Filtering mechanisms for the visualization of geo-referenced information

Abstract

This paper describes a prototype of a web tool for the visualization of geo-referenced information organized in several categories. The main features that distinguish this tool from others with the same purpose are the inclusion of filtering mechanisms based on semantic criteria and the use of multiple representations with different levels of detail. Filtering mechanisms contribute to reduce the amount of displayed data allowing the generation of intelligible representations. The user selects interactively the categories she/he is interested in. This is a basic filtering mechanism, but besides this, a degree of interest function is used to include semantic criteria. This function quantifies the user's interest in order to visualize the most relevant data, suppressing the less relevant data.The definition of multiple representations with different levels of detail enables the reduction of the detail when small scales are being used. In addition less detailed representations are used to present less relevant data.