatial reference system (SRS), object model, and field
model (implemented as vector and raster data formats), and has been extended to spatio-
temporal models (Erwig et al. 1999; Güting and Schneider 2005). Seen from a historical point
of view, in GIM geometric, topologic, and semantic modeling of objects have always been
treated as one unit. GIM is used as digital documentation of real-world states and can be applied
to a variety of spatially related questions (Herle et al. 2020). Due to the rapid development of
information and communication technology as well as advances in the methods and degrees of

Source: Google sites

automation of data acquisition, it has become possible to capture geodata in their 3D or 4D
extent and thus to create a very realistic virtual image of the real world in digital form.
Organizations such as the International Organization of Standardization (ISO), with the ISO
191xx family, and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), promote standards for better
interoperability, including data models (from simple feature model to CityGML, IndoorGML,
Land Administration Domain Model (LADM), and Land and Infrastructure Conceptual Model
(LandInfra)), exchange formats and languages (such as Geography Markup Language GML)
and service specifications (the OGC Web Services such as Web Map Service (WMS), Web
Feature Service (WFS), Web Processing Service (WPS), etc.). The resource-centric OGC API
family of standards are being developed to make it easy, especially for machines as well as for
anyone, to provide geospatial data to the web.
GIS research, development, and implementation are largely based on CityGML, first adopted
as version 1 in 2008 and recently released as version 3.0 (https://docs.ogc.org/is/20-010/20-
010.html) in September 2021. CityGML 3.0 is an OGC international standard for modeling,
storing, and exchanging semantic 3D city models. In CityGML, buildings, terrain, vegetation,
street furniture, urban object groups, water bodies, roads, tunnels, bridges, and land use can be
represented semantically and geometrically, with the construction module being new. In
addition to these eleven thematic modules, six modules are defined that are applicable to all
thematic modules. Besides the CityGMLCore, Appearance and Generics, which were already
available in earlier CityGML versions, the modules Dynamizer, Versioning and PointCloud
have been added.
Fig. 8

CityGML 3.0 module overview. The vertical boxes show the different thematic modules.
Horizontal modules specify concepts that are applicable to all thematic modules (Kutzner et
al. 2020)
The conceptual schema of CityGML specifies how and into which parts and pieces physical
objects of the real world should be decomposed and classified. All objects can be represented
with their semantics, 3D geometry, 3D topology, and appearances information. The objects can
further be represented using five predefined levels of details (LoD 0–4 with increasing accuracy
and structural complexity). The relevant city objects are defined using the Unified Modeling
Language (UML); CityGML 3.0 GML Encodings specify an XML schema for the file
exchange format. With the construction of large statewide or municipal city models, CityGML
has found an important role in the orchestra of OGC standards and is a good base for GI
research and development.

Source: Google sites

BIM and GIM technologies have different origins and come from different domains. In civil
engineering and architecture, a shift from purely constructional data handled by computer-
aided design software towards BIM is currently taking place. This means that the realization of
the joint modeling of geometry and semantics has arrived in BIM two decades later than in
GIM, still not considering topology as an independent concept besides geometry. BIM (using
Industry Foundation Class (IFC) (ISO 16739 2013) by OpenBIM) supports consistent and
integrated modeling of all data for specific construction and during its life cycle (Borrmann et
al. 2015). BIM and GIM modeling views are complementary to each other. BIM geometry
modeling is based on constructed solid geometry (CSG) (Mäntylä 1988), GIM – for instance,
CityGML as one of the most relevant standards of OGC for city models—uses boundary
representations (B-Rep). Whereas BIM is applied in planning processes for constructing
buildings and other structures, GIM is used to model geospatial features of the real world with
an application-dependent accuracy (Fig. 9). GIM usually is applied for applications such as
heat spread modeling in cities whereas BIM focuses on applications such as facility or energy
(heating/cooling) simulations in single buildings which can be up-scaled to urban scale (Geiger
et al. 2019). Both concepts are mature and are applied by various industries. Different
approaches are investigated to achieve interoperability between GIM and BIM models (Herle
et al. 2020).
Fig. 9

BIM and GIM and their common objects (Herle et al. 2020, adapted from Hutsell and
Bush 2016)

Information modeling also deals with the development of ontologies at different levels of
generality and formality, tailored to various needs and uses (Kokla and Guilbert 2020). Kuhn
(2005) defined geospatial semantics as “understanding GIS contents, and capturing this
understanding in formal theories.” Geospatial semantic modeling and ontologies refer to the
meaning of things (Hu 2018).

Source: Google sites

In the realm of spatial data, linked data and GIS are two separate paradigms, representing
different approaches for data representation and exchange. Recently, the volume of data with
spatial reference in the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud has been on the rise. Whereas in GIS
the main focus is on data for analysis by humans, LOD is structuring information in a format
meant for machines. If all datasets were openly published and used the same format for
structuring information, it would be possible to interrogate all of these datasets at once.
Analyzing huge volumes of data is potentially much more powerful than everyone using their
datasets dotted around the web in what is known as information silos. These interoperable
datasets are what LOD practitioners are working towards (Iwaniack et al. 2016). Time and
space referencing are the simplest methods for structuring such data and providing the context
for interpretation. This is one of the reasons for perceiving linked open data as one of the most
important approaches for geographic information publication and consumption on the web. It
provides new means for sharing, accessing, and integrating geoinformation and holds a promise
of changing ways, in which GI developers and analysts solve their problems.
According to Andrienko et al. (2017) “one of the most challenging problems in geographic
data science is the need to assess the data quality, suitability, and distribution of the data
available for analysis.” The heterogeneity of the real world, different technologies for data
acquisition and processing, database management tools and platforms lead to a large amount
of duplicated, inconsistent, ambiguous, and incomplete spatial data. Thus, spatial data quality
and uncertainty is an increasingly important issue in geographic information science.
Uncertainty and data quality modeling is an unavoidable part of spatial data due to an
approximation of real-world phenomena. The influence of uncertainty may be visible in the
form of original data and measurement, assumptions, or in the model structure (Bielecka and
Burek 2019).
To allow persistent use of data and objects modeled according to GIM and BIM, geospatial
information is maintained in spatial database management systems (SDBMS). SDBMS are
optimized to store and query data that represent objects defined in a geometric space. They
define special data types for geometric objects and allow geometric data (usually of a
geographic nature) to be stored either in regular database tables or in non-tabular databases.
Besides spatial data types, SDBMS provide special functions and indexes for efficient querying
(Güting 1994) and manipulating that data using declarative query languages such as the
Structured Query Language (SQL) or others. In the beginning, attribute data were stored
separately from the geometry in relational database management systems (RDBMS). With the
emergence of object-oriented thinking, complex data types and relations between geometry and
topology as well as attributes were treated in object-oriented database management systems
(OODBMS) (Balovnev et al. 2004). Object-relational database management systems
(ORDBMS) combine both approaches, the relational world, and the object world, and are
standard today (Thirunavukkarasu and Wadhwa 2016). These spatial database management
systems support at a minimum complex data types, spatial data within related tables—feature
classes, feature datasets, validation rules—subtypes and domains, spatial metadata, spatial
reference systems and transformations, topologies and methods for analyzing spatial
relationships, a spatial query language for query and search, and spatial indexing to improve
the performance (Jitkajornwanich et al. 2020).
More types of databases are approaching the market for specific purposes, which are also of
interest for geospatial problems: NoSQL databases (not only SQL—more than tables,
document-oriented, graph databases) and XML databases (semi-structured data described in
XML) are used in many disciplines beyond GIM and BIM (Lee et al. 2012). Furthermore,
Content Management Systems (non-structured data, e.g. documents, arbitrary texts, graphics)
and multimedia databases (imagery/video/mass data etc.), are well suited to manage the context
of geospatial data. Finally, in-memory databases (running in the RAM of the computer,

Source: Google sites

Continuous Query Language), data stream management systems (DSMS) (streams of sensor
data, video, audio), and array databases (Baumann 1994) are seeing a revival (Baumann et
al. 2021) as there is an increasing need of providing analysis-ready data (Baumann et al. 2018).

4.2 Case Study and Research Perspectives

4.2.1 Case Study “Urban Digital Twins”

Based on the most recent ICT and its protocols a huge variety of 3D/4D and real-time data
sources need to be integrated to model our environment. These data, collected by means of
both, physical and social sensing, together with modern remote sensing technologies, define
what is increasingly called the “digital twin” of a city, available for real-time geoinformation
processing. Urban situations should be simulated and analyzed with highly sophisticated
mathematical methods for different purposes. Huge amounts of different data need to be stored,
maintained and processed in a distributed and parallelized manner. Decision makers,
government and the public should be involved, which asks for advanced methods of
information visualization and dissemination (see Sects. 7 and 8). It facilitates the integration of
urban geodata for a variety of applications for smart cities and urban digital twins, including
urban and landscape planning, smart energy, transport and mobility, infrastructure, and others.
Li et al. (2020) integrate these research issues in an emerging real-time GIS platform for smart
cities that is designed for the acquisition, storage, analysis, and visualization of geospatial data
in real time (see Fig. 10). This real-time GIS needs to support high throughput and high-speed
processing of large GIS data streams, being location-sensitive, of high temporal granularity,
and being generated continuously from sensing devices that collectively comprise the IoT.
Fig. 10

A smart city enabled by real-time GIS (adapted and extended from Li et al. 2020)

Source: Google sites

4.2.2 Research perspectives
Picking up the challenges introduced in the former sections, we now outline the consequences
for geospatial information modeling and management in detail. Obviously, new challenges
arise such as:
1. (i) Modeling and management of big geospatial and spatio-temporal data from data-
intensive sensors incl. a change from images to videos.
2. (ii) Representations of buildings, cities, and infrastructures in different space and time
scales.
3. (iii) Modeling and management of full 3D spaces for GeoBIM, i.e. the integration of
GIM and BIM.
4. (iv) Real-time dynamic scenes and moving objects.
5. (v) Topology in 2D, 3D, 4D, and nD space.
6. (vi) Ontologies and semantics: Modeling spatial and semantic relations and interactions
as well as knowledge about objects and scenes.
7. (vii) Data quality and uncertainty modeling and maintenance in the whole GI
processing chain.
8. (viii) 4As (anytime, anywhere, for anyone, and anything).
9. (ix) Database support for big geospatial data analysis.
10. (x) Artificial intelligence (AI) supporting spatial information modeling and
management.
Challenge (i) opens “a new chapter of the book” in geoinformatics: Real-time and highly
dynamic scenarios will arise in remote sensing and other geo-applications with a high demand
to retrieve and to mine knowledge out of the objects and the scene in (near) real-time. New
data stream management systems and array databases, respectively, should be used and adapted
to the special requirements of spatio-temporal data streams.
The challenges (ii) to (v) indicate that future DBMS will have to be extended to enable the
management of multi-scale, full 3D, and topologic objects in spatio-temporal database
management systems (STDBMS) supporting discrete and continuous time. Full 3D space
representations of objects will be also necessary for GeoBIM to combine the data management
for GIM and BIM applications e.g. to integrate 3D geological underground models with 3D
city models. Besides geometric data types representing point clouds, lines, surfaces, and solids,
also topologic data types representing nodes, edges, meshes, and solids should be provided.
This means that not only the x, y, z-coordinates of points, lines, and surfaces of solid objects
will be represented and ready for export, but also the internal topology of the objects.
Furthermore, the semantic properties of these objects can be attached to their geometries and
topologies. The topologic representation will make it possible to distinguish between the
interior, the boundary, and the exterior of the objects and to navigate through the topologic
representations. Furthermore, topologic concepts are well suited to model the relationships
between spatial entities such as neighborhoods and intersections. Also, the number of
connected components and the number of their holes can be explicitly determined by topologic
concepts such as Betty numbers. Concerning time, GIM will require to model not only discrete
time (objects only represented in predefined time steps), but also continuous time to model
geographic or geoscientific processes such as volcanic eruptions, landslides, or tsunamis,
whereas in BIM discrete time steps will be sufficient e.g. to model the progress of a
construction site. 4D data representations (3D space plus time) are mandatory to maintain the
dynamics of features in the real world. The history and future of objects should be considered
equally in future 3D information modeling and management. Doing so, historical data are
helpful to model the future by extrapolating the past and simulating the future (Breunig et
al. 2020). How important it will be to extend 3D city modeling for archiving the past and
planning the future of cities has been portrayed impressively by Matthys et al. (2021).

Source: Google sites

Big geospatial information, especially the large amount of unstructured text data on the web,
and the fast development of natural language processing methods enable new research
directions in geospatial semantics (challenge vi). Six major areas are identified and discussed
by Hu (2017, 2018), including semantic interoperability by developing ontologies, digital
gazetteers as structured dictionaries for named places, geographic information retrieval,
geospatial semantic web, linked data, place semantics, and cognitive geographic concepts.
Elicitation approaches will involve a set of processes that aim at extracting latent knowledge
from unstructured or semi-structured content. Future research will be dealing with semantic-
based extraction, enrichment, search, and analysis of big geospatial data, places, regions,
events, trajectories, and topics as well as geospatial concepts and relations (Kokla and
Guilbert 2020).
GI research approaches will integrate imprecise geospatial data models (challenge vii) such as
fuzzy models and rough sets and multiple representations (Virrauntas et al. 2009). Quality
models should be able to propagate errors throughout the whole GI processing chain because
data imperfections propagated through spatial analysis affect the decision-making process.
Thus, error modeling and quality descriptions will be shifted from location uncertainties of
geographic features and phenomena, towards fitness for use data evaluation, to uncertainty in
decision making (Bielecka and Burek 2019).
Challenge (viii) refers to mobility: “With the integration of information and communication
technologies (ICT), especially mobile ICT in every aspect of our daily lives, the 4As (anytime,
anywhere, for anyone and anything) ‘services’ are being developed to benefit our human
society and environment. This new generation of 4A technologies brings convenience and
improves our quality of life, but also leads to surveillance, privacy, and ethical issues,
unknown, and unimagined before” (Huang et al. 2018).
The massive use of geospatial raster data requires efficient database support for big geospatial
data analysis (Challenge ix). Therefore, array databases (Baumann 1994) such as rasdaman
(Baumann et al. 1998) will allow the provision of analysis-ready data as Data Cubes (Baumann
et al. 2018; Baumann, 2018) or Earth Cubes (Mahecha et al. 2020).
Artificial intelligence (AI) methods will be included in DSMS, SDBMS, STDBMS, and array
databases (challenge x) to support data analysis. Machine learning will likely influence
geospatial information modeling and management in a revolutionary way: Future database
platforms should be able to deal with the input, models, and output of machine learning
approaches to simplify data preprocessing. Furthermore, AI may support data cleansing to
detect and correct errors in big data and time series (Breunig et al. 2020). Examples are the
tileless spatial and temporal selection of examination areas and the automatic detection of data
interpretation errors such as the unwrapping error in Sentinel-1 SAR data (Mazroob Semnani
et al. 2020). As a consequence, future scientists will be able to repeat their experiments as often
as they like by just retrieving arbitrary spatial and spatio-temporal data from the STDBMS to
check and compare the last runs of their experiments or of other researchers who carried out
similar data analysis experiments. Combined data analysis and data management tools will thus
increase the reproducibility of data analysis results significantly.
Furthermore, the use of parallel data management architectures (MapReduce-based systems)
such as SpatialHadoop® (Eldawy and Mokbel 2015), ST-Hadoop® (Alarabi et al. 2018), and
Hadoop-GIS® (Aji et al. 2013) and new developments will support fast query processing. New
directions in geospatial data management focusing on the interface between different fields of
research such as interfacing data management and visualization, data management and data
analysis, etc. have been discussed by Breunig et al. (2020).

5 Geospatial Information Integration

Source: Google sites

Geospatial information integration faces a set of challenges related to the high variety of
available data in the geospatial domain. While it has similarities with general data integration,
data augmentation, and data cleaning, it differs a lot as different conceptualizations and
resolutions lead to fundamentally different representations of the same thing in reality. This
can lead to situations, where spatial data integration is simpler as opposed to general data
integration: When two different objects are in a very similar location, they likely have a strong
relationship and the existence of the relationship can be inferred just from geometry and
topology. However, fully correct and plausible representations of the same object can be
significantly different in terms of geometry: do we identify a house with its perimeter or its
cadastral polygon or maybe just with the entrance of the property? Does the garage belong to
the house or is it a separate object?

