New DFG project on digital maps at the chair for computer science I
07/22/2011Internet maps often have a small number of levels of detail, thus zooming may imply abrupt changes. This distracts users. In a new project, algorithms are developed that allow for a continuous transformation between different scales.
Nowadays, interactive maps are widely used in navigation systems or on the Internet. Most map viewers (such as products by Google or MapQuest) allow for zooming and panning, that is, changing the scale and the position of the current map view, respectively. Depending on the requested scale, a user normally gets to see a map from a small set of preprocessed maps. When a user calls a zoom function, the map viewer switches to another map, which may cause abrupt changes to what the user sees. As a result, the user may lose context.
In order to overcome this problem, we aim at algorithms for the generation of variable-scale maps. Under a variable-scale map we understand either (i) a sequence or continuum of maps that covers an interval of scales or (ii) a single map that displays different regions at different scales. A compilation of good single-scale maps is not the same as a good variable-scale map since variable-scale maps need to satisfy additional constraints. In order to produce good variable-scale maps, we need to find algorithmic solutions for continuous map generalization, variable-scale label placement, and map layout generation. We will formalize these tasks as optimization problems and, thereby, we will make the quality of variable-scale maps measurable. We aim at efficient algorithms and heuristics that allow for application in real-time systems.
The project titled "Algorithms for Interactive Variable-Scale Maps" is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for a period of three years.
The chair for computer science I contributes with this project to the Internet Research Center (IRC) at University of Würzburg.
Project leader: Jan-Henrik Haunert, Alexander Wolff
