The representation of data in a viewable medium or format
124
votes
38answers
19k views
Examples of Beautiful Maps
Often times when we make maps it is based on our subjective interpretation of what is aesthetically pleasing. I would like if people posted examples of beautiful maps, displaying any phenomena in any ...
41
votes
11answers
2k views
Best practices for visualizing speed
Imagine you're tracking, for example, vehicle or animal movement and receive regular GPS position updates. How would you visualize speed of movement on a static (= printable) map? I've been coloring ...
30
votes
14answers
2k views
Is there any experience using Computer Games to display GIS data?
besides being a GIS use I'm a big computer game fan.
Games like Civilization, Minecraft, World at War and many others have a very powerfull engine to display huge maps in a beutifull way. I was ...
29
votes
9answers
1k views
What is the best practice for visualisation of a spatio-temporal data set?
I'm investigating visualisation of a spatio-temporal data-set. What examples are available, online or offline, of high-quality spatio-temporal data visualisation?
25
votes
9answers
7k views
How would I draw and visualize custom maps based on OSM data?
I would like to be able to use openstreetmap data for a specific region as a source and "draw" from that the map of infrastructure improvements - mostly roads.
I want it to be self-hosted (not ...
25
votes
8answers
1k views
When is a 3D Visualisation in GIS Useful?
I can currently only think of two cases:
to visualise potential changes in a landscape, such as the effect of adding windfarms, or the addition of a new building to an urban area. However both these ...
22
votes
7answers
1k views
Examples of geovisualizations of global connectivity
I stumbled upon interesting visualization of global connectivity patterns:
'Major road and rail networks in Africa, along with transmission line
and underwater cable data.'
(Source, more ...
22
votes
9answers
1k views
Effectively displaying demographic data on a printed map
I would like to plot the following per zone (30 zones total) data on a printable/non interactive map:
Average age
Average household income
Number of households
Population density
Number of people
...
22
votes
5answers
1k views
Are there any international standards for map symbology?
We are going to let our users add points, polylines and polygons to a map. Are there any international standards for map symbology?
For example for emergency symbols?
22
votes
2answers
4k views
How to style beautiful road maps with QGIS?
I am trying to design a beautiful map using Qgis. As I'm a software developer not a designer, I was hoping that this will be easy, but it isn't!
There is a similar question here Qgis tutorials and ...
19
votes
4answers
484 views
How to generate schemas of GIS hardware / software / workflows?
Quite often I find myself in a situation where I need to explain hardware or software GIS infrastructure to people with no or limited knowledge of GIS. Or give an overview of geoprocessing tasks ...
19
votes
6answers
2k views
How to compare two spatial point patterns?
If I have two point pattern distributions within the same geographic region, how would I go about visually and quantitatively comparing those two distributions?
Also assume I have many points within ...
19
votes
4answers
1k views
Curved point-to-point “route maps”
I have recently been looking at airlines web pages that display their routes departing a certain city to all other cities they service. I would like to be able to create similar curved routes between ...
17
votes
8answers
525 views
Examples of building-level geovisualization
I have recently stumbled upon a presentation and paper by Duncan Smith exploring geovisualization of 2001 area classification of output areas using building level resolution of urban area (London in ...
15
votes
3answers
2k views
Visualising WKT geometry string in QGIS
A very simple question: Is there a simple tool in QGIS to graphically visualise geometry formatted as text?
Example geometry:
"POLYGON((571178 6337246,571178 6402217,598061 6402217,598061
...
14
votes
4answers
475 views
Fitting a word/tag cloud into geographic boundaries
Are there any available tools or a recommend methods for displaying a tag or word cloud (also know as wordle) onto a world map, much like in this example: Map: United States of surnames? (There may be ...
13
votes
3answers
242 views
Is it possible to use symbols instead of colours to visualise raster cell values?
I have a raster image (GeoTIFF) with integer values. I know how to visualise raster values in QGIS using colormaps or similar, but I would like to assign symbols to each colour value instead - just ...