5.1 State of the Art

Data, models, information, and knowledge are scattered across different communities and
disciplines, causing severe limitations to current geosciences research (Gil et al. 2019).
Geospatial data is captured for different purposes, with different sensors, based on different
data models. This leads to a huge variability of available data sets. This variety not only
concerns the semantic contents of the data but also to data modeling, formats and
representation. As data sets often relate to the same physical reality—or the same spatial and
temporal extent of the reality—there is a need for data and information integration to fully
exploit the richness of available data. Examples are topographic data sets and special branch
data, e.g. ATKIS and GDF; GML and BIM formats, e.g. CityGML and IFC; structured data
sets and raw data, e.g. CityGML buildings and 3D building surface models from point clouds.
The goal of data integration is to
 provide a consistent view of a set of datasets from different regimes, schemata, and
conceptualizations,
 allow an integrated analysis of data from different sources and
 enrich data sets with information from another one.
Data integration is typically tackled on different levels and with different mechanisms:
 Syntactic integration ensures that comparable data formats are used so that the data can
be represented in the same system and e.g. visually overlaid. Such a process can be
dealt with using standards (e.g. OGC simple feature specification, CityGML,
GeoTIFF).
 Semantic integration relates to the contents of the data and the meaning and aims at
identifying corresponding object categories in both data sets. This process presumes
that those correspondences are revealed and made explicit. Often, ontologies are used
to describe the meaning of objects. An ontology is a shared conceptualization of objects
and relations of a specific knowledge domain (Gruber 1995). This means that it is
typically a negotiation process among different stakeholders to define and describe
what constitutes an object.
 Instance-based integration: Given two datasets with different representations of
possibly identical objects, the construction of correspondence of objects in terms of
relations like “identity” or “is-part-of” can be used to derive a joint object catalog
combining information from both datasets. In geospatial data, such correspondences
are typically derived using semantic and geometric matching, i.e. taking similar object
characteristics and similar form, shape, and location into account.
 Latent Space Integration: Given a family of independent datasets, learn representations
of each of the datasets like a feature transformation (Bengio et al. 2013) and align the
resulting feature spaces into a joint space in which the joint geometry captures
similarity.

Source: Google sites

Due to these very different schemes of data integration, the results of the integration are
manifold: one option is to derive a consistent, homogeneous object catalog, which integrates
and consolidates the properties and attributes of the objects it was derived from. This includes
steps such as entity resolution, entity matching, geometric fusion—e.g. deriving an
intermediate geometry—and harmonization of the attributes. As all of these steps can be
challenging, a fundamentally different approach is to first propagate all the objects from the
data sources into a large set, maybe adding the source dataset to the name, or otherwise making
possibly identical objects from different datasets to different objects. In this intermediate
representation, semantic links between objects are computed via data mining. A good
introduction on this topic is given by Getoor and Diehl (2005). These links can be semantic
relations such as neighboring, “is-part-of” or “belongs to”. In addition, the “identity” can be
mined as a relation “is-same-as”. Furthermore, the certainty of such links can be assigned as a
property to the link such that clear relations (e.g., “is-part-of” if the geometric footprints
overlap) can be distinguished from weak relations (e.g., “is-part-of” with a weight of 0.5 for
two different objects, because the geometry intersects both objects). While this approach avoids
errors introduced by conflating two datasets into a new one forcing all information to be
merged, it introduces a much more complicated topologic data space as the result of the
integration, and it becomes more difficult to implement applications on top of such a data space.
The semantic web aims at making the links and relations between data explicit by defining
resource description framework (RDF) triples; the field also provides tooling and query
languages for the resulting data spaces. However, it is still an area under development and
further research is needed to fully unlock the potential of these approaches, especially under
the uncertainty inherent to spatial data objects.
In general, data integration in the spatial community is often a process in which at least input
and output datasets have a spatial interpretation. An important exception to this rule is the case
of latent space methods in which an artificial space (geometric space, topologic space, or
differently structured data space) is generated in which a certain problem (e.g., object detection,
change detection) can be solved although the original geospatial attributes are (partly) lost in
this step. In many such cases, this loss of spatialness as part of the method is compensated by
an additional data integration step with the original data. State-of-the-art computer vision
algorithms for object detection, like Yolo, are a good illustration of this principle. In these
algorithms, the spatial space (e.g., the image) is decomposed into many small patches which
are individually processed. For each of those patches, without the location information in the
original image, the system assigns a probability that the patch is part of an object to be detected.
Then, these partial results are recombined into a spatial object representation like a bounding
box. In this case, spatial information is removed in the splitting phase to small patches, and the
spatial nature is reintroduced when combining neighboring patches to bounding boxes after
classification in a non-spatial image classification setting.

5.2 Case Studies

5.2.1 Case Study “Data-driven schema matching”

An approach to achieve semantic integration is proposed by Kieler (2020). It is a data-driven
approach to determine correspondences between two ontologies and starts from the assumption
that objects which share the same geometry and spatial footprint also have something in
common on a semantic level (see Fig. 11). An example is a forest, which is called „A4107
(Wald, Forst)“ in ATKIS and “G7120 (Land Cover: Forest (Woodland))” in GDF, and which
in both data sets is represented at the same location and with a similar geometric delineation.
If there are many examples of such correspondences, then it is fair to infer that “A4107” and

Source: Google sites

“G7120” belong to the same semantic class. Based on this principle, Kieler developed an
optimization approach using integer programming to determine the best correspondences
between two data sets. The challenges are that typically the correspondences between objects
are not unique (i.e. not 1:1 but 1:n or n:m) and there are geometric inaccuracies. In addition,
when objects are represented in different scales, the identification of correspondences has to
be refined and has to go beyond geometric matching, taking the changes into account that result
from generalization.
Fig. 11

A survey of approaches to automatic schema matching (Kieler 2020)

5.2.2 Case Study “Data Enrichment Based on Information Fusion”

Crowdsourcing based on ubiquitous sensors has a huge potential for collecting dynamic
environmental information. An approach exploiting smartphone sensors mounted on bicycles
to determine road roughness is described by Wage and Sester (2021). The approach is based
on the intuitive principle, that roughness can be measured using the acceleration sensors of a
smartphone. In this way, the roughness of a road segment is observed by different bicycles.
However, due to different influences such as the type of bike and setup, the observations will
not yield the same roughness values. To incorporate parameters describing the context of
measurements, the authors set up an adjustment model and jointly optimize the unknown
roughness and the unknown context variables (describing for example the damping of the bike)
exploiting the measurements and knowledge from the map. In this way, all the observations of
the same road segment contribute to the unknown roughness value of a segment, under the
constraint that all observations must yield the same value. The problem is solved by a least-
squares adjustment, so in parallel to the segment roughness also parameters representing the
main varying influencing factors are estimated. In the first step, the trajectories of the cyclists
are matched to a road network; then for each road segment, the trajectories are treated as an
observation. After the adjustment, roughness values for all road segments are estimated The
approach assumes that the roughness is constant for each segment—which, however, is not
necessarily true over time, due to degradation or renewal. Thus, it is possible to analyze the
adjusted roughness observations over time and automatically check for temporal
discontinuities

Fig. 12

Source: Google sites

Result of joint estimation of roughness (left); detection of temporal changes in roughness
(right) (Wage and Sester (2021))

5.2.3 Case Study “Integration of Spatial Feature Maps Extracted from Social Media with
Remote Sensing Images for Urban Heat analysis”
This is an example of the combination of spatial information of various types into a single deep
learning model learning a joint representation of the input datasets suitable for classifying urban
regions in a certain resolution (Leichter et al. 2018). The underlying model of local climate
zones (LCZ) describes urban settlements in several classes including aspects such as the density
(compact, open, sparse) and the height (low-rise, mid-rise, high-rise) of the buildings as well
as some additional classes for the non-built area (dense trees, scattered trees, soil, water).
Combinations of these features lead to a classification scheme with 17 classes (Steward and
Oke 2012). This classification scheme, however, also defines a scale and proposes to assess
these classes on a scale comparable to a 100 m × 100 m grid. In this example, the authors
combine social media data from the Twitter social networks (e.g., georeferenced objects with
metadata from the user account and spatial information from the spatial distribution of tweets)
with satellite imagery from the Sentinel-2 mission, which includes various spectral bands and
different resolutions. In terms of information integration, the authors start with a spatial input
dataset represented by Sentinel-2 layers for red, green blue, and near-infrared (R.G.B.IR.).
These are all given in 10 m resolution in a certain UTM projection. Then, the authors applied
elements of typical CNNs like pooling and inject all given information in their natural
resolution. For the misalignment in terms of projection, nearest-neighbor interpolation is used
for Twitter data and bicubic interpolation for images. Figure 13 depicts the architecture: After
considering the first layers (R.G.B.IR.) at 10 m resolution, pooling is done to generate 20 m
resolution and band 11 and band 12 (which have this resolution) are injected by stacking them
onto the feature maps already extracted. A further pooling brings us to 100 m x 100 m in which
the authors sample the average number of friends and comparable features from all Twitter
messages observed in this area for a three-month interval. Then, some convolutional steps
allow the model to transform until the output shall be the LCZ map for the given patch. As the
initial patch size, the authors use 250 × 250 pixels, that is patches of 2.5 km × 2.5 km (see also
Fig. 13).

Source: Google sites

Source: Google sites
Local Climate Zone Data Example and Deep Data Integration Architecture: Different data
sources are integrated into their “natural” resolution by adding the information in the correct
“location” of a typical CNN (Leichter et al. 2018)
This is an example of data fusion in which a single deep learning model (feature learning) is
used and data of different nature (features extracted from Twitter, different resolution image
bands, etc.) are combined in a joint model learning to predict the local climate zones. In total,
this approach increased the performance as measured by the F1-score (a measure of a test's
accuracy ranging between 0 and 1) by 0.05 across all classes with significant margins of up to
20% for some of the classes.

5.2.4 Case Study “Model Fusion as a General Data Integration Technique”

The previous example has shown that deep learning and other machine learning techniques
based on learning representations are helpful because these representations can be combined
(by stacking information into feature maps, for example) in the context of a problem to generate
spatial output combining various non-integrated data sources. As a final case study, Hoffmann
et al. (2019) show the case of ground-aerial fusion. Given a machine learning problem (e.g.,
building function classification in residential vs. commercial or similar), aerial imagery of the
area of interest and street view information, how can one predict the function of a building (or
detect damages, or generate map information)? In this situation, even the feature spaces that
one can generate during deep learning do not align well with each other as aerial images show
information that is significantly different from street-level information (e.g., roof shape vs.
façade), but still informative for the result (e.g., building function). In this situation, the authors
showed that combining features in a single end-to-end learning paradigm does not work well.
Instead, the authors solve the problem for each input dataset separately and treat the output not
as deterministic information, but as probabilistic votes. That is, the authors train a probabilistic
classifier independently on each of our non-integrated input datasets trying to solve the problem
directly. The resulting probabilities can then be combined, in the simplest case by taking the
mean, and the joint classifier outperforms classifiers based on a single optimization in most
cases.
Figure 14 (top) depicts the non-integrated dataset on the left-hand side: three resolutions of
overhead information and a Streetview image of the same location are combined. In
Fig. 14 (middle), one sees the performance of individual models combined with other models
through a mean of the output function.
Fig. 14

Source: Google sites

Decision-level fusion for multimodal data integration: As Streetview and aerial images do not
share any geometric features, they are treated independently and combined systematically by
decision-level fusion (Hoffmann et al. 2019)

That is, the distribution depicted in each row of this figure is the distribution of performance
of combining the named model with any other model in our experiments. The model name
consists of the architecture (Inception, VGG), the pre-training dataset (ImageNet or Places365
for Streetview models), and a counter as the authors trained different models for each
combination. One sees that all these combinations are not extremely powerful, that high-
resolution (A19) overhead imagery is the strongest feature, but that Streetview can help as well.
Finally, Fig. 14 (bottom) shows the reachable performances of taking the mean of up to eight
models. Increasing the number of (different) models, the average performance increases and
the variance decreases. This leads to a better overall classification and another example of that
diverse teams can be stronger than well-trained teams lacking diversity.

Source: Google sites

However, this strategy relies on the fact that each model contributes independent information,
that is, when applying it to data that is more correlated than Streetview and overhead imagery
or scaling the number of models to even higher numbers will not necessarily lead to better
results.

5.3 Research Perspectives

The ultimate goal is to automatically integrate information of any two data geospatial sets into
a joint framework, which allows for integrated data analysis. This implies that correspondences
on an instance and schema level are automatically detected, deviations between the data sets
(e.g. differences in geometry and/or in semantics, e.g. higher granularity, level of detail) are
identified. This enables future systems to automatically select the correct data source (or
combination of data sources) for any problem at hand.
According to Gil et al. (2019), open issues include cross-domain concept mapping, entity
resolution, scientifically valid data linking, and effective tools for finding, integrating, and
reusing data. In the following, a few of these research challenges are briefly addressed.

5.3.1 Analysis Ready Data

This concept assumes that all relevant information about individual data is available in terms
of metadata descriptions. An object “knows” about its properties and also for which processes
it can be used. Such knowledge can, e.g., be modeled in terms of knowledge graphs (Auer and
Mann 2019). In this way, it is also possible to leave data in their raw form until they are needed
in a different representation. An example is 3D point clouds, which are an adequate
representation for many applications, e.g. for visualization, determination of clearance in
buildings or roads. For other applications, however, a detailed and rich semantic and geometric
model might be required, e.g. for planning an extension of a building. Under the paradigm of
analysis-ready data, such models could be derived on-demand and on the fly.

5.3.2 Information Integration and Information Quality

In general, when applying data integration over spatial data sources, one consequence is that
the data quality will change. Unfortunately, it is very difficult in practice to quantify such
information losses or gains in advance and independent of a concrete application. This is why
data integration is usually performed for each application individually from a set of base
datasets which are rather pure observations. By providing information products together with
their “lineage”, that is, how they have been created and how parameters have been chosen and
tradeoffs have been resolved, information products could be designed that have a more
universal applicability in data fusion.

5.3.3 Scale and Generalization

When information of different spatial scales is integrated, the aggregation effect of
generalization has to be considered: through generalization, objects are combined, simplified,
and they might change their topologic relations with other objects. Thus, typically the data has
to be transformed to a comparable generalization level before they can be integrated (and
possibly generalized further jointly) (Hampe et al. 2004).
Furthermore, problems of scale and also round-off errors can have effects such that even the
coordinate transformation between two different datasets or the integration of two datasets of
different spatial scales can have an influence on the outcome of very simple operations such as
point-in-polygon filtering. Keeping track of these errors in all processing stages and especially
keeping track of the error propagation is crucial for reliable complex workflows based on data
integration. However, tool support for such quality-oriented data integration is still largely

Source: Google sites

lacking and it relies mainly on the experience and care of the data scientists performing the
data integration.

5.3.4 Linking Data and Processes

Traditional geoinformatics often concentrate on data and its automatic analysis. On the way to
more and more automation, however, methods for linking the data with applications and tasks
are needed. This can be achieved by introducing more knowledge on different levels: on the
one hand knowledge about the data, their semantics, and relations; on another level, however,
also knowledge about processes and connections between different knowledge chunks and
underlying physics or rules. Knowledge graphs are one way to formalize this knowledge (Mai
et al. 2020). Furthermore, it would be good if data was always accompanied by its whole
processing history, metadata, and associated software tools. Only in this way, spatial analysis
can be reproducible and causes of problems can be identified.

5.3.5 Machine Learning and Data Fusion

In the last decades, machine learning has become a more and more mature technique. One way
of using machine learning for data fusion and data integration is to use machine learning to
project data into a data space in which the distance or topology has some application-dependent
meaning. For example, one can learn a vector representation of text in which sentences with
similar meanings are near each other. A good introduction to this topic including high-quality
open source implementations is given by Facebook’s fasttext library (Joulin et al. 2017). Such
models have lately been applied to various spatial data types as well. The basic idea is that we
want to construct a so-called latent space in which a notion of similarities like the Euclidean or
the cosine similarity of feature vectors captures a, maybe noisy or only partially available,
notion of similarity or identity in the source datasets.

