PORTRAYAL SCHEMA DESIGN AND MECHANISM FOR MAP PERSONALIZATION
C. Kurokawa, M. Ota
Kokusai Kogyo Co.,Ltd.,Tokyo, Japan
chikako_kurokawa@kkc.co.jp
A map, one of the methodologies for representing Geographic
Information (GI), is designed for versatile uses in general. They are useful
for mutual understanding of the real world. However, they are sometimes awkward
for users because maps do not fulfill their personal requirements.
“Ubiquitous mapping” is a function that people can access any
map at anywhere and anytime through the information network (Ota, 2004) and is
expected to solve such problems. Personalization and visualization are big
issues to realize the mechanism of ubiquitous mapping, because we have to store
enormous amounts of GI if we accommodate personalized GI to answer every user
requirements.
However, reusability of GI will improve by modeling features
with drawing parameters which are independent from features. Feature is defined
as “abstraction of real world phenomena” in ISO/TC211 Standards, and it
consists of “attributes (spatial, temporal, and thematic)”, “relationships with
other features (inheritance and association)” and “operations”. Geographic data
is a set of feature instances that comply with feature types. Spatial
attributes are used for visualization, while temporal attributes are used to
produce animations and thematic attributes are used for design of figures in geographic
data representations. Drawing parameters in this paper are data for geographic
data representation in maps such as symbols and parameters to put symbols such
as positions, angles and offsets. It is the
underlying concept in ISO 19117 “Portrayal”, one of ISO/TC211
Standards, to separate drawing parameters from feature instances.
We design practical portrayal schemas which are independent
from geographic data based on the concept of ISO19117 and build prototype
visualization system based on these schemas to provide the basic mechanism for
standardization and personalization in spatial data representation in this
paper. We create and register drawing parameters which are instances of
portrayal schemas as user’s typical preferences, and represent personalized
maps by switching over those preferences with this system. To provide
personalized maps automatically, we extract situations where users want to get
personalized maps, systematize words to describe situations and join them with
colors, and then we store such information about users’ recognition for colors
and personal preferences.
Good representations for individuals are of great variety
according to their purposes, however, registration of portrayal parameters
makes it possible to visualize same geographic data in different styles, and those
parameters can be applied to other spatial data sets.