Drawing Georeferenced Graphs - Combining Graph Drawing and Geographic Data

Abstract

We consider the task of visually exploring relationships (such as established connections, similarity, reachability, etc) among a set of georeferenced entities, i.e., entities that have geographic data associated with them. A novel 2.5D paradigm is proposed that provides a robust and practical solution based on separating and then integrating back again the networked and geographical dimensions of the input dataset. This allows us to easily cope with partial or incomplete geographic annotations, to reduce cluttering of close entities, and to address focus-plus-context visualization issues. Typical application domains include, for example, coordinating search and rescue teams or medical evacuation squads, monitoring ad-hoc networks, exploring location-based social networks and, more in general, visualizing relational datasets including geographic annotations.