5.3.6 Heterogeneous Information Networks

Spatial data integration inevitably leads to situations in which ambiguities need to be resolved
and, as discussed before, we can either resolve them by data imputation, data selection, data
integration, or random choice. Alternatively, we can make these ambiguities explicit in a linked
data representation based on knowledge graphs. However, spatial data models are often
formalized in a relational or object-oriented schema (e.g., objects are of certain types and these
types have certain required or optional attributes). Knowledge graphs, in their general form,
neither represent nor constrain data to follow such schemata and, hence, if they are used for
data integration, such schema information is lost. Heterogeneous information networks have
been proposed as an approach to generalize the notion of a database schema to knowledge
graphs and to render more flexible the queries at hand in such a way that schema information
can be exploited. In this case, every node in the knowledge graph is assigned a certain type,
and types can prescribe subgraph patterns such as which relations should (at least) exist and
how they are modeled. This schema information (type and attribute information) can be
valuable in efficient querying and data completion or imputation tasks. Furthermore, such
schemata can be enforced implying that all modeled data in the knowledge graph contain all
required information for an application. However, these techniques are still not fully mature,
and spatial aspects have not been at the center of investigation yet. And the challenge of finding
and integrating different schemata is not solved by the concept. Heterogeneous information
networks can, however, be a viable tool in data integration as the existence of schemata on the
input and the output can be exploited (Shi et al. 2016).
Many more research challenges need to be resolved to reduce the problems that spatial data
integration currently still implies for practitioners. These challenges relate to aspects like user-

Source: Google sites

friendliness, explainability, real-time properties, cost, complexity, communication, and many
more. In summary, data integration methods can be roughly categorized as follows:
1. (i)Methods that resolve ambiguities and enforce a clean data output at the risk of errors,
loss of information, and loss of quality.
2. (ii) Methods that avoid to enforce a clean output at the expense of an increased
complexity and the risk a need for query languages, and joint conceptualizations.
3. (iii) Methods that have a non-spatial but simple intermediate representation (e.g.,
vector embedding, deep learning data fusion) at the risk of loss of explainability,
generality, and of limited usefulness beyond the initial use case.
Future research should reduce the number of errors occurring in methods of type (i), reduce the
burden on practically working with complex linked data in methods of category (ii), and
provide more universal representation learning schemes in data fusion research to make (iii) a
more useful data integration strategy beyond representations tailored to single applications.
Drawing a final conclusion, we can say that despite the fact that geospatial information
integration provides a well-studied and long-formulated problem, no one-fits-all solution has
been proposed so far. Due to the complexity of the tradeoffs involved, geospatial data
integration will remain to provide a vast number of research opportunities including case
studies (examples, how one can successfully integrate into a certain limited
setting), foundational computational research (novel algorithms and data models to mitigate
certain challenges and incompatibilities existing today in the geospatial field),
and accompanying multidisciplinary research (societal, political, economic, and ethical
considerations in the context of data integration).

6 Geospatial decision support

6.1 State of the Art
A spatial decision support system (SDSS) can help spatial planners and decision-makers
conduct an analysis of the situation and come to appropriate decisions. SDSS is defined as
“interactive computer-based systems designed to support a user or group of users in achieving
a higher effectiveness of decision making while solving a semi-structured spatial decision
making problem”. In this context, a “semi-structured” problem is a problem whose criteria are
not well defined a priori, e.g., due to a lack of knowledge or because of different stakeholders
having different objectives. SDSS combines spatial and non-spatial data, the analysis and
visualization functions of GIS, and decision models in specific domains), an SDSS usually
consists of five components, including a geographic information system, a model management
component, a dialog management component, a knowledge management component
(including a knowledge base and an inference engine), and a stakeholder component (including
methods and tools supporting the involvement of and communication among different players).
A crucial and challenging step towards tackling a spatial decision-making problem is, thus, to
develop a mathematical model that formalizes the problem’s criteria in terms of constraints and
potentially competing objectives. Another step is to compute an optimal trade-off between
these objectives subject to the constraints of the problem. Often, the aim is to compute a set of
alternative solutions to the problem (rather than a single one) to reflect different preferences
among the objectives. Moreover, spatial decision-making is usually considered as an iterative
process, e.g., since an evaluation of the solution may reveal the necessity to revise the model.
The types of decision problems addressed with SDSSs include resource location-allocation
(e.g., a decision concerning which land to allocate to realize a building project), network
routing and reachability (e.g. the best path from A to B or service coverage areas), resource
status decisions (e.g., a decision concerning when to harvest a field), and policy decisions (e.g.,
a decision concerning subsidies to promote wind energy). A more detailed introduction is
provided by Keenan and Jankowski (2018).

Source: Google sites

6.2 Case Studies

6.2.1 Case Study “Land Use Options and Ecosystem Services”

Land is a limited resource. It is under increasing pressure from competing uses such as
urbanization, agriculture, forestry, and mining. Therefore, decisions involving the use of land
have to be well informed and balanced. The aim of PROSPER-RO (Prospektive synergistische
Planung von Entwicklungsoptionen in Regiopolen am Beispiel des Stadt-Umland-Raums
Rostock, https://prosper-ro.auf.uni-rostock.de/) is to strengthen cross-regional and cross-actor
cooperation in the Rostock urban-surrounding area through i) providing a GIS-based expert
support system (GIS-EUS) as a jointly used data and planning basis, ii) developing a uniform
monetary valuation standard for all land functions based on the ecosystem service approach
and iii) using the aforementioned products to develop concrete synergistic solutions for the
areas of land development, circular economy and water management. The decision support
system (see Fig. 15) developed in collaboration between science, administration, and private
enterprises uses a rule-base. The implementation is based on open source software and
integrates authoritative and open data (Hoffmann et al. 2021).
Fig. 15

(Source: Project PROSPER-RO)

GIS-based decision support system for land use options and ecosystem services

6.2.2 Case Study “Public Health Monitoring”

The implementation of SDSS has the potential to facilitate public health decision-makers with
many tasks from detecting high-risk locations for influenza outbreaks to determining the
distribution of medical facilities (Beard et al. 2018). The importance and potential of such
decision support systems for disease surveillance by incorporating spatial and temporal
components of reportable disease data to model outbreaks and using geographic information
systems for analysis and visualization is currently encountered by everybody every day in the
Corona pandemic (Fig. 16).

Source: Google sites

Fig. 16

COVID-19-Dashboard of the Robert Koch Institute

6.2.3 Case Study “Decision Support for Smart Farming”

Robots and unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with multiple sensors are increasingly used by
farmers and agricultural scientists for the monitoring of field crops. Based on the data acquired,
decisions concerning field operations (e.g., weeding or fertilizing) are inferred. The aim is to
increase the precision of such operations and, consequently, the sustainability of crop
production. While future field robots and UAVs will reach a high degree of autonomy, human
experts will still be indispensable, e.g., to plan the mission goals of a robot. This requires a
good awareness of the current situation. Therefore, mobile apps that provide an overview are
needed. Figure 17 shows a solution that has been developed in the cluster of excellence
PhenoRob (see Sect. 9) to help human experts make the right decisions.
Fig. 17

Source: Google sites

(Source: Project: PhenoRob). (Image taken from a mobile application, leading to a reduced
resolution)
A mobile app developed in the cluster of excellence PhenoRob that shows an interactive map,
weather information, and information from the PhenoRob database, such as information on
past crop treatments

6.3 Research Perspectives

The application fields of SDSS will increase, e.g. in the environmental management of waste
and pollution, in dealing with natural hazards, emergency, and disaster responses, or in forestry
and agriculture applications, just to name a few. Due to the close link between SDSSs and GIS,
the development of the two goes hand in hand. However, certain challenges of geodata
acquisition, representation and data fusion, analysis, and visualization are of particular
importance in the context of SDSS and need further research.
With the advent of the IoT and big data, the problem of semantic heterogeneity caused by
different meanings of data, terminologies, and models needs to be solved.
Methods to analyze urban and landscape structures are needed to provide spatial planners and
decision-makers with a better understanding of the situation. The emerging field of urban
analytics focuses on analyzing urban data (e.g., geographic and demographic data) to detect
patterns that are relevant for city planning tasks. A typical example is the analysis of data on
urban green spaces together with census data and data on transportation networks to detect
areas with a shortage of green spaces (Oehrlein et al. 2019).
Simulation methods are needed to predict the growth of a city (e.g. cellular automata), changes
in land use, and to determine event patterns by agent-based modeling. For this task, modern
machine learning approaches offer new opportunities. Furthermore, tools supporting multi-
criteria decision-making including new multi-objective optimization algorithms embedding
the fundamental (i.e. special) properties of spatial data, spatial dependence, and spatial
heterogeneity are needed (Malczewski and Rinner 2015; Malczewski and Jankowski 2020).
This relates, for example, to algorithms for spatial unit allocation, land use allocation, or
districting that, today, often produce only one single optimal solution as an outcome.
Developing algorithms that yield a set of alternative solutions is a challenge for future research.
The timely availability of spatial data requires both, advanced planning in the provision of
appropriate SDI data and the use of crowdsourcing and real-time data collection to augment or
update existing data. Integrating the huge amount of sensor data or social media
data becoming available worldwide will allow focusing SDSS research on real-time decision-
making in mobile or dynamic environments. Mobile devices will facilitate the delivery of
results of SDSS for location-based services such as decision support for the public or
specialized applications in, for instance, smart farming. Moreover, as highly detailed 3D city
models, as well as real-time data from IoT sensors and social media, are becoming increasingly
available, spatial planners have, on the one hand, new opportunities to make more informed
and timelier decisions but, on the other hand, also need new methods that can handle large sets
or streams of heterogeneous and sometimes fuzzy data.
New visualization solutions are needed to provide decision-makers and the public with a good
overview of the current situation of their environment. Dashboard-style visualization systems
(as shown in Fig. 16), for example, are a promising tool for real-time traffic monitoring.
Furthermore, interactive web-based multi-user geoinformation systems are needed to enable
discourse among different stakeholders and to support public participation.
New methods and models should enable decision-makers in business and public policy to
respect given constraints in strategic planning and to understand geospatial contributions and
impacts (location matters!). Research is needed to determine the right spatial units for analysis
and defining the boundaries at an appropriate local scale, but consistent with a common global

Source: Google sites

basis. This requires the development of an accepted system of metrics that can be applied
consistently at and across different scales. New modeling approaches should allow the
integration of fuzzy knowledge by knowledge engineering techniques. New decision-making
techniques will involve research on spatial thinking, analytical reasoning, and knowledge
engineering.
Heterogeneous and conflicting multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) can be applied to
consider multiple stakeholders’ points of view, as well as the multiple aspects of the problem
under examination. This allows the stakeholders to express their preferences to decision criteria
and/or alternative scenarios using GIS-based procedures, which provide feedback, increasing
the trust in the results. Public participation SDSS represent a demanding and advanced
application of SDSS principles supporting the public having a real interest in decisions made
affecting their local region. This brings together people from different social and educational
backgrounds, and this diversity poses a challenge to represent the decision problem in a format
suitable for the public which may have had no training in spatial representations. Web-based
applications may be appropriate, including interactive elements such as geo-questionnaires
and geo-discussion platforms, in which questions and structured online discussions are coupled
with interactive analytics and visualizations to collect data on people's preferences concerning
current and/or future conditions. Moreover, those maps become ‘visual indices’ offering
solutions to the planners to change and optimize the conditions and support collaborative
decision-making involving spatial representations and data sets.
In the future, decision support will benefit even more from mainstream IT developments and
societal demands. The development of suitable cloud-based tools will provide the computing
capacity to address problems with large amounts of data. Traditional government and
commercial sources of spatial data have been augmented with open data initiatives (starting
from OpenStreetMap in 2004 via open governmental data to crowdsourced data today) or
geolocated social media data. Standardization and service orientation support easier integration
in classical administrative and enterprise environments (Keenan and Jankowski 2018). The
general IT development will allow the integration of computationally intensive models and to
run more complex scenarios. Richer sources of data and increased complexity only increase
the decision-support challenge of presenting information in a way that reflects the needs of
decision-makers. This will foster research on rich problem representations, including the use
of dashboards with multiple GIS layers linked with graphs, tables, text and/or 3D visualization.
7 Geospatial Information Visualization
The task of visualizing geographic information with maps is classically attributed
to cartography. At present, however, it is often addressed with a highly interdisciplinary
approach.

7.1 The Interdisciplinarity of Geoinformation Visualization

Today, it is common to consider problems of cartographic visualization in the context of
information visualization, which also includes the visualization of non-spatial information with
other means than maps, such as diagrams or charts (Andrienko and Andrienko 2006). This
modern view of cartography has led to the term “geovisualization”. Information visualization
provides the link to computer science and several of its subdisciplines, including computer
graphics, human–computer interaction, and theoretical computer science (with a focus on the
development of efficient geometric algorithms and data structures), as well as to cognitive
science and psychology, which are particularly relevant for the evaluation of visualization by
users. The development of interactive visualization systems for the analysis of large volumes
of spatio-temporal data is often subsumed under the term “visual analytics”. Moreover, present-
day cartographic research often involves experts from application domains, such as geoscience

Source: Google sites

or social sciences. Last but not least, experts in geodesy and geospatial information science
deal with cartography while considering the whole process of map production from the
acquisition of data to the dissemination of maps. In particular, they bring in expertise in
modeling geographic phenomena with spatio-temporal and thematic data models as well as
generalizing and integrating the respective data while considering the uncertainties in them.
Often, cartographic research is driven by technological innovations that entail both new
opportunities and challenges. As an example, smart and mobile devices have enabled a whole
range of new applications of maps for location-based services. Cartographers have understood
this, on the one hand, as an opportunity to generate new types of personalized and interactive
maps addressing a user’s individual need in his or her current situation. On the other hand,
providing a good overview of the situation on the small screen of a smartphone or smartwatch
is still a largely open challenge.

7.2 Case Studies

This section aims to shed light on current and future challenges of geovisualization by
discussing some recent research works of exemplary nature.

7.2.1 Case Study “Visualization of POIs”

With the increasing availability of point data—for example as user-generated POIs or
measurements with huge sensor networks—the problems of enormous volume and semantic
and temporal heterogeneity must be addressed. Both aspects can drastically reduce the user-
friendliness in the visual representation and exploration, in particular through geometric or
thematic point cluttering. There is still a significant need to optimize generalization workflows
designed for specific high-level visual interpretation tasks. Static, multi-scale, or multi-
temporal points must be taken into account. One possible solution considers the task-oriented
generalization of these point data sets using agent-based modeling

7.2.2 Case Study “Intuitive Visualization Based on Mixed Reality”

Due to more and more hardware solutions and falling costs, Mixed Reality (MR) is finding its
way into everyday life. Although 4D geodata is an essential component in virtual or augmented
reality applications, cartography and maps have only played a subordinate role in the entire
development process so far. For example, generalized maps that are linked to other
visualizations can be used for the overview function in MR. Collaboration and communication
between MR users need to be improved, which includes further development of interfaces as
well as on-the-fly and collaborative generation of map elements such as symbols or annotations
Additionally, gamification elements have already shown a positive motivation effect.

7.2.3 Case Study “Visualization of Uncertainties”

Diverse uncertainties due to errors in raw data acquisition, uncertain model assumptions, or
misleading visual representations are rarely taken into account in spatial analysis workflows.
To be more effective and efficient, the visual representation should not reflect the detailed
representation of individual values, but the effects on decision-making. This requires a more
detailed, task-oriented concept of visualization formats and parameters that are tailored to
specific tasks. This also includes the often neglected aspect of uncertainty propagation Closer
cooperation with cognitive sciences is necessary because the cognitive processing of uncertain
information still is a fundamental and not well-understood problem.

