Visualizing Geographical Information Through Tag Clouds

In the last decade, the need to support decision makers in solving problems related to a territory and its phenomena has stimulated Geographic Information Visualization (GeoVis) researchers to propose highly interactive visualization tools able to both synthesize information from large datasets and perform complex analytical tasks. The goal of the present paper is to propose a GeoVis method based on a recent InfoVis technique, known as Tag Cloud, which combines tag clouds with advanced GeoVis techniques for visualizing geographic data and related spatio-temporal phenomena. The method elaborates a simplified map containing a georeferenced cloud of tags, placed where the associated information is appropriate and significant. As initial result a system prototype has been realized in order to obtain an overview of data distribution and classification. It is focused on data extraction and aggregation, and output visualization, and adopts various techniques to allow users to select data to visualize starting from a geographic dataset.