Schematizing car routes with their surrounding street network

ABSTRACT Car drivers can benefit from schematized maps because they require a different level and type of information from different areas of the map. The technical challenge of creating such maps is that a schematic car route map should be optimized for the individual route, and yet simultaneously present the surrounding street network to support orientation. Existing schematization algorithms focus either on routes (without including the surrounding street network) or on the street network (without optimizing the route schematic layout). This paper addresses this lack of methods in schematization research and proposes an algorithm that is able to schematize both the route and the surrounding street network while resolving their conflicting layout criteria. We follow a two-step approach: we optimize the route layout criteria and afterward add the surrounding street network adapting it to the schematic route distortions. Our schematic ‘route + network’ maps aim to satisfy three requirements: (i) better readability of the route with respect to its decision points, (ii) preserving the qualitative characteristics of the surrounding street network while adapting it to route distortions, (iii) better visibility of alternative routes within the street network. A user study with six example maps validates our layout.