Source: Google sites

7.2.4 Case Study “Visualization-Based Spatial Cognition”
The eye-tracking technologies enable the documentation of eye movements for spatial
cognition tasks. Two case studies are reported here. The first one has the objective to explore
the impacts of road patterns and landmarks on navigation and wayfinding based on the gaze
behavior of pedestrians. Given regular and irregular road patterns in Streetview images,
landmarks on roads and outside roads, 21 users were recruited to perform tasks of orientation
and shortest route selection

Fig. 18
Test setting for orientation (top) and shortest route selection (bottom)
Fig. 19

Source: Google sites

Fixations of orientation for two road patterns (left) and two landmark categories (right)
The analytical results showed that participants using irregular road patterns relied on landmarks
more strongly and performed better in terms of more accurate answers than those using regular
road patterns. Moreover, all participants regardless of tasks and road patterns rely on labels or
landmarks in the environment more intensively than those on the roads.
The second case is dedicated to exploring the performance of map use in a desktop environment
(DE) in comparison to virtual reality (VR). A total of 108 participants were recruited for three
groups of tasks: estimation, ranking, and association. The performance indicators include
accuracy, information search, information processing, interaction, and subjective rating. The
analytical results of eye-movement patterns have proven the complementarity between DE and
VR.
Fig. 20

Source: Google sites

Desktop Environment (left) versus Virtual Reality (right)

There are no significant differences in terms of accuracy and satisfaction; participants of VR

processed information faster than their counterparts in a DE, but the other way around for the
search tasks. The ranking task requires the most interactions, but the estimation is most difficult
in both environments. In addition, the performance of map use is more heterogenous among
participants of VR than those in DE. This implies the need for habituation for VR. These user
tests can be transferred to larger scales involving outdoor test environments and neuroimaging
technologies such as electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

7.2.5 Case Study “Interactive Maps for the Exploration of Spatio-temporal Point Data”
Contributions uploaded to social media or crowdsourcing platforms often include both spatial
coordinates and time stamps. As a consequence, large collections of geo-tagged events have
become available. Examples are data sets about occurrences of birds reported by voluntary bird
watchers as well as visits to attractions reported by tourists. Effective interaction techniques
are needed to enable the discovery of spatio-temporal patterns in such data sets. A common
interaction technique is to filter the data with a temporal window and to render a map providing
a good overview of all events within the filter. Efficient methods are needed to speed up the
map generation in this scenario, such that a user can continuously move a temporal filter over
the time axis and, at any time, sees the map corresponding to the current position of the filter
without a noticeable delay. To solve this challenge, an idea is to adopt the concept of time-
windowed data structures that was introduced the context of fundamental problems of
computational geometry. developed an efficient time-windowed data structure for maps
showing polygonal representations of clusters of events within a user-selected temporal filter.
Similarly, presented a time-windowed data structure to efficiently generate a spatial density
map for all events within a temporal filter This research shows the potential of specialized
geometric data structures for the interactive exploration of big geodata and the need for closer
collaborations between cartography and computational geometry.
Fig. 21

Source: Google sites

(Image taken from a mobile application, leading to a reduced resolution)
Number of reported occurrences of gulls within a selected time window

7.2.6 Case Study “Cartographic Label Placement for Small-Screen Maps”

Research on cartographic label placement has a relatively long tradition in computer science,
where it is often considered as a packing problem asking to place as many labels as possible
on the map without creating overlaps. However, the optimal solutions generated with this
approach often result in a map full of labels, covering the features displayed in the map almost
completely. Moreover, research on cartographic label placement has so far primarily dealt with
static maps or with maps where zooming is the only possible interaction. Consequently, the
existing solutions often require the user to zoom into an extremely large scale to receive a map
in which all features are labeled. This is unsatisfactory especially for maps on small devices
such as smartphones or smartwatches, where at a large scale only a small area can be shown,
causing the user to lose the context. New labeling models and labeling algorithms for small-
screen maps need to be developed to allow a user to access all labels at a medium scale, where
a sufficient overview is still provided. is to use external labels, avoiding the occlusion of the
background map and to allow the user to navigate through multiple views of the same map to
access all labels Efficient heuristic optimization methods are used to compute solutions in real-
time, yet for the evaluation of the mathematical model that formalizes the labeling problem,
exact optimization methods based on mathematical programming are of advantage. As this
research shows, the combination of algorithm engineering and cartography has a large
potential, which has not been fully exploited yet.
Fig. 22

Source: Google sites

(Image taken from a mobile application, leading to a reduced resolution)
Two labeling models allow a user to access labels for all points on a map without zooming into
a very large scale. Top: A model allowing a user to navigate from page to page. Bottom: A
model based on a slider that can be used to let labels enter or leave the map

7.3 Research Perspectives

The aforementioned research works of DGK members are also being explored in the
international community. A recent survey on the research priorities among 27 commissions of
the International Cartographic Association (ICA) has revealed 9 topic clusters as shown in
“The two dominating clusters, i.e. visualization technologies and geographic information
technologies, can very well justify the ICA as an international community for the promotion of
the discipline and profession of cartography and GI science. The two other clusters, i.e.
cartographic knowledge, including its preservation, accessibility and communication, and user
study with research questions related to user experience, usability testing, human–computer
interface etc., have also gained significant visibility. Integrated geographic information
technologies and visualization has been a sustainable cluster for more than ten years and is
characterized by topics of visual analytics. Open data and standards are a cluster with two
mutually enhancing concepts. It has grown rapidly in recent years with open source platforms.
Education and training covers both regular cartographic education programs for young people
and life-long learning for mid-career professionals. Finally, there is an increasing awareness of
ethics and quality issues in the value chain from raw data to user behavior, for which the role
of cartographers is becoming indispensable.” More detailed keywords and their frequencies of
occurrence are represented in the word cloud in
Fig. 23

Source: Google sites

Research priorities of ICA commissions
Fig. 24

Frequently occurring keywords in priority topics

Concerning the automatic generation of maps, which falls into the cluster visualization
technologies, algorithms and data structures are needed that can efficiently deal with large data
sets. While in principle this challenge is not new, future maps will be more interactive, allowing
the users to customize a map with multiple thematic, spatial, and temporal filters. Hence, an
important task is to design multi-dimensional data structures which, after a set-up phase, can
be queried in real time for a map corresponding to the filter settings specified by the user. These
data structures need to be dynamic since new data are often incrementally added or even come
in the form of continuous data streams.
A query, in this context, can be considered as a point in a multi-dimensional space. Sequences
of queries issued by a user can be considered as trajectories in that space; e.g., a trajectory
could represent the continuous change of the map scale during zooming or the interaction of a
user with a time-slider interface. This idea also opens up new possibilities to study how users
interact with maps. A particularly promising approach is to adapt methods of trajectory mining
to analyze sequences of interactions. For example, using algorithms for trajectory clustering,
one could identify groups of users with similar behaviors and preferences.

Source: Google sites

Another open challenge in the context of user studies is to define realistic tasks that can be
quantitatively evaluated. There is a large agreement in the cartography community that a map
should be tailored to a task, which is why task-based user studies are very popular and relevant.
However, the tasks in such studies are often rather narrow, e.g., the participants are asked to
find specified text labels on the map. Tasks that are more complex, such as tasks requiring a
good overview for strategic planning, are rarely defined in such studies as they are more
difficult to define and their solutions more difficult to assess.
Another promising direction of research is the development of new measures for the assessment
of maps. In particular, measures of similarity for geometric objects are needed, e.g., to compare
an automatically generated map with a reference solution or to assess the difference between
two maps of different scales. Moreover, measures of visual complexity are needed to find a
good trade-off between information fidelity and map legibility when generating a map from a
large and detailed data set.
Finally, it is evident that in the future the links between the two disciplines cartography and
information visualization will become even stronger. Algorithmic approaches to visualizing
non-spatial and spatial (geographic) data are in principle the same, i.e., the same optimization
techniques are applied in both fields. Moreover, the map is increasingly used as a metaphor for
the visualization of non-spatial information, such as graphs or sets systems. For example,
methods for visualizing author networks or instituational hierarchies as maps have recently
found the interest of the InfoVis community. With their expertise in maps, cartographers have
a lot to contribute to this area.
8 Geospatial information dissemination
In recent years, the amount of geospatial information and the frequency of data acquisition
(“velocity” in big data terms) have increased exponentially. Mainly, this change has come
about by innovations in data collection such as novel surveying techniques and mobile mapping
systems, geosensor networks, and remote sensing systems (e.g., Copernicus). Complementary
to these developments the depth of penetration of the Internet in everyday life, as well as the
progression of concepts such as Web 2.0–4.0 and crowdsourcing and crowdsensing, has
increased significantly. The worldwide diffusion of small innovative sensors and smart devices
created a variety of new endpoints apart from traditional computers. In the coming years this
expansion of endpoints to the internet will continue and new edges, which are hardly
foreseeable today, will emerge. Connectivity and digitalization are the main drivers of this
development. With new wireless communication infrastructures, for instance, 5G, LoRaWAN,
or NBIoT, but in the long-term also with initiatives such as StarLink, internet connectivity will
propagate also to remote regions. At the same time, digitalization will continue to penetrate
every aspect and object of human life. The advancement of embedded systems will continue to
be characterized by miniaturization, but also energy autonomy with new concepts of energy
harvesting will be pursued. The IoT will potentially connect all objects to one another, with or
without human interaction. These new devices will link the physical with the digital world and
observe and drive real-world phenomena. Since every object in the physical world has
geospatial properties such as location, the amount and velocity of geospatial data will increase
further.

8.1 State of the Art

8.1.1 Geoinformation Dissemination Approaches

Dissemination of data on the internet, especially with the evolution of the web, is usually based
on the request/response communication pattern. In the traditional web, users make requests to
a server to retrieve or create information about a resource such as a website. In the geospatial

Source: Google sites

world, this paradigm resulted in geo web services and Web APIs to retrieve geospatial data
using protocols of the web. For instance, the INSPIRE initiative uses different models and
standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium to make geospatial data accessible. The INSPIRE
directive specifies a framework for the member states of the European Union to establish and
operate local, regional and national spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) Thereby it ensures
compatibility and usability across borders. Currently, it focuses on retrieving data with
portrayal and data services defined by the OGC. WMS and WFS are two widely used services
to request maps or geospatial objects from servers. With the introduction of the Sensor Web
Enablement (SWE) services such as Sensor Observation Service (SOS) or the SensorThings
API, these infrastructures are extended to sensor observations and tasking in the IoT. With the
standardization of the SensorThings API and recently the OGC API – Features the service-
based focus of the OGC has shifted towards the Web API approach. The design pattern allows
a user and developer-friendly easy-to-use interface based on common web technologies such
as HTML or GeoJSON standardized (geo) services, Web APIs, and communication protocols
to provide interoperability between (spatial) data infrastructures and enhances information
fusion, for instance, in web applications such as geoportals.

8.1.2 Message-Driven Communication

However, nowadays, many real-world applications are reactive systems, which are based on
asynchronous message-driven interaction models. They often rely on loosely coupled push
messaging, which is initiated by the publisher and not by the requestor. Hereby, clients express
their information preferences in advance, for instance with a publish/subscribe model. With
this messaging mechanism, the continuous real-time delivery of data tuples between producer
and consumer is possible, so that also data streams can be initiated. identify the need for
message-driven models in contemporary SDIs to support the exchange of geospatial
information in real-time. In recent years, some efforts from the OGC to establish push-based
dissemination standards of geospatial data have already been made. Initially driven by the
sensor web community, these have resulted in the OGC publish/subscribe interface standard,
which includes metadata, but relies on other message delivery protocols such as SOAP (Simple
Object Access Protocol) messaging or AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol). By
now, there is no designated push-based geospatial standard which disseminates spatially
annotated messages based on push technology. Such a standard might help to disseminate
messages based on geospatial properties. However, some research has been conducted in this
field recently

8.2 Case Studies

8.2.1 Case Study “EarlyDike—An Early Warning System for Dike Failures”
In the EarlyDike project, an early warning system for dike failures based on real-time
geospatial events is realized. The project consists of three methodological approaches: (i)
simulation of the environmental impacts by forecasting storm surges and wave loads, (ii)
monitoring of the condition of the dike itself by deploying new sensor technologies, and (iii)
simulation of the extent of a flood in case of a dike failure. The architecture of the projects
consists of three layers. The backend forms a sensor and spatial data infrastructure (SSDI) with
an observation and an integration layer. Services of the SWE such as the SOS are used to store
and retrieve the data produced in the project. These can be requested by the presentation layer,
e.g., a Geo Portal, by utilizing a request/response pattern. Additionally, the eventing between
the software parts is introduced by IoT protocols. The GeoMQTT protocol is used to establish
a geo event bus to interconnect sensors, simulators, and the SSDI. It ensures the delivery and

Source: Google sites

provisioning of real-time spatio-temporal events and data in time-sensitive architectures such
as early warning systems.
Fig. 25

Architecture with GeoEvent Bus in the EarlyDike Project (

8.2.2 Case Study “senseBox and openSenseMap”

The senseBox is an open-source Do It Yourself (DIY) citizen science toolkit which can be used
to monitor the environment This crowdsensing approach addresses citizens and especially high
school students to participate in an open monitoring network for various environmental
phenomena such as temperature, particulates, or noise. The senseBox can be easily connected
to the openSenseMap (https://opensensemap.org/), a sensor web platform to store, analyze and
provide continuous measurement data
Fig. 26

The openSenseMap is a citizen science web platform for environmental data

Source: Google sites

8.3 Research Perspectives

8.3.1 Technology Enables Novel Distributed Geo Applications

Novel applications in different domains will appear that make use of new internet edges and
their geospatial events. These include environmental monitoring and structural health
monitoring (SHM) in smart cities or smart buildings or, in general, digital twin applications.
Also, moving objects and associated applications will benefit from increased connectivity and
digitalization. In transportation and logistics, new concepts based on inter-object
communication and geospatial data streams will be implemented to find solutions for current
traffic problems. Vehicle to vehicle (V2V), vehicle to infrastructure (V2I), and the Internet of
UAVs (IoU-AV) are just some of the promising concepts, which can be implemented by the
innovative possibilities this technology offers. In addition, applications of different domains
such as the Internet of Production (IoP) or the Internet of Construction (IoC) will use geospatial
data, so that the dissemination is crucial for different use cases. However, the dissemination of
geospatial data raises a multitude of research questions and challenges in the future which have
to be tackled to make it possible to implement applications and increase efficiency as well as
sustainability.

8.3.2 Future Data Infrastructures

Future geospatial data infrastructures follow various goals and face different challenges: from
improving productivity and efficiency over engaging citizens as data providers and users to
ensuring individual privacy and tracking of the provenance of data (Dangermond and
Goodchild 2020). For instance, in the future, the SDI approach manifested, e.g., in the
INSPIRE directive could be extended to processing or sensor services. Also, advanced
querying languages such as GraphQL and similar technologies should be considered in these
architectures (Shelden et al. 2020). Additionally, the interoperability focus should not be
exclusively on the geospatial information modeling world. New promising related concepts
and data collecting approaches foster the integration of different domain applications and data
sources. The IoT or other closely related domains such as BIM share common geospatial
objects and should be considered in interoperability approaches. Thus, interoperability
strategies across domains need to be developed and established (Herlé et al. 2020). Since
current infrastructures mainly focus on the request/response principle, the already mentioned
push technologies which promote real-time geospatial event streams need to be considered in
next-generation infrastructures and architectures as well. This integration and the vast amount
of events create various research questions and challenges concerning especially the selection
and aggregation of these data streams.

8.3.3 Finding Meaningful Messages and Events

Systems that communicate by messages or events need to be able to distinguish between
meaningful and meaningless messages. Based on e.g. context, location, proximity or semantics,
messages have to be filtered while disseminated to address the correct recipients. In systems
with large numbers of publishers, these filtering processes have to be applied to potentially a
high number of messages with high velocity. This requires real-time analytics and the fusion
of data streams to filter meaningful messages. Extraction and dissemination of meaningful
events become even more complex when information from different domains and systems are
fused. On the one hand, new opportunities arise; on the other hand, interoperability challenges
increase further. Automatic curation, transformation, and fusion of events and data pose new
research questions. Technologies of the semantic web such as linked data structures and
ontologies, but also artificial intelligence and machine learning can be one solution to

Source: Google sites

successfully deliver meaningful messages to the correct recipients. Besides typical security
issues such as authentication or privacy, open challenges include questions about the
provenance and validity of messages and encapsulated data. Especially in forecast and decision
support systems suitable extensions and mechanisms are needed to model uncertainty and
quality of the data. New mechanisms and extensions also have to be designed to meet
interoperability requirements and the nature of geospatial data.

8.3.4 National Research Data Infrastructures

Furthermore, big geospatial data with high volume and velocity such as remote sensing data
gathered by Copernicus or from geosensor networks introduce new types of data that currently
cannot be integrated into SDIs using the existing mechanisms and standards. Usually,
depending on the type and the use case, dedicated data infrastructures are conceptualized and
implemented. These dedicated data infrastructures often form data silos which are typically
difficult to access, especially if proprietary protocols and formats are used. Therefore, SDIs
must be extended to adopt future requirements. For instance, in Germany, several research
communities are launching national data infrastructures for different kind of scientific data
(Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur, NFDI, see Sect. 9).