12
votes
10answers
607 views
GIS and natural disasters - examples of geo-visualizations and geospatial analysis
I stumbled upon NY Times' web map of deaths from tornadoes in US.
Can you point me to some more interesting examples of geo-visualization and/or geospatial analysis of natural disasters and their ...
12
votes
4answers
979 views
What is the best method of visualizing a network on a map?
I have several hundred geo-referenced data points, and the relationships from that point, to other points. I'm trying to figure out the best way of visualizing this on an interactive map (possibly ...
12
votes
4answers
428 views
How to create spatial tag clouds or “tag maps”?
I'm looking for implementations of spatial tag clouds or "tag maps". Some papers I found talk about a Yahoo Tag Maps API, but I couldn't find any such thing.
I'd prefer OpenLayers-based solutions, ...
12
votes
3answers
477 views
How to implement ringmaps in ArcGIS?
In a recent article by Stewart and colleagues in IJHG I stumbled upon interesting technique of visualizing data using ringmpas. Some more information referenced in the article about this technique ...
11
votes
4answers
489 views
What are some 3D visualisation tools that successfully work with GIS data?
There are a large number of 3d modelling tools available (both open and closed source). I would like to be able to:
Import GIS data into a 3d environment and retain georeferenceing.
Retain the ...
11
votes
2answers
211 views
How to improve cartographic visualization of overlapping polygons?
I need some advice about how to improve the visualization of cartographic information.
User can select different species and the webmapping app shows its geographical distribution (polygonal degree ...
10
votes
7answers
538 views
What is the point of standard symbology?
There are several questions on the site asking for standard symbology to represent markers of specific types of objects (i.e. Power Distribution, Crime Mapping, Emergency Symbols, Lakes).
What is the ...
10
votes
3answers
316 views
What's a good library for displaying many small maps on a web page
I would like to create a visualization on the web similar to the following:
http://namemapper.babynamewizard.com/namemapper/
Are there any good libraries for doing this? Is OpenLayers light-weight ...
10
votes
5answers
602 views
How to implement value-by-alpha map in GIS?
I've been doing some background reading about cartograms recently and stumbled upon interesting alternative - value-by-alpha maps.
Concept is described in more details here and full paper is ...
10
votes
5answers
338 views
Displaying point data to reflect time/age
I have a layer of 3,000 points for a state, with each indicating the age of a specific type of building. What is a recommended visual display that effectively and equally highlights the age of these ...
10
votes
1answer
144 views
What are the guidelines for the use of non-contiguous cartograms?
The non-contiguous cartogram seems to solve a lot of the area distortions seen with traditional cartograms, while preserving the ability to identify areas by their shape lost with Dorling or Demers ...
9
votes
5answers
558 views
Are there any convenient sources of color palettes to use in ArcGIS software while producing maps?
Since it was asked in Beta and I want to know the answer, I post it here.
9
votes
4answers
622 views
Visualizing large datasets with Leaflet
When using Leaflet to visualize a large dataset (GeoJSON with 10,000 point features), not surprisingly the browser crashes or hangs. A sub-sample of 1000 features from the same dataset works ...
9
votes
2answers
376 views
Static map visualization of multiple categories/attributes in a point?
I have a point data with multiple categorical values for each point location. For example:
point1 = a,b
point2 = a
point3 = b,c
point4 = a,b,c,d,e
and so on
Note that the ...
9
votes
5answers
372 views
Another Student in Need of Career Advice
I would like to apologize in advance for asking yet another "what should I do with my life" type of question.
I am currently a senior who is very close to finishing up my B.S. in Information Systems. ...
9
votes
2answers
318 views
Examples of geospatial scientific posters
Can you point me to examples of interesting scientific posters featuring results of geospatial analysis and/or geovisualizations?
9
votes
4answers
341 views
How can a 3D model of a building be displayed in a web-browser?
I would like to try to show a proposed building in a web-browser such that the user can interact with it in a way similar to google maps streetview. Is it possible to do this, in any platform?
