The State of the Art in Map-like Visualization

This is the companion website for the state-of-the-art report on map-like visualization, to appear in Vol. 39 of Computer Graphics Forum.

Authors

Marius Hogräfer Magnus Heitzler Hans-Jörg Schulz

Abstract

Cartographic maps have been shown to provide cognitive benefits when interpreting data in relation to a geographic location. In visualization, the term map-like describes techniques that incorporate characteristics of cartographic maps in their representation of abstract data. However, the field of map-like visualization is vast and currently lacks a clear classification of the existing techniques. Moreover, choosing the right technique to support a particular visualization task is further complicated, as techniques are scattered across different domains, with each considering different characteristics as map-like.

In this paper, we give an overview of the literature on map-like visualization and provide a hierarchical classification of existing techniques along two general perspectives: imitation and schematization of cartographic maps. Each perspective is further divided into four principal categories that group common map-like techniques along the visual primitives they affect. We further discuss thisclassification from a task-centered view and highlight open research questions.

Full-size Figures

Published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Creative Commons License

Figure 1: Teaser Image

Figure 3: Map-like Transformation

Imitation Icons

Schematization Icons

Citation in BibTeX

To cite this article, we encourage you to use the following bibtex entry in your citation manager:

@article {maplike2020,
  title = {The State of the Art in Map-Like Visualization},
  author = {Hogr\"afer, Marius and Heitzler, Magnus and Schulz, Hans-J\"org},
  year = {2020},
  number = {3},
  journal = {Computer Graphics Forum},
  volume = {39},
  issn = {1467-8659},
  pages = {647--674},
  doi = {10.1111/cgf.14031}
}