9 Framework for GI Research in Germany

9.1 Infrastructures
The directive “Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE)” develops a
framework for the member states of the European Union to establish and operate local,
regional, and national SDIs. Thereby, it ensures compatibility and usability across borders.
Currently, it focuses on retrieving data with portrayal and data services defined by the OGC.
In the future, the approach could be extended to processing or sensor services. INSPIRE can
be seen as state of the art in geospatial data management.
The directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information (‘Open Data Directive’,
EU 2019/1024, http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/1024/oj) provides common rules for a
European market for government-held open data (https://digital-
strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/open-data). This will stimulate the publishing of dynamic
data and the uptake of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and limit the exceptions
which currently allow public bodies to charge more than the marginal costs of dissemination
for the re-use of their data. Open Data will become the default in the future, which will support
much more data-driven geospatial information research and usage.
DFG RISources (https://risources.dfg.de/) is an information portal on scientific research
infrastructures in Germany that provides scientists with resources and services for planning
and carrying out research projects. Some examples of already existing infrastructure
components are open access repositories (iDAI.geoserver, BonaRes, Coastal Observing
System for Northern and Arctic Seas (COSYNA), GLUES Geodata Infrastructure (GLUES
GDI), Live weather data from German sites (WETTER), Animal Tracking Data (Movebank)
and virtual cultural landscape laboratories (Virtuelles Kulturlandschaftslaboratorium
(VKLandLab, Bill 2012)).
There is a growing awareness in the research community of the importance of FAIR
principles in data handling: data should be free, accessible, interoperable, and reusable
(Wilkinson et al. 2016). This implies the necessity of structured data storage with automatic
search mechanisms on rich metadata. Many countries in recent years launched calls to set up
national research data infrastructure (e.g. in Germany by
DFG https://www.dfg.de/foerderung/programme/nfdi/), intended to systematically develop,
sustainably secure, and make accessible the data holdings of science and research and to

Source: Google sites

network them (inter)nationally. They will be established in a process driven by the scientific
community as a networked structure of consortia acting on their initiative.
With NFDI4Earth (https://www.nfdi4earth.de/) the german earth system science community
is developing such an infrastructure based on the FAIR principles. The concept includes several
standards from the geospatial world to ensure interoperability and sustainability. Especially
huge amounts of spatio-temporal data must be exploited and combined, which will raise new
enormous challenges on existing or future mechanisms and standards. Despite the efforts for
interoperability, the seamless interconnectivity with existing SDIs is not given, however,
desirable. Mechanisms for linking data sets across boundaries of data infrastructures of
different domains in an interoperable way have to be investigated. Solving this challenge has
huge potential for increasing efficiency and forming new applications.
In summary, the public administration supports science and economy by providing up-to-date
and adapted geodata and services. The expansion of spatial data infrastructures in the
administration (such as INSPIRE) and economy is well advanced. And in science, too, the
development and networking of data repositories from different disciplines are being driven
forward, e.g. through the NFDI initiative. Still, the geoinformatics community seems to rely
on existing infrastructure for their research, not (yet) seeing the necessity of jointly pushing
forward the establishment of a joint infrastructure, serving several purposes in an integrated
way, e.g. an urban observatory (building, energy, pollutants, waste, social aspects), or a
mobility observatory (individual mobility, logistics, traffic control). Beyond physical
infrastructures and data infrastructures there is also an increasing need for software
infrastructures, which allow to exploit the richness of the data in open and reproducible ways.

9.2 Research Funding

Funding of research is as diverse and differentiated as the research landscape itself. Different
national and European research funding agencies at different levels and with different
intentions exist: From a german perspective, these are the EU (Horizon 2020), DFG with more
basic research funding, BMBF (e.g. FONA), BMWK (e.g. Copernicus related research), and
BMVI (e.g. MFUND), which are more dedicated to applied research. Three large coordinated
research projects are described in the following.
DFG currently funds a priority program (“Volunteered Geographic Information: Interpretation,
Visualizierung und Social Computing” (SPP 1894)) coordinated by TU Dresden. “The core
question of this SPP is how visualization methods can contribute to the utilization of VGI and
support the interaction of users involved. Research questions span from the extraction of spatial
information to the visual analysis and knowledge presentation, taking into account the social
context while collecting and using VGI. The heterogeneity and the limited semantic structure
of user-generated spatial data represent a major challenge.” (https://www.vgiscience.org/).
Also the research training group RTG 2159 on “Integrity and Collaboration in Dynamic Sensor
Networks” (https://www.icsens.uni-hannover.de/en/), a joint doctoral program at Leibniz
University Hannover, is funded by DFG. Collaborative sensor networks which need to
guarantee integrity are a core element of many future systems. Examples are automated and
autonomous vehicles, but such systems are also found in flexible factory automation,
agriculture, construction, service and home robotics. In particular, multi-sensor platforms
moving around in the real world and communicating with each other must ensure the integrity
of their navigation information, in order not to endanger their environment. The prime
contribution of the RTG is to provide basic methodologies as well as concepts of integrity and
collaboration for dynamic sensor networks in connection with digital maps (Schön et al. 2018).
One of the significant challenges facing our society concerning agriculture is to increase crop
production, despite limited arable land, and at the same time, reduce the ecological impact. The
DFG-funded cluster of excellence “Phenorob: Robotics and Phenotyping for Sustainable Crop

Source: Google sites

Production” (https://www.phenorob.de/) at the University of Bonn is developing methods and
new technologies that observe, analyze, better understand and specifically treat plants.
Different sensor platforms, i.e., ground and aerial vehicles, operated autonomously, provide
precisely georeferenced and phenotypic data from single plants over the experimental plot to
the field scale. 3D structural models of one and the same plant will be registered over time for
a 4D reconstruction. This will lead to the development of a new generation of mapping systems
and a better understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics of structural and functional plant
traits. The project develops an autonomous field robot that detects and identifies individual
plants and creates a weed map of the field to treat individual plants with the most appropriate
intervention method. Furthermore, the robot can precisely apply nitrogen fertilizer enabled by
digital avatars that predict the plant nutrient demand and probable losses in the field.
10 Geospatial Information Research and the Grand Challenges
10.1 Grand Challenges
Grand challenges are medium to long-term focused topics that require significant
breakthroughs in basic research, applied research, and technical development in key
technologies. One of their primary objectives is to focus and align research efforts: Scenarios
are developed that should be easy to communicate and understand. The goal must be very
ambitious and be at the limit of what is "just about possible". At the same time, there should
be hope that these goals can realistically be achieved (Mertens and Barbian 2015;
Wissenschaftsrat 2015). There exist different lists of grand challenges; most of them include
health, demographic change, and wellbeing; food security, sustainable agriculture, and
forestry; marine and maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy; secure, clean,
and efficient energy; smart, green and integrated transport; climate action, environment,
resource efficiency, and raw materials; changing world, inclusive, innovative and reflective
societies; secure societies – protecting freedom and security worldwide.
In a similar vein, the United Nations, in 2015, have identified 17 sustainable development goals
addressing the most pressing problems facing our world (https://sdgs.un.org/goals, Kraak et
al. 2021).
As a result of scientific and technical progress, for example in laser, information, and satellite
technology, the core tasks in geoinformatics can be performed ever faster and more cost-
effectively, but above all more comprehensively, with far higher quality and rapidly increasing
spatial and temporal resolution. In recent years, the all-encompassing digital transformation
has entered science far more than before by opening up new ways of thinking and enabling
new methods. In the course of the digital transformation, there is a growing realization in many
disciplines that a uniform, high-quality reference to space and time in conjunction with digital
environmental information of all kinds is imperative as an ordering scheme for many questions.
The references to our living space and the systemic understanding that has grown in the process
offer increased points of contact for geospatial information processing with societal mega
topics, such as mobility, information, energy, climate, health, and environment.

10.2 GI community Contributions

The geospatial information science community can contribute to the solution of nearly all grand
challenges, with its expertise in geospatial data acquisition and interpretation, information
modeling and management, information integration, decision support, information
visualization, and information dissemination. Geoinformatics provides methods for the
collection and interpretation of sensor data for the extraction of geoinformation as well as for
its management, analysis, and visualization. It thus provides the basis for the generation of
digital representations of the real world (digital twin) being of essential importance for tackling
major societal challenges. For example, geoinformatics contributes to more sustainable

Source: Google sites

agriculture and the development of new mobility concepts. The development of methods
increasingly relates to machine learning procedures. In addition, new research topics are
emerging, e.g. at the interface between humans and autonomous system: enhancing and
supporting human actions and human understanding by increasing assistance and semantics
through adequate interaction interfaces, to name only a few.
Those challenges are beyond what a single discipline can handle, thus, this calls for an
increasing interdisciplinary collaboration with other disciplines disciplines—and also with
society as a whole. Only recently, the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina has called for
such a collaboration to establish and foster a Earth System Science in Germany (German
National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 2022). As spatial data and their processing are core,
the GI community should not be too shy to also take a leading role.
Fig. 27

GI research contributions to the grand challenges

Availability of Data and Material

All URLs are checked end of March 2022.
Code Availability
Not relevant.
Abbreviations
4As:
Anytime, anywhere, for anyone, and anything
AAN:
Appearance adaptation network
AI:
Artificial intelligence
ALS:

Source: Google sites

 Airborne laser scanning
AMQP:
Advanced message queuing protocol
API:
Application programming interfaces
AR:
Augmented reality
ATKIS:
Amtliches Topographisch-Kartographisches Informations system
BIM:
Building information model
B-Rep:
Boundary representations
CAD:
Computer-aided design
CNN:
Convolutional neural networks
CP:
Computational photography
CRF:
Conditional random fields
CSG:
Constructed solid geometry
DE:
Desktop environment
DFG:
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
DGK:
Deutsche Geodätische Kommission
DIY:
Do it yourself
DL:
Deep learning
DSMS:
Data stream management systems
EO:
Earth observation
ESA:
European space agency
GAN:
Generative adversarial networks
GC:
Grand challenges
GDF:
Geographic data files
GI:
Geospatial information
GIM:
Geospatial information modeling
GIS:

Source: Google sites

 Geographic information system
GML:
Geography markup language
GNSS:
Global navigation satellite systems
GSD:
Ground sampling distance
HD:
High definition
ICA:
International cartographic association
ICT:
Information and communication technologies
IMU:
Inertial measuring unit
IFC:
Industry foundation class
INS:
Inertial navigation system
InSAR:
Interferometric synthetic aperture radar
INSPIRE:
Infrastructure for spatial information in Europe
IoC:
Internet-of-construction
IoP:
Internet-of-production
IoT:
Internet of things
IoUAV:
Internet of UAVs
ISO:
International Organization of Standardization
ISPRS:
International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
LADM:
Land administration domain model
LandInfra:
Land and infrastructure conceptual model
LBS:
Location-based services
LCZ:
Local climate zones
LoD:
Level of detail
LOD:
Linked open data
LSTM:
Long short-term memory
MCDA:

Source: Google sites

 Multi criteria decision analysis
MCMC:
Markov Chain Monte Carlo
MR:
Mixed reality
MRF:
Markov random fields
NASA:
National aeronautics and space administration
NFDI:
Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur
OGC:
Open geospatial consortium
OODBMS:
Object-oriented database management systems
ORDBMS:
Object-relational database management systems
POI:
Point-of-interest
PSI:
Public sector information
RADAR:
RAdio detection and ranging
RANSAC:
Random sample consensus
RDBMS:
Relational database management systems
RDF:
Resource description framework
RNN:
Recurrent neural networks
SDBMS:
Spatial database management systems
SDG:
Sustainable development goals
SDI:
Spatial data infrastructures
SDSS:
Spatial decision support system
SHM:
Structural health monitoring
SOAP:
Simple object access protocol
SOS:
Sensor observation service
SQL:
Structured query language
SRS:
Spatial reference system
SSDI:

Source: Google sites

 Sensor and spatial data infrastructure
STDBMS:
Spatio-temporal database management systems
SWE:
Sensor web enablement
UAV:
Unmanned aerial vehicles
UML:
Unified modelling language
UN:
United Nations
V2I:
Vehicle-to-infrastructure
V2V:
Vehicle-to-vehicle
VGI:
Volunteered geographic information
VR:
Virtual reality
WMS:
Web map service
WFS:
Web feature service
WPS:
Web processing service
XML:
Extensible markup language

 Communicating spatial patterns and relationships through visualizations

Making sense of complex spatial relationships can feel like solving a puzzle blindfolded but
visualization techniques can transform this challenge into an intuitive experience. Whether
you’re working with architectural designs urban planning data or geographic information
systems the right visualization approach will help you grasp intricate spatial patterns and
connections with remarkable clarity. These powerful tools and methods let you explore
transform and understand spatial relationships in ways that raw data or traditional diagrams
simply can’t match.

In today’s data-driven world you’ll find these visualization techniques powering everything
from interactive city planning models to advanced scientific research. By mastering these
visualization methods you’ll gain the ability to communicate complex
spatial concepts effectively and make more informed decisions based on spatial data. Modern
technology has revolutionized how we can represent and interact with spatial information
making it more accessible than ever.

Understanding The Power Of Spatial Visualization In Complex Data Analysis

Source: Google sites

Defining Spatial Relationships

Spatial relationships describe how objects connect position-wise in physical or conceptual

space. These connections include proximity (near/far) distance measurements directional
associations (north/south) topological links (connected/inside) and hierarchical arrangements.
In geographic information systems spatial relationships form the foundation for analyzing
patterns between features like buildings roads or natural landmarks measured through
coordinates attributes and relative positions.

Why Visualization Matters In Spatial Analysis

Visualization transforms abstract spatial data into meaningful visual patterns you can interpret
at a glance. It reveals hidden trends such as population density clusters crime hotspots or traffic
flow patterns that numbers alone can’t effectively communicate. Modern visualization tools
like heat maps 3D renderings and interactive dashboards enable you to identify correlations
discover anomalies and make data-driven decisions faster than traditional analytical methods.
Visualization Benefit Impact on Analysis
Pattern Recognition 60% faster insight discovery
Data Communication 40% improved stakeholder understanding
Decision Making 45% reduction in analysis time

Mapping Techniques For Multi-Dimensional Data Display

Advanced mapping techniques transform complex spatial datasets into clear visual
representations that reveal patterns and relationships across multiple dimensions.

Heat Maps And Density Plots

Heat maps translate data intensity into color gradients revealing spatial clustering and
concentration patterns. These visualizations use warmer colors (reds oranges) to show high-
density areas and cooler colors (blues greens) for lower densities. Modern heat mapping tools
like Kernel Density Estimation create smooth transitions between data points making patterns
more apparent. Popular applications include:

 Population distribution analysis

 Traffic flow monitoring
 Customer behavior mapping
 Crime hotspot identification

Choropleth Maps And Geographic Information Systems

Choropleth maps display quantitative data across geographic boundaries using color variations
or patterns. Modern GIS platforms like ArcGIS QGIS combine choropleth mapping with
powerful analysis tools. These systems enable:

 Multiple data layer integration

 Statistical analysis overlays
 Dynamic scale adjustments
 Custom boundary definitions

Source: Google sites

The technique excels at showing demographic economic or environmental patterns across
regions while maintaining geographic context.

Interactive 3D Visualization Methods

Modern interactive 3D visualization methods transform complex spatial data into explorable
virtual environments allowing real-time manipulation and analysis.

Virtual Reality Applications

VR technology revolutionizes spatial data visualization through immersive 3D environments.

Using platforms like Unity3D and Unreal Engine you can create walkthrough experiences of
architectural models cityscapes and geographic terrains. VR headsets like Oculus Quest and
HTC Vive enable users to physically move through datasets examining spatial relationships
from any angle. This technology proves especially valuable for urban planning simulations
landscape architecture and complex infrastructure projects where understanding scale and
perspective is crucial.

Augmented Reality Tools

AR tools overlay digital spatial information onto real-world environments through mobile
devices or smart glasses. Applications like ESRI’s ArcGIS AR and Trimble SiteVision enable
field visualization of underground utilities proposed buildings and infrastructure networks.
Teams can view BIM models in context make precise measurements and identify spatial
conflicts before construction begins. AR visualization especially excels in facilities
management utility mapping and construction planning where seeing hidden infrastructure is
essential.

Dynamic Rotation And Zoom Features

Modern 3D visualization platforms offer intuitive rotation pan and zoom controls for detailed
spatial analysis. Tools like Cesium Mapbox GL JS and ArcGIS JavaScript API provide smooth
camera transitions custom viewpoints and level-of-detail rendering. Users can seamlessly
move from global overview to street-level detail examining spatial relationships at multiple
scales. These features support tasks like viewshed analysis line-of-sight studies and vertical
alignment checks in complex terrain models.

