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Geo-scape, a granularity depended spatialization tool for visualizing multidimensional data sets

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Geo-spatial Information Science

Abstract

Recently, the expertise accumulated in the field of geovisualization has found application in the visualization of abstract multidimensional data, on the basis of methods called spatialization methods. Spatialization methods aim at visualizing multidimensional data into low-dimensional representational spaces by making use of spatial metaphors and applying dimension reduction techniques. Spatial metaphors are able to provide a metaphoric framework for the visualization of information at different levels of granularity. The present paper makes an investigation on how the issue of granularity is handled in the context of representative examples of spatialization methods. Furthermore, this paper introduces the prototyping tool Geo-Scape, which provides an interactive spatialization environment for representing and exploring multidimensional data at different levels of granularity, by making use of a kernel density estimation technique and on the landscape “smoothness” metaphor. A demonstration scenario is presented next to show how Geo-Scape helps to discover knowledge into a large set of data, by grouping them into meaningful clusters on the basis of a similarity measure and organizing them at different levels of granularity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Rural and Surveying Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 9 H. Polytechniou Str., Zografos Campus, 15780, Athens, Greece

    Kontaxaki Sofia, Kokla Margarita & Kavouras Marinos

Authors
  1. Kontaxaki Sofia
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  2. Kokla Margarita
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  3. Kavouras Marinos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kontaxaki Sofia.

Additional information

Sofia Kontaxaki received her Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 1993, and her MScE degree in Geoinformatics from the same University in 2002. From 1993 to 1999, she worked as a computer engineer at Intrasoft S.A, an IT Service Provision company, providing services in the fields of systems development and integration, systems management and managed services. She is currently at the Ministry of Education, Lifelong Learning and Religious Affairs, working as an Informatics Teacher in the Secondary Education. At the same time, she is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Rural and Surveying Engineering of the NTUA. Her research interests include information visualization and especially spatialization, knowledge representation and extraction, geospatial ontology integration, and semantic interoperability.

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Sofia, K., Margarita, K. & Marinos, K. Geo-scape, a granularity depended spatialization tool for visualizing multidimensional data sets. Geo-spat. Inf. Sci. 13, 275–284 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11806-010-0385-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11806-010-0385-8

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