I can ...
9
votes
4answers
787 views
Processing(.org) for geospatial visualization?
Does anyone know if Processing is being used for geospatial visualization? I can't find much out there, but this is impressive: http://benfry.com/zipdecode/
Here's one I just found: ...
9
votes
7answers
602 views
What is the best way to visualize multiple large LIDAR tiles?
I want to load approximately 10 large LIDAR tiles for analysis. I have tried using ArcScene but it appears there is a limit on how much data ArcScene can handle at one time. Each tile is 65-90MB in ...
9
votes
1answer
253 views
How to visualize azimuthal data with uncertainties?
I am trying to make a figure showing azimuthal data with a different range of uncertainties at each point. This oldschool figure from a 1991 paper captures the "bowtie plot" idea that I'm aiming for:
...
9
votes
1answer
467 views
What are some great examples of information dashboards integrated with core GIS capabilties via the web?
I am tasked with designing a GIS information dashboard (think energy consumption, capacity, or any other measurable value across a campus). I would like to get a sense for what has been done well and ...
8
votes
7answers
693 views
How to automatically set polygons borders to improve map readability when rendering thematic maps?
When mapping an value as a color to render a thematic map the objects borders can alter the map readability a lot. For example in this thematic map of the US counties with black borders:
There are a ...
8
votes
5answers
2k views
How to emulate this grayscale basemap look+feel in Google Maps
I love the design on the Development Seed homepage, where they've used a grayscale basemap with bold 3D-style graphic markers.
It appears that they've used the ModestMaps API to create a tiled ...
8
votes
2answers
512 views
How do you choose the classifications on choropleth maps?
I find myself more and more struggling over defining break points when displaying choropleth (aka thematic) maps to view by others. Does anyone have any suggested references that help guide, both how ...
8
votes
3answers
199 views
How to properly Drape vectors over a DEM?
I have a DEM of my study area, and the streams in it.
Whenever I add both to ArcScene, and drape the vectors over the DEM, some of the vectors disappear from over the surface, and are visible under ...
8
votes
1answer
312 views
Open source GIS tool for mapping health data
Im looking for an open source desktop gis tool that can be used for visualization and exploratory analysis.
I want it to be interactive and perhaps display two or more maps at the same time to allow ...
8
votes
4answers
1k views
How to represent bimodal attribute value distributions on a map
I'm looking for a visualisation method that enables me to represent bimodal or even multimodal attribute value distributions on line features.
A bimodal distribution has two different modes that ...
8
votes
3answers
215 views
How to present three spatial variables in one map? [closed]
I want to assign 3 category of variables in a single map.
In other words, I have to produce a cartographic visualization of the damage including a legend listing:
damaged surface area in the ...
7
votes
4answers
900 views
Data visualisation from OSM planet
In a similar idea to http://flowingdata.com/2010/05/25/world-atlas-of-flickr-geotaggers/ and http://flowingdata.com/2010/05/25/map-of-where-toursists-flock/ I would like to extract OSM planet data, ...
7
votes
4answers
280 views
Visualization of satellite image - directly in python
Is there any way (a package or what not), to visualize a geotiff image directly in Python? I don't want to use ENVI or ArcGIS or anything else. Thank you in advance.
7
votes
2answers
378 views
Generating a dynamic graph on USA map
I want to reproduce the dynamic US map showing the obesity percentage across the years 1984-2009 as shown in the CDC website http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html
I am looking for tools and ...
7
votes
0answers
219 views
Is it possible to add photo-realistic clouds in ArcGlobe animations?
This question asked about the best software to produce professional fly-through animations, and included a link to a nice video of the Grand Canyon.
That video includes photo-realistic clouds in the ...
6
votes
2answers
357 views
Visualize text file with location info and intensity
I have an ascii text file containing location data (column 9-lat and 10-long) and intensity(column 20)
200010 207 020311 40658.5 406593 52 344927.31 7100203.50 -26.2078720 127.4491855 ...