Network Visualization Strategies For Spatial Connections

Network visualization transforms complex spatial relationships into clear visual

representations by emphasizing connections flow and hierarchy between geographic elements.

Force-Directed Graphs

Force-directed graphs create organic layouts that reveal spatial connections through physical
simulation algorithms. Nodes represent geographic locations while edges show relationships
like transportation routes traffic flows or resource distribution networks. Tools like D3.js
enable interactive force-directed visualizations where nodes repel or attract based on
connection strength allowing natural clustering patterns to emerge. This technique excels at
displaying both local and global network structures in spatial systems.

Source: Google sites

Hierarchical Edge Bundling

Hierarchical edge bundling reduces visual clutter in complex spatial networks by grouping
related connections into bundled paths. This technique aggregates individual links between
nodes into smooth curves that follow the network’s hierarchical structure. By using tools like
Gephi you can visualize relationships between geographic regions administrative boundaries
or infrastructure systems while maintaining clarity through strategic edge bundling. The
method particularly suits visualizing organizational structures across geographic areas.

Node-Link Diagrams

Node-link diagrams provide a straightforward approach to visualizing spatial network topology

and connectivity patterns. Each geographic location appears as a node with lines representing
direct connections between places. Modern tools like NetworkX let you customize node sizes
based on metrics like population or economic activity while edge weights can indicate
connection strength. This visualization style effectively communicates network centrality
geographic clusters and critical pathway analysis in spatial systems.

Advanced Data Layering Techniques

Modern spatial visualization requires sophisticated data layering to reveal complex

relationships across multiple dimensions and datasets.

Multi-Layer Mapping

Multi-layer mapping combines different spatial datasets into a single comprehensive

visualization. Use transparency controls and layer ordering to stack demographic data census
tracts flood zones and infrastructure networks. Tools like MapBox and QGIS enable dynamic
layer toggling letting you adjust visibility levels between 0-100% for each dataset. Create
custom layer groups to organize related data such as environmental factors or transportation
networks while maintaining visual hierarchy through strategic opacity settings.

Temporal-Spatial Integration

Temporal-spatial integration reveals how spatial relationships evolve over time. Implement
time-slider controls to animate changes in population density traffic patterns or urban
development across specified date ranges. Use timestamped data layers to track seasonal
variations environmental changes or infrastructure development. Tools like Kepler.gl and
ArcGIS Time Aware layers enable creation of dynamic visualizations that display temporal
patterns through playback controls and interactive timelines.

Cross-Sectional Views

Cross-sectional views cut through layered spatial data to expose vertical relationships and
underground features. Generate profile views of terrain infrastructure and subsurface geology
using tools like ArcGIS Pro’s Profile View or QGIS Profile Tool. Apply vertical exaggeration
to emphasize subtle elevation changes and layer transitions. Create multiple cross-sections
along key transects to analyze spatial variations in underground utilities geological formations
or building foundations.

Source: Google sites

Real-Time Visualization Tools And Technologies

Dynamic Data Processing

Real-time data processing engines transform raw spatial data into visualizable formats
instantly. Modern tools like Apache Kafka and Apache Storm handle massive spatial datasets
through stream processing enabling immediate analysis. These systems use distributed
computing to partition data across multiple nodes reducing processing time from hours to
milliseconds. Advanced spatial indices and GPU acceleration further optimize complex
geometric calculations allowing seamless updates to interactive maps dashboards and 3D
visualizations.

Live Rendering Solutions

WebGL-based platforms like Mapbox GL JS and deck.gl enable fluid rendering of complex
spatial visualizations in web browsers. These solutions leverage GPU acceleration to handle
millions of data points while maintaining smooth 60fps performance. Modern rendering
engines support dynamic texture mapping procedural generation and level-of-detail
optimization adapting visualization quality based on zoom levels and viewport constraints.
Real-time shading techniques enhance depth perception through ambient occlusion and
dynamic lighting creating more intuitive spatial representations.

Cognitive Approaches To Spatial Data Representation

Visual Hierarchy Methods

Visual hierarchy methods organize spatial information based on human perception patterns.
Use size contrast to emphasize important geographic features by making them 20-30% larger
than surrounding elements. Apply color intensity gradients ranging from light to dark to guide
attention flow creating clear focal points. Implement z-index layering with 3-5 distinct levels
to separate foreground elements from background context. Strategic white space placement
around key features creates natural visual breaks that improve information processing by 40%
according to UX research studies.

Pattern Recognition Techniques

Pattern recognition techniques leverage the brain’s natural ability to identify spatial
relationships. Use Gestalt principles like proximity grouping by placing related elements within
10 pixels of each other. Create visual rhythm through consistent spacing of 15-20 pixels
between repeated elements. Apply symmetry in layouts to reduce cognitive load by 35%
according to cognitive psychology studies. Implement visual anchors at key intersections using
distinctive shapes or colors that contrast with surroundings by at least 60% in brightness or hue
to establish clear reference points for spatial orientation.

Best Practices For Complex Spatial Data Visualization

Optimizing Visual Clarity

Apply visual hierarchy through strategic color selection and element sizing to guide attention
to key spatial relationships. Use consistent symbology across related datasets and limit your

Source: Google sites

color palette to 5-7 distinct hues for optimal comprehension. Implement proper spacing
between map elements with a minimum 2-pixel buffer to prevent visual clutter. Consider using
transparency gradients for overlapping features and incorporate white space strategically to
create clear visual boundaries between different data layers.

Maintaining Data Accuracy

Implement rigorous quality control measures to preserve spatial data integrity during
visualization. Verify coordinate systems match across all datasets and maintain appropriate
scale ranges for different zoom levels. Use data classification methods that accurately represent
the underlying distribution such as natural breaks for uneven distributions or quantiles for
normalized data. Document transformation processes and maintain metadata for each
visualization layer to ensure reproducibility.

Ensuring User Accessibility

Design visualizations that accommodate various user needs including colorblind-friendly

palettes and scalable interface elements. Provide interactive controls that allow users to
customize display settings such as contrast levels and symbol sizes. Include clear legends that
explain all visualization elements and offer multiple export formats for different use cases.
Enable keyboard navigation and screen reader compatibility for digital interactive
visualizations while maintaining WCAG 2.1 compliance standards.

Future Trends In Spatial Visualization Technology

The future of spatial visualization is rapidly evolving with breakthrough technologies and
innovative approaches to data representation. These advancements promise to revolutionize
how we interact with and understand spatial information.

Emerging Tools And Platforms

Leading visualization platforms are integrating cloud-native architectures for real-time

collaborative mapping. Tools like Cesium ion offer WebAssembly-powered 3D globe
visualization while Mapbox’s Vision SDK enables real-world AR navigation. New platforms
combine edge computing with 5G networks to process massive spatial datasets instantly.
Digital twin platforms like Unity Reflect and Bentley iTwin create hyper-realistic virtual
environments that sync with physical spaces in real-time.

AI-Powered Visualization Solutions

Machine learning algorithms now automate complex spatial pattern detection and visualization
optimization. Deep learning models can identify optimal visualization methods based on data
characteristics and user preferences. Computer vision systems enhance spatial analysis by
automatically extracting features from satellite imagery and street-level photos. AI-driven
procedural generation creates detailed 3D environments from simple 2D data while neural
networks optimize map symbology and color schemes for maximum clarity.

Implementing Effective Visualization Strategies For Your Project

Source: Google sites

 Mastering spatial visualization techniques empowers you to transform complex relationships
into clear meaningful insights. Modern tools and cognitive approaches now make it possible to
create dynamic interactive visualizations that adapt to your specific needs.

By leveraging these advanced visualization methods you’ll enhance your ability to

communicate spatial concepts effectively. Whether you’re working with urban planning heat
maps 3D environments or network diagrams these techniques provide the foundation for data-
driven decision-making.

The future of spatial visualization looks bright with AI-powered solutions and cloud-native
platforms leading the way. As you implement these strategies remember to prioritize visual
clarity data accuracy and user accessibility to create impactful visualizations that drive results.
Geospatial visualizations
9 min read•Last Updated on August 21, 2024

Geospatial visualizations bring data to life on maps, allowing us to see patterns and
relationships in a spatial context. This powerful tool combines geographic information with
statistical data, enabling researchers to communicate complex spatial insights effectively.

In the realm of reproducible data science, mastering geospatial visualizations is crucial. From
understanding different data types to choosing appropriate projections and color schemes,
these skills empower analysts to create compelling, accurate, and shareable map-based
visualizations.

Types of geospatial data

 Geospatial data forms the foundation of spatial analysis and visualization in

reproducible data science
 Understanding different types of geospatial data enables effective representation and
manipulation of spatial information
 Proper handling of geospatial data types ensures accuracy and consistency in
collaborative statistical projects

Vector vs raster data

Top images from around the web for Vector vs raster data


Urban Heat Islands – Basic GIS knowledge vector and raster data – EO4GEO View
original
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
Data Types | GIS with R View original
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

Source: Google sites

Urban Heat Islands – Basic GIS knowledge vector and raster data – EO4GEO View
original
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Data Types | GIS with R

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2 of 2

 Vector data represents discrete features using points, lines, and polygons
 Raster data divides space into a grid of cells, each containing a value
 Vector data excels at representing distinct objects and boundaries
 Raster data efficiently captures continuous phenomena (elevation, temperature)
 Vector data maintains high precision regardless of scale
 Raster data resolution depends on cell size, affecting detail and file size

Point, line, polygon features

 Point features represent single locations (cities, landmarks)

 Line features depict linear elements (roads, rivers, boundaries)
 Polygon features encompass areas with defined boundaries (countries, lakes)
 Points store x and y coordinates
 Lines consist of ordered series of points
 Polygons comprise closed loops of lines defining interior and exterior

Coordinate reference systems

 Define how geographic locations are represented on a flat surface

 Geographic Coordinate Systems use latitude and longitude (WGS84)
 Projected Coordinate Systems transform 3D earth to 2D plane (UTM, State Plane)
 Datum specifies the reference ellipsoid and its orientation
 EPSG codes provide standardized identifiers for coordinate systems
 Proper CRS selection crucial for accurate spatial analysis and visualization

Geospatial data formats

 Various file formats exist to store and exchange geospatial data efficiently
 Choosing appropriate formats impacts data interoperability and processing speed
 Understanding geospatial data formats facilitates seamless collaboration in
reproducible research

Source: Google sites

Shapefiles and GeoJSON

 Shapefile consists of multiple files (.shp, .dbf, .shx, .prj)

 Shapefile stores vector data with associated attributes
 GeoJSON uses JSON format to represent geographic features
 GeoJSON supports points, lines, polygons, and their collections
 Shapefiles widely used in desktop GIS applications
 GeoJSON popular for web-based mapping and data exchange

Raster file formats

 GeoTIFF combines TIFF image format with georeferencing information

 JPEG2000 offers efficient compression for large raster datasets
 NetCDF supports multidimensional scientific data (climate models)
 ESRI Grid format used in ArcGIS ecosystem
 HDF5 handles large, complex datasets with hierarchical structure
 Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) enables efficient web-based access

Geospatial databases

 PostGIS extends PostgreSQL for spatial data storage and querying

 SpatiaLite provides lightweight spatial database capabilities for SQLite
 GeoPackage offers open, standards-based format for vector and raster data
 ArcSDE integrates spatial data with enterprise relational databases
 MongoDB supports geospatial indexing and queries for NoSQL applications
 Spatial databases enable efficient storage, retrieval, and analysis of large datasets

Map projections

 Map projections transform 3D earth surface onto 2D plane

 Understanding projections crucial for accurate spatial analysis and visualization
 Proper projection selection impacts data representation and interpretation in
collaborative research

Common map projections

 Mercator projection preserves angles, used in web mapping (Google Maps)

 Robinson projection balances area and shape distortion for world maps
 Albers Equal Area maintains accurate area relationships
 Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) divides earth into 60 zones
 Azimuthal projections show true direction from central point (polar regions)
 Cylindrical projections wrap earth around a cylinder (Equirectangular)

Projection selection criteria

 Purpose of the map (navigation, area comparison, global view)

 Geographic extent of the study area (local, regional, global)
 Properties to preserve (area, shape, distance, direction)
 Distortion patterns and their impact on data representation
 Familiarity and acceptance within target audience

Source: Google sites

  Compatibility with existing data sources and software

Reprojecting spatial data

 Process of converting data from one projection to another

 Requires knowledge of source and target coordinate systems
 Transformation methods (geometric, polynomial, grid-based)
 Resampling techniques for raster data (nearest neighbor, bilinear, cubic)
 Importance of maintaining spatial accuracy during reprojection
 Tools for reprojection (GDAL, PROJ, R sf package, ArcGIS)

Geospatial visualization tools

 Diverse tools available for creating and analyzing geospatial visualizations

 Selection of appropriate tools depends on project requirements and team expertise
 Integrating geospatial tools with reproducible workflows enhances collaboration

GIS software options

 QGIS offers open-source, cross-platform desktop GIS functionality

 ArcGIS provides comprehensive commercial GIS ecosystem
 GRASS GIS specializes in raster analysis and modeling
 SAGA GIS focuses on terrain analysis and scientific applications
 MapInfo Professional caters to business intelligence and location analytics
 Global Mapper offers versatile file format support and 3D visualization

R packages for mapping

 sf package handles vector data and spatial operations

 raster package processes gridded spatial data
 leaflet enables interactive web maps in R
 tmap creates static and interactive thematic maps
 ggplot2 with coord_sf() for mapping within grammar of graphics
 spatstat performs spatial statistics and point pattern analysis

Python libraries for geospatial

 GeoPandas extends Pandas for spatial operations on geometric types

 Rasterio reads and writes raster datasets
 Folium creates interactive maps based on Leaflet.js
 Cartopy supports map projections and geospatial data visualization
 PySAL provides spatial analysis functions and statistical methods
 Shapely manipulates and analyzes geometric objects

Thematic mapping techniques

 Thematic maps visualize spatial patterns of specific attributes or phenomena

 Choosing appropriate techniques enhances data communication and interpretation
 Effective thematic mapping supports reproducible analysis and decision-making

Source: Google sites

Choropleth maps

 Display statistical variables using color-coded polygons

 Suitable for showing data aggregated by administrative boundaries
 Require careful consideration of data classification methods
 Normalization important for comparing areas of different sizes
 Color schemes should match data type (sequential, diverging, qualitative)
 Limitations include potential misrepresentation due to varying polygon sizes

Proportional symbol maps

 Represent quantitative data using symbols of varying sizes

 Effective for showing absolute values across different geographic units
 Symbol types include circles, squares, and pictograms
 Scaling methods (linear, logarithmic) affect visual perception
 Overlapping symbols may require transparency or clustering techniques
 Combine with color to represent additional variables

Dot density maps

 Illustrate spatial distribution of phenomena using dots

 Each dot represents a specific quantity of the mapped variable
 Effective for showing relative concentrations and patterns
 Dot placement can be random within units or based on ancillary data
 Dot size and value affect map readability and interpretation
 Considerations include dot overlap and visual estimation accuracy

Interactive mapping

 Interactive maps enhance user engagement and data exploration

 Integration of interactive elements supports dynamic analysis in reproducible research
 Balancing interactivity with performance crucial for effective visualization

Web-based mapping libraries

 Leaflet.js provides lightweight, mobile-friendly interactive maps

 Mapbox GL JS offers vector tile-based mapping with 3D capabilities
 OpenLayers supports wide range of data sources and projections
 D3.js enables creation of highly customized, data-driven visualizations
 Cesium specializes in 3D globes and time-dynamic visualizations
 Google Maps JavaScript API integrates familiar mapping interface

Tooltips and popups

 Display additional information when users interact with map features

 Tooltips provide quick info on hover, suitable for simple attributes
 Popups offer more detailed information and can include multimedia content
 Customizable styling to match overall map design
 Can be triggered by various events (click, hover, touch)
 Consideration of mobile device interactions important for responsiveness

Source: Google sites

Zoom and pan functionality

 Allows users to navigate map at different scales and locations

 Zoom levels determine detail and generalization of displayed features
 Panning enables exploration of areas beyond initial view
 Smooth transitions improve user experience and spatial context
 Tile-based systems optimize performance for large datasets
 Considerations include data loading strategies and level of detail management

Spatial analysis in visualizations

 Integrating spatial analysis techniques enhances map interpretation

 Visualization of spatial patterns and relationships supports data-driven insights
 Combining analysis with visualization crucial for reproducible spatial research

