Persistent challenges in geovisualization – a community perspective

Abstract

Over four workshops, we collected community input on what people considered as persistent challenges in geovisualization with the participation of 72 experts from various sub-domains of geographic information science and technology. We categorize and analyze this bottom-up input, and contrast it with the previously published research challenges based on five research agenda papers (top-down). We observe certain overlaps but also some interesting differences between the top-down and bottomup approaches. A synthesis of the two suggests three major issues as persistent challenges: (1) a better understanding of the scope of our domain, how it interacts with other domains, and how to make this happen, (2) a systematic understanding of human factors, (3) a 'practicable' set of guidelines that matches the visualization types to task types, and guides the practitioner to design geovisualizations that are appropriate and helpful to the user. Distinguishing persistent from important, we discuss why the identified challenges are persistent, and draw recommendations for action based on our observations and interpretations. We believe these findings will help building a stronger, bettergrounded research agenda for our community. RÉSUMÉEn quatre ateliers, nous avons collecté des données auprès de 72 experts de différents domaines des sciences et technologies de l'information géographique sur ce qui est considéré comme des défis persistants en géovisualisation. Nous avons classé et analysé ces informations ascendantes (bottom-up) et les avons comparées aux défis de recherche précédemment publiés dans cinq papiers centrés sur les agendas de recherche et qui constituent notre référence descendante (top-down). Nous observons certains chevauchements mais aussi des différences intéressantes entre les approches ascendantes et descendantes. Une synthèse des deux suggère trois problèmes majeurs comme défis persistants : 1/ une meilleure compréhension de l'étendue de notre domaine, comment il interagit avec d'autres domaines et comment susciter ces interactions 2/ une compréhension systématique des facteurs ARTICLE HISTORY

The Sound of Being There: Audiovisual Cartography with Immersive Virtual Environments

“…Virtual reality (VR) has become a frequently emphasized factor in literature with a cartographical research agenda (Çöltekin et al 2017;Griffin et al 2017;Virrantaus et al 2009; cf. also Huang et al 2018).…”

Sonifying data uncertainty with sound dimensions

“…The understanding and representation of uncertainty is a persistent challenge in GIScience and its cognate fields (Çöltekin, Bleisch, Andrienko, & Dykes, 2017). As all spatio-temporal data is constrained by spatial, temporal, and thematic precision and accuracy (Ballatore & Zipf, 2015), it is paramount to communicate uncertainty effectively, both to scientists and non-specialist audiences.…”

Geospatial Information Visualization and Extended Reality Displays

“…Cartographic visualizations are (traditionally) designed to facilitate communication between the mapmaker and map users. As a new approach to making sense of geospatial information in the digital era, specifically in the development of digital tools that help map readers interact with this information, the concept of geovisualization emerged (MacEachren 1994;Çöltekin et al 2017 and widened our understanding of how maps could help make sense of a Digital Earth when used in an exploratory manner in addition to their role in communication. Thus, geovisualization is conceived as a process rather than a product, although the term is also commonly used to refer to any visual display that features geospatial information (maps, images, 3D models, etc.).…”