Spatial clustering

 Identifies groups of similar features based on location and attributes

 Methods include K-means, DBSCAN, and hierarchical clustering
 Visualize clusters using color-coding or symbology
 Helps reveal hotspots, patterns, and spatial dependencies
 Consider scale and distance metrics in clustering algorithms
 Interpretation requires understanding of underlying spatial processes

Heat maps

 Represent density of point features using color gradients

 Effective for visualizing concentrations and identifying hotspots
 Kernel density estimation commonly used for smoothing
 Parameters include bandwidth and cell size
 Color ramps should match data characteristics and analysis goals
 Combine with base maps for context and reference

Spatial interpolation

 Estimates values at unsampled locations based on known points

 Methods include Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) and Kriging
 Visualize continuous surfaces from discrete sample points
 Consider anisotropy and spatial autocorrelation in interpolation
 Validate results using cross-validation techniques
 Communicate uncertainty in interpolated values through visualization

Color schemes for maps

 Color selection significantly impacts map readability and interpretation

 Appropriate color schemes enhance data communication and accessibility
 Consistent color use supports reproducibility in geospatial visualizations

Sequential vs diverging palettes

Source: Google sites

  Sequential palettes show ordered data from low to high values
 Diverging palettes emphasize deviation from a central value
 Sequential uses varying lightness or saturation of single hue
 Diverging employs contrasting hues at extremes with neutral midpoint
 Choose based on data characteristics and analysis objectives
 Consider perceptual uniformity for accurate interpretation

Colorblind-friendly choices

 Ensure maps are accessible to individuals with color vision deficiencies

 Avoid problematic color combinations (red-green, blue-yellow)
 Use ColorBrewer or similar tools for colorblind-safe palettes
 Incorporate patterns or textures to supplement color differences
 Test visualizations with colorblindness simulation tools
 Provide alternative representations (labels, values) when possible

Symbolization best practices

 Match symbol characteristics to data type and scale of measurement

 Use intuitive color associations (blue for water, green for vegetation)
 Limit number of classes to maintain visual distinction
 Ensure sufficient contrast between symbols and background
 Consider cultural implications of color choices
 Provide clear legend explaining symbol meanings and data ranges

Cartographic design principles

 Effective cartographic design enhances map communication and usability

 Applying design principles ensures clarity and accuracy in spatial data representation
 Consistent design approach supports reproducibility in geospatial research outputs

Map layout elements

 Title communicates main theme and geographic context

 Legend explains symbols, colors, and data classifications
 Scale bar or statement indicates map scale and measurement units
 North arrow orients map (unless north is obvious)
 Inset maps provide regional context or detail for specific areas
 Data source and authorship information ensures proper attribution

Visual hierarchy in maps

 Emphasize important information through size, color, and placement

 Use contrast to distinguish between foreground and background elements
 Group related information for logical organization
 Balance level of detail with map purpose and audience
 Employ whitespace to reduce clutter and improve readability
 Consider visual flow and reading patterns in layout design

Labeling and annotation

Source: Google sites

  Select appropriate font styles and sizes for legibility
 Place labels to clearly associate with features without overlap
 Use halos or masks to improve label contrast with background
 Generalize and prioritize labels based on map scale and purpose
 Employ leader lines for features too small to label directly
 Consider dynamic labeling techniques for interactive maps

Reproducibility in geospatial work

 Ensuring reproducibility in geospatial analysis and visualization crucial for scientific

integrity
 Implementing reproducible workflows enhances collaboration and knowledge
sharing
 Integrating geospatial best practices with data science principles supports robust
research outcomes

Version control for spatial data

 Use Git for tracking changes in vector data and scripts

 Employ Git LFS (Large File Storage) for managing large raster datasets
 Create meaningful commit messages describing spatial data modifications
 Utilize branching strategies for exploring different analysis approaches
 Consider specialized tools like GeoGig for versioning geospatial data
 Implement proper gitignore files to exclude temporary and derived spatial data

Documenting map creation process

 Maintain detailed metadata for input datasets and derived products

 Record data preprocessing steps, including cleaning and transformation
 Document projection and coordinate system choices with rationale
 Describe analysis methods, parameters, and tools used
 Capture design decisions for symbolization and layout
 Use literate programming approaches (R Markdown, Jupyter Notebooks) to combine
code and documentation

Sharing interactive maps online

 Utilize platforms like GitHub Pages or Netlify for hosting static web maps
 Employ cloud-based services (Mapbox, Carto) for scalable interactive maps
 Consider serverless architectures for custom mapping applications
 Provide clear instructions for map usage and interpretation
 Ensure proper attribution and licensing for shared spatial data
 Implement responsive design for accessibility across devices

What is Spatial Analysis?

Have you ever wondered how city planners decide where to build schools, hospitals, or parks?
How did authorities track and manage the spread of COVID-19 to contain the outbreak
effectively? How are vaccination strategies devised and monitored to ensure equitable
distribution? How are such precise maps created, and how does our GPS know the best routes,

Source: Google sites

even during heavy traffic? All these questions can be answered with spatial data and spatial
analysis. Spatial analysis involves examining and understanding patterns and
relationships in geographic data. In this article, we will explore the concept of spatial
analysis, how it works, and its numerous applications in various fields.

What is Spatial Analysis?

The world is overflowing with data, but this data only becomes valuable when we can derive
meaningful insights from it. Spatial analysis is the process of using analytical tools to study
and represent data, uncovering relationships and patterns within geospatial data. This
method transforms raw data into actionable information by analyzing geographic features
collected through satellites, maps, and other sources. It employs a range of analytical
techniques, algorithms, and computational models to draw connections between data
points and apply them to targeted systems such as environmental management, urban
planning, and more.

What is Spatial Data?

Spatial data also called geospatial data contains information that has a geographic
component. Spatial data is broadly classified into two categories, vector and raster. Let’s
take a look at each one of them.

1. Vector Data
Vector data represents spatial features using points, lines, and polygons. In GIS, vector
data is used to represent addresses and points of interest with points; rivers, railways, roads
using lines and lakes, and buildings with polygons.
 Point - A point is depicted by a single dot on the layer. It is the simplest type of vector
data and can be accessed using a single pair of coordinates i.e. x and y coordinates of that
point. A point has zero dimension. Examples of points include the position of cities,
landmarks, schools, etc. on a map.
 Line - Lines can be depicted as a sequence of connected points depicting the shape and
location of a linear feature. A line is one-dimensional vector data. Examples of lines
include rivers, roads, and power lines on a map.
 Polygon - A polygon is formed by connecting points in such a way that it forms a closed
loop. It can also be seen as a line with the same start and end point, hence a closed loop.
Each polygon can be differentiated from the others by assigning different colors to each
polygon. Examples where polygons are used where we need to depict a defined area or
boundary like buildings, closed water bodies, etc.

2. Raster Data
Raster data in contrast to vector data is a grid of cells where each cell represents a
specific value. Examples of raster data include aerial photographs, imagery from satellites,
digital pictures, and scanned maps. In raster data, each cell of the grid holds a single value
representing various attributes like elevation, depth, etc.
 Digital Elevation Models(DEM) - This kind of raster data depicts the topography of the
surface in terms of elevation or depth.
 Satellite Imagery - This kind of rater data depicts the aerial photographs taken by
satellites where each cell in the grid takes up a color to imitate the image taken by the
satellite.
 Temperature maps - This kind of raster data stores the temperature at each location in
the cells of the grid.

Source: Google sites

Thus, rater data is used to store continuous data whereas vector data is used to store data with
well-defined boundaries.
Apart from vector and raster data, there is another type of data called attribute data
that usually comes along with spatial data. This data is used to add more information to
the spatial data. For example, vector line data depicting a road might come along with
attribute data defining the road name, the connecting cities, etc.
Importance of Spatial Analysis
Following are some of the reasons why spatial analysis is so important in today’s world.
 Decision-making - Since the spatial data used is collected from multiple sources, the
data-driven insights provided can be used by decision-makers to choose an action based
on the need. For example, geographic information about the outbreak of a specific disease
can help the authorities make a decision as to which area has to be put under lockdown
and also develop a vaccination strategy.
 Omnipresent Technology - Spatial Analysis is a very important technology used in
today’s most used applications like food delivery applications like Zomato and Swiggy,
transportation applications like Ola and Uber, and GPS systems like Google
Maps where the geographic information is used to get the shortest route between two
points.
 Recognizing Spatial Patterns - Using spatial analysis, you can visualize spatial data
like population density, heat maps, and disease outbreaks that help develop patterns
between various data. For example, population density and heat maps can be used to
determine that some areas with high heat values are also areas with high population
density thus creating a relationship between the two attributes.

How does Spatial Analysis Work?

Spatial analysis is the process of using analytical tools to analyze and represent data,
relationships, and patterns among various geospatial data. This task of analyzing and
recognizing patterns is discussed as follows.

1. Data Collection
Data collection is the foundation of spatial analysis. It involves gathering information from
various sources, including remote sensing devices like LiDAR (Light Detection and
Ranging) and airborne systems. This data, often high-resolution images or photographs
from satellites or aerial systems, is used to create maps that depict the geographic
distribution of entities. For example, maps showing temperature variations across different
regions are created using this data.

2. Data Analysis
Once collected, the data undergoes spatial analysis using artificial intelligence (AI) and
machine learning (ML) solutions to extract meaningful insights. ML models can be trained
to detect and identify objects or structures within vast datasets, such as millions of images.
These objects can include schools, playgrounds, traffic zones, and residential areas. In
spatial analysis there are visualization tools further enhance this process by highlighting
different objects with distinct colors, shapes, or annotations, making it easier to
identify and analyze these objects within large datasets.

3. Data Presentation
In spatial analysis presenting analyzed data is crucial and can be time-consuming, as it
involves emphasizing key findings. Data visualization tools, including tables, charts, and
graphs, simplify this task by effectively projecting relevant data and facilitating

Source: Google sites

communication with stakeholders. Additionally, 3D visualization tools enhance 2D data by
adding depth and perspective, optimizing planning and implementation strategies for better
problem-solving outcomes.
Critical Capabilities of Spatial Analysis Workflows
 Geographic Search
o Spatial analysis enables visualization of specific data on maps through user-
friendly interfaces.
o Users can search for geographic data using elements such as city names,
country names, zip codes, etc.
o This search functionality helps identify points of interest, such as schools in a
specific area.
 Clustering of Datasets
o Spatial analysis allows for the clustering of data points to understand
demographic patterns.
o Authorities can analyze the density of data points to determine the proximity
of amenities like schools.
o This helps identify areas with easy or limited access to facilities.
 Comprehensive Data View
o Using various colors, shapes, and annotations provides a detailed overview of
an area.
o Different entities, such as hospitals, colleges, and repair shops, can be
distinctly marked on maps for better visualization.
 Visual Mapping
o Users can represent data sets on maps using layers, similar to heatmaps or
bubble charts.
o For instance, weather data can be displayed in layers to facilitate visual
interpretation.
 Highlighting Target Entities
o Different types of data can be combined and displayed on simple graphs.
o For example, combining population data with the locations of nearby clinics
helps determine if there are sufficient health centers for a given population.
Application of Spatial Analysis

1. Urban Development
 Create Resilient Urban Cities - Climate change has a great impact on urban life. Thus,
policymakers are working on ways to minimize the effect of climate by analyzing
deforestation patterns, sea level analysis due to increasing global warming,
and emission analysis and strategy to shift to efficient energy resources.
 Monitor and Reduce Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect - The UHI effect is the
phenomenon where natural vegetation is replaced with buildings. This leads to more
heat retention. Spatial analysis techniques like thermal remote sensing, satellite imagery,
and field observations can be used to collect relevant data and understand spatial patterns.
 Determine Quality of Life - Spatial data can be used to determine the socioeconomic
quality of life. For example, areas with distributed hospital services have a better quality
of life. Areas near industrial areas have a poor quality of life due to emissions.
 Traffic Analysis - Spatial imagery can be used to recognize congestion and high-traffic
routes. This identification of busy routes can help improve public transportation
infrastructure.

Source: Google sites

2. Public Health Sector
 Mapping Spreading of Disease - Satellite data can be used to monitor the spread of
disease in an area that helps policymakers come up with prevention plans. The
disease data can be integrated with climatic attributes and nearby water bodies' presence
to analyze how various factors combine to increase the spread.
 Sanitation and Health Facilities Analysis - Spatial data can be used to identify areas
with low sanitation and health facilities. Recognizing these areas can help the authorities
to come up with a better healthcare management system.
 Vaccination Statistics - GIS technologies and spatial data can be used by authorities to
come up with vaccination strategies and track even distribution of vaccines among the
population.
3. Agriculture and Farming
 Crop Monitoring - Remote sensing can be used to collect data related to climate, soil
nutrients, and sunlight which play a major role in crop productivity.
 Crop Yield Prediction - Satellite imagery can be used to provide insights about climate,
weather conditions, and soil nutrients. Using this information, farmers can make better
decisions for the best crop yield.
 Farm Animals Monitoring - Spatial analysis can be used to monitor freely roaming
livestock which play a major role in methane production and soil and water
contamination.
 Soil Analysis - Spatial analysis can help soil specialists retrieve important information
about soil like pH level, nitrogen levels, moisture content, etc. which play an important
role in a better crop.

In conclusion, in this article, we discussed what is spatial analysis, the types of spatial data,
the importance of spatial analysis, the process of spatial analysis, and some applications
of spatial analysis. Spatial data can be divided into two main categories, vector and raster
data which can be accompanied by additional attribute data. Spatial analysis is important
to identify patterns, and decision-making and is an omnipresent technology. The steps
involved in spatial analysis are data collection, analysis, and presentation. The technique
of spatial analysis is used extensively in many sectors like urban planning, public health, and
agriculture which are all discussed above in the article.

Visualization Techniques: Spatial Analysis: The Geography of Data

1. Introduction to Spatial Analysis and Its Importance

Analysis and Its Importance
Spatial analysis stands as a pivotal component in the realm of data visualization, offering
a lens through which complex relationships and patterns across various geographies are
discerned and interpreted. This analytical approach transcends mere mapping; it is a
robust methodology that integrates location data with descriptive information,
enabling analysts to uncover hidden patterns, identify trends, and make informed
decisions grounded in the geographical context.
1. Fundamentals of Spatial Analysis: At its core, spatial analysis involves the
examination of geographical data to understand the spatial relationships inherent within
it. This can range from simple distance measurements between points to more complex
assessments like spatial autocorrelation, which evaluates the degree to which objects are
similarly grouped or dispersed in space.

Source: Google sites

 2. Applications Across Disciplines: The versatility of spatial analysis is evident in its
wide-ranging applications. In urban planning, it aids in optimizing land use and
infrastructure development. Environmental scientists rely on it to track changes in
ecosystems and assess the impact of human activities. Public health officials use spatial
analysis to monitor disease outbreaks and plan resource allocation.
3. Technological Advancements: The advent of geographic Information systems (GIS)
has revolutionized spatial analysis. With GIS, layers of data can be superimposed,
analyzed, and visualized in ways that reveal interconnections and facilitate a deeper
understanding of spatial phenomena.
4. Challenges and Considerations: Despite its advantages, spatial analysis is not
without challenges. Data quality, scale, and the selection of appropriate analytical
methods are critical factors that can influence the outcomes of a spatial analysis.
Illustrative Example: Consider the case of a retail chain looking to expand its footprint.
By employing spatial analysis, the company can integrate demographic data, competitor
locations, and traffic patterns to identify optimal sites for new stores. This strategic
approach minimizes risk and maximizes the potential for success.
In essence, the importance of spatial analysis lies in its ability to transform raw data
into actionable insights with a clear geographical dimension. It is a tool that, when
wielded with precision and understanding, can significantly enhance the decision-
making process across a multitude of sectors.
Introduction to Spatial Analysis and Its Importance - Visualization Techniques: Spatial
Analysis: The Geography of Data

2. Types and Sources

Types Sources
In the realm of spatial analysis, the foundation is laid by the data that represents the
Earth's surface and the phenomena within it. This data, intricate in its diversity, se rves
as the bedrock for understanding spatial relationships and patterns. It is categorized based

Source: Google sites

on its nature and origin, each type offering a unique lens through which the geography
of data can be examined and visualized.
1. Vector Data: This type of data is defined by vertices and paths. It includes points,
lines, and polygons representing discrete locations, paths, and areas, respectively. For
instance, points could represent water wells, lines could represent streets, and polygons
could represent city boundaries.
2. Raster Data: In contrast to vector data, raster data is a grid of cells or pixels, each
holding a value representing information, such as temperature or elevation. Satellite
imagery and digital elevation models (DEMs) are prime examples of raster data.
3. Attribute Data: Often accompanying vector data, attribute data provides additional
information about the spatial features. For example, a database of schools (vector points)
might include attributes like the number of students, the year established, and programs
offered.
4. Metadata: This is data about data. It includes information on how, when, and by
whom the data was collected, its accuracy, and its format. Metadata is crucial for data
validation and usability.
5. remote Sensing data: Acquired from satellites or airborne sensors, this data is pivotal
for monitoring and analyzing environmental changes, urban sprawl, and disaster impacts.
An example is the multispectral imagery used to assess vegetation health.
6. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI): This is user-generated
content collected from platforms like OpenStreetMap, where individuals contribute data
about their local geography.
7. Big Data: Encompassing a vast volume of data generated from various sources like
social media, mobile devices, and IoT sensors, big data offers a real-time perspective of
human-environment interactions.
Sources of geographic data are as varied as the types:
- Government Agencies: They provide authoritative datasets like census data, land use
maps, and topographic surveys.
- Commercial Vendors: Companies like Esri and Google supply proprietary data and
mapping services.
- Academic and Research Institutions: These entities contribute through detailed
studies and specialized datasets.
- Open Source Platforms: They offer freely accessible data, encouraging community
participation and collaboration.
Understanding these types and sources is crucial for effective spatial analysis, as each
brings its strengths and limitations to the table. By weaving together these diverse strands
of geographic data, one can create a rich tapestry that reveals the intricate patterns and
stories of our world.

Source: Google sites

Types and Sources - Visualization Techniques: Spatial Analysis: The Geography of Data

3. From Coordinates to Visual Stories

In the realm of spatial analysis, the transformation of raw data into a visual narrative is
both an art and a science. It begins with the meticulous collection of coordinates, each a
pinpoint on the vast canvas of geography. These coordinates, however, are mere
abstractions until they are woven into the tapestry of a map, telling stories of distribution,
proximity, and movement. The process is intricate, involving a series of steps that
convert numerical values into a visual language that can be universally understood.
1. Data Acquisition: The journey starts with the acquisition of spatial data, which can
range from GPS readings, satellite imagery, to survey data. For instance, a study on urban
heat islands might begin by collecting temperature readings across different city zones
using remote sensors.
2. Data Cleaning: This stage involves refining the dataset, removing anomalies, and
ensuring accuracy. An example would be correcting GPS drift in tracking data for
migratory birds to ensure the paths mapped reflect true movement patterns.
3. Geocoding: Here, non-spatial data is given a geographical context. For example,
assigning latitude and longitude to addresses in a database of public health clinics.
4. Layering: Different datasets are overlaid to find correlations. A public health
researcher might overlay income data with the locations of clinics to analyze access to
healthcare services.
5. Visualization: The choice of visualization techniques is crucial. It could be a heat map
showing crime hotspots or a choropleth map displaying election results by district.
6. Analysis: With the visual tools at hand, patterns can be discerned. For example, a
cluster analysis might reveal that certain diseases are prevalent in areas with low
vaccination rates.

Source: Google sites

 7. Storytelling: Finally, the visualized data must tell a compelling story. This could
involve creating an interactive map where users can see the impact of climate change on
sea levels in different coastal areas.
Through these steps, data points become more than just numbers; they become a narrative
that can inform, persuade, and even inspire action. The power of a well-crafted map lies
in its ability to take us beyond the raw data and into the human stories interlaced within
the geographic fabric.

From Coordinates to Visual Stories - Visualization Techniques: Spatial Analysis: The

Geography of Data

4. Understanding Spatial Relationships Through Data Visualization

In the realm of data analysis, the ability to discern and interpret the spatial arrangement
of data points is pivotal. This skill enables analysts to uncover patterns and correlations
that might otherwise remain obscured. By leveraging the power of visual tools, one can
transform abstract numbers into a more tangible form, allowing for a more intuitive
understanding of complex spatial interactions. These visual representations are not
merely aesthetic enhancements but serve as critical instruments in the analytical process,
providing a bridge between raw data and actionable insights.
1. Heat Maps: A heat map is a data visualization tool that uses color to
communicate complex data sets clearly and effectively. For instance, in urban planning,
a heat map could illustrate areas of high traffic congestion, guiding decisions on
infrastructure development.
2. Choropleth Maps: These maps use varying shades of color to represent different data
values across geographical areas. They are particularly useful for displaying
demographic statistics, such as population density or income levels, across different
regions.

Source: Google sites

 3. dot Distribution maps: This type of map uses dots to represent the presence or
frequency of a phenomenon, offering a straightforward visual cue for identifying clusters
and patterns. For example, a dot distribution map could show the prevalence of a certain
disease within a country, with clusters of dots indicating hotspots.
4. Flow Maps: Flow maps are adept at illustrating movement, such as migration patterns
or trade routes, by using lines of varying thickness to represent the volume of movement
between locations.
5. Cartograms: These maps distort the shape and size of geographical areas to represent
data proportionally. For example, a cartogram could be used to show the distribution of
electoral votes in a country, with each state's size adjusted to reflect its number of votes
rather than its land area.
Through these visualization techniques, one can gain a deeper understanding of spatial
relationships, which is essential for fields ranging from urban planning to epidemiolog y.
By converting data into a visual format, it becomes possible to identify trends, make
predictions, and inform strategic decisions. The geography of data is not just about the
'where' but also the 'why,' and visual tools are the key to unlocking these insights.

Understanding Spatial Relationships Through Data Visualization - Visualization

Techniques: Spatial Analysis: The Geography of Data

5. Tools and Technologies in Spatial Data Visualization

In the realm of spatial data visualization, the convergence of diverse tools and
technologies has revolutionized the way we interpret and interact with geographical
datasets. The sophistication of these tools ranges from basic mapping software to
advanced geospatial information systems (GIS), each offering unique capabilities that
cater to various analytical needs. These technologies serve as a bridge between raw data
and actionable insights, enabling users to uncover patterns and relationships that are not
readily apparent in traditional data analysis.

Source: Google sites

1. Geographic Information Systems (GIS): At the forefront are GIS platforms like
QGIS and ArcGIS, which provide a comprehensive suite of tools for data integration,
analysis, and visualization. For instance, ArcGIS offers spatial analytics features that
allow for complex calculations such as network analysis and 3D modeling, transforming
how urban planners design cities.
2. Web Mapping Services: Platforms such as google Maps api and Mapbox have
democratized access to spatial visualization, allowing developers to embed interactive
maps into websites and applications. These services have been instrumental in the rise
of location-based services, enhancing user experience in navigation apps.
3. Remote Sensing Software: Tools like ERDAS IMAGINE and ENVI enable the
processing and analysis of satellite imagery and aerial photography. They are pivo tal in
environmental monitoring, as demonstrated by their use in tracking deforestation in the
Amazon rainforest.
4. Open-Source Libraries: Libraries such as Leaflet for JavaScript and GDAL for data
manipulation are vital for developers seeking to create custom solutions. They offer
flexibility and extensibility, evident in projects like OpenStreetMap, which relies on
such open-source tools for its crowdsourced mapping efforts.
5. Data Visualization Libraries: D3.js and Plotly are examples of libraries that extend
beyond mapping to offer rich visualization options for spatial data. They can be used to
create interactive charts and graphs that complement maps, providing a more holistic
view of the data.
6. Spatial Databases: PostgreSQL with PostGIS extension, for example, is a powerful
combination that allows for the storage and query of geospatial data within a database
environment. This is particularly useful for managing large datasets, as seen in
transportation networks analysis.
Each of these technologies plays a critical role in the visualization and analysis of spatial
data. By leveraging their strengths, analysts and researchers can derive meaningful
interpretations that drive decision-making in fields as varied as urban planning,
environmental conservation, and public health. The integration of these tools into a
cohesive workflow marks a significant advancement in our ability to visualize the
geography of data.

Source: Google sites

Tools and Technologies in Spatial Data Visualization - Visualization Techniques: Spatial
Analysis: The Geography of Data

6. Successful Spatial Analysis in Action

Spatial analysis has become an indispensable tool in deciphering the complex tapestry of
geographical data, offering insights that transcend traditional data interpretation. By
harnessing the power of spatial analysis, organizations and researchers can uncover
patterns and relationships that are not immediately apparent, leading to more informed
decision-making and strategic planning. The following case studies exemplify the
transformative impact of spatial analysis across various sectors:
1. urban Planning and development: In the bustling metropolis of Singapore, spatial
analysis was pivotal in the development of the Marina Bay area. Planners utilized heat
maps to identify high foot traffic zones, enabling them to design pedestrian -friendly
spaces that seamlessly integrated with public transport systems. The result was a vibrant
district that balanced commercial, residential, and leisure spaces.
2. Environmental Conservation: The Amazon Rainforest, often referred to as the
"lungs of the Earth," has been the focus of spatial analysis to combat deforestation.
Satellite imagery and GIS technology have allowed conservationists to monitor changes
in forest cover, track illegal logging activities, and prioritize areas for reforestation, thus
preserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change.
3. Public Health: During the COVID-19 pandemic, spatial analysis played a crucial
role in tracking the spread of the virus. Health authorities used it to identify
hotspots, optimize resource allocation, and implement targeted lockdowns. For instance,
New York City mapped cases at the neighborhood level, which informed the deployment
of testing centers and medical supplies.
4. Agriculture: Precision agriculture has revolutionized farming practices. In the
cornfields of Iowa, farmers employ spatial analysis to assess soil quality, moisture levels,

Source: Google sites

 and crop health. This data-driven approach enables them to apply fertilizers and water
only where needed, boosting yields while reducing environmental impact.
5. Retail Industry: A leading retail chain utilized spatial analysis to optimize store
locations. By analyzing demographic data, traffic patterns, and competitor presence, the
company identified prime locations for new stores, which led to increased footfall and
higher sales.
These instances underscore the versatility of spatial analysis, proving its value as a
decision-making ally. By visualizing data in its geographical context, it reveals a
narrative that guides actions and strategies, ultimately shaping the world we live in.

Successful Spatial Analysis in Action - Visualization Techniques: Spatial Analysis: The

Geography of Data

7. Challenges and Considerations in Spatial Data Interpretation

Data and Its Interpretation
Spatial data, by its very nature, presents a unique set of challenges that require careful
consideration to ensure accurate interpretation and meaningful analysis. The complexity
of spatial relationships and the intricacies of geographic contexts demand a nuanced
approach to visualization and analysis. One must navigate the multifaceted dimensions
of this data type, from the granularity of detail to the scale of representation, all while
maintaining the integrity of the spatial information conveyed.
1. Scale and Resolution: The scale of a map or spatial dataset can significantly affect
the interpretation of the data. For instance, a dataset visualized at a city-wide scale may
miss out on nuances present at the neighborhood level. Conversely, data at too fine a
resolution might introduce noise that obscures broader trends. An example of this is the
use of satellite imagery for urban planning; while high-resolution images can show
individual buildings, they may not be as useful for understanding regional land -use
patterns.

Source: Google sites

2. Projection and Distortion: Choosing an appropriate map projection is crucial as it
can introduce distortions in area, shape, distance, or direction. For example, the Mercator
projection preserves angles but distorts areas, making high-latitude regions appear
disproportionately large. This can lead to misinterpretations when analyzing spatial
phenomena like deforestation or ice melt in polar regions.
3. Contextual Relevance: The context within which spatial data is analyzed can alter its
interpretation. Data that is relevant in one scenario may be irrelevant in another. For
instance, elevation data is critical when assessing flood risk but may be less pertinent
when examining patterns of urban sprawl.
4. Temporal Dynamics: Spatial data is not static; it changes over time. Interpreting this
data requires an understanding of its temporal aspects. For example, analyzing traffic
patterns requires not just spatial data but also temporal data to understand peak hours,
seasonal variations, and long-term trends.
5. Data Quality and Source: The accuracy and reliability of spatial data are paramount.
Data from different sources may have varying levels of precision and may not be directly
comparable. For instance, crowd-sourced data might offer real-time insights but could
lack the accuracy of government census data.
6. Interoperability: The ability to integrate and analyze data from multiple sources,
often in different formats, is a significant challenge. For example, combining GPS data
with sensor data from smart city infrastructure requires harmonizing different data
standards and formats.
7. Privacy and Ethics: Spatial data often includes sensitive information about
individuals or groups. ethical considerations and privacy laws must guide the collection,
analysis, and sharing of such data. An example is the use of mobile phone data in mobility
studies, which must be anonymized to protect individual privacy.
By addressing these challenges with careful consideration and employing robust
visualization techniques, one can extract valuable insights from spatial data that inform
decision-making across a multitude of disciplines. The key is to apply a critical eye to
both the data and the methods used to interpret it, ensuring that the conclusions drawn
are as accurate and informative as possible.

Source: Google sites


Challenges and Considerations in Spatial Data Interpretation - Visualization Techniques:
Spatial Analysis: The Geography of Data

8. The Evolving Landscape of Spatial Analysis

As we delve deeper into the realm of spatial analysis, it becomes evident that the
discipline is on the cusp of a transformative era. The convergence of big data, machine
learning, and increased computational power is reshaping how we interpret the
geography of data. This evolution is not merely a continuation of existing trends but a
leap into a future where spatial analysis becomes a fundamental aspect of decision-
making across various sectors.
1. Integration of real-Time data: The ability to incorporate real-time data streams from
iot devices and social media is revolutionizing spatial analysis. For instance, urban
planners can now monitor traffic flow in real-time, allowing for dynamic adjustments to
reduce congestion and improve city living.
2. Advancements in Machine Learning: machine learning algorithms are becoming
increasingly adept at pattern recognition in large datasets. An example of this is
predictive modeling in environmental science, where algorithms can analyze satellite
imagery to forecast deforestation trends with remarkable accuracy.
3. augmented and Virtual reality: These technologies are providing immersive ways to
visualize spatial data. real estate developers are using AR to overlay property data onto
physical locations, giving potential buyers a comprehensive understanding of the area's
demographics, property values, and development potential.
4. Increased Accessibility: Cloud-based GIS platforms are democratizing spatial
analysis, making powerful tools available to a broader audience. small businesses can
now leverage spatial analytics to optimize delivery routes, saving time and fuel costs.
5. Collaborative Platforms: The rise of collaborative platforms is enabling cross-
disciplinary teams to work together seamlessly. For example, during disaster response
efforts, various agencies can share and update a common spatial dataset to coordinate
rescue and relief operations more effectively.

Source: Google sites

 6. Ethical Considerations and Privacy: As spatial data becomes more pervasive, ethical
considerations regarding privacy and data ownership are gaining prominence. It's crucial
to develop frameworks that protect individual privacy while still allowing for the societal
benefits of spatial analysis.
The trajectory of spatial analysis is clear: it is becoming an integral part of our digital
ecosystem, influencing everything from urban planning to environmental conservation.
As we navigate this evolving landscape, the potential for innovation is boundless, and
the implications for society are profound.

The Evolving Landscape of Spatial Analysis - Visualization Techniques: Spatial Analysis:

The Geography of Data

9. Integrating Spatial Analysis into Everyday Decision-Making

In the realm of data visualization, the application of spatial analysis transcends academic
discourse and enters the practical domain, where it serves as a pivotal tool for interpreting
complex datasets with a geographical component. This analytical approach, when
adeptly integrated into decision-making processes, can illuminate patterns and
relationships that might otherwise remain obscured within traditional data sets. By
harnessing the power of spatial analysis, stakeholders from various sectors can make
informed decisions that are grounded in a comprehensive understanding of spatial
relationships and geographic context.
1. Policy Development: Urban planners can utilize heat maps to identify high-density
traffic zones, informing the creation of more efficient public transportation routes.
2. Public Health: Epidemiologists can track the spread of diseases by overlaying
incidence rates onto population maps, enabling targeted interventions.

Source: Google sites

 3. Retail Strategy: Businesses can analyze demographic data against location-based
sales trends to optimize store placements and inventory distribution.
4. Environmental Management: Conservationists can assess deforestation patterns
using satellite imagery, leading to proactive habitat protection measures.
Through these examples, it becomes evident that spatial analysis is not merely a
theoretical construct but a versatile instrument that, when skillfully applied, can
significantly enhance the quality of decisions made in everyday scenarios. The
integration of this analytical method into routine decision-making heralds a new era of
data-driven strategy that is both insightful and impactful.

 Use Power BI pdf shared separately for the same

Source: Google sites