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Space-Time Cube for Visual Queries over Metadata of Heterogeneous Geodata

Ein Raum-Zeit-Würfel für visuelle Abfragen zu Metadaten heterogener Geodatensätze

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Abstract

Nowadays, huge amounts of geodata are increasingly made accessible on geodata portals. Typically, these data portals provide extensive metadata with various attributes, such as topic, size, and quality, that describe basic information about the datasets. However, at present, there is still insufficient work using visual interfaces to support the intuitive understanding of the overall distribution of metadata and make efficient decisions on which datasets they want. In this study, we designed a visual interface to display the metadata based on a space-time cube (STC) visualization, through which users could gain not only an overview of the metadata, but also detailed information about individual metadata attributes. We evaluated the design with 32 participants who were asked to perform five predefined benchmark tasks. The evaluation results show that most users can successfully finish tasks in finding specific datasets. This demonstrates that the space-time cube can provide a good overview and is visually attractive to potential users of the data portal. Nevertheless, the design has some limitations, e.g., the selection of color scheme and 3D symbol shape, which we need to improve in our future work. Besides, STC is rather new to most participants, and some of them were not used to this type of visualization. We believe that the space-time cube could be deployed as a supplementary method for displaying metadata in open data portals if sufficient user guidance is provided.

Zusammenfassung

Heutzutage werden große Mengen an Geodaten zunehmend auf Geodatenportalen zugänglich gemacht. In der Regel bieten diese Datenportale umfangreiche Metadaten mit verschiedenen Attributen wie Thema, Größe und Qualität, die grundlegende Informationen über die Datensätze beschreiben. Derzeit gibt es jedoch noch keine ausreichenden Arbeiten, die visuelle Schnittstellen verwenden, um das intuitive Verständnis der Gesamtverteilung der Metadaten zu unterstützen und effiziente Entscheidungen darüber zu treffen, welche Datensätze sie wünschen. In dieser Studie haben wir eine visuelle Schnittstelle zur Darstellung der Metadaten auf der Grundlage eines Raum-Zeit-Würfels (STC) entwickelt, über die die Benutzer nicht nur einen Überblick über die Metadaten, sondern auch detaillierte Informationen über einzelne Metadatenattribute erhalten können. Wir haben das Design mit 32 Teilnehmern evaluiert, die fünf vordefinierte Benchmark-Aufgaben durchführen sollten. Die Evaluierungsergebnisse zeigen, dass die meisten Benutzer die Aufgaben zum Auffinden bestimmter Datensätze erfolgreich lösen können. Dies zeigt, dass der Raum-Zeit-Würfel einen guten Überblick bieten kann und für potenzielle Nutzer des Datenportals visuell attraktiv ist. Dennoch weist das Design einige Einschränkungen auf, z.B. bei der Auswahl des Farbschemas und der 3D-Symbolform, die wir in unserer zukünftigen Arbeit verbessern müssen. Außerdem ist STC für die meisten Teilnehmer ziemlich neu, und einige von ihnen waren nicht an diese Art der Visualisierung gewöhnt. Wir glauben, dass der Raum-Zeit-Würfel als zusätzliche Methode zur Darstellung von Metadaten in offenen Datenportalen eingesetzt werden könnte, wenn eine ausreichende Benutzerführung gegeben ist.

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Notes

  1. https://dl.acm.org/.

  2. http://tj.jiangsu.gov.cn/col/col4009/index.html.

  3. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/.

  4. https://www.webmap.cn/main.do?method=index.

  5. https://www.qualtrics.com/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Cartography and Visual Analytics, Technical University of Munich, Arcisstrasse 21, 80333, Munich, Germany

    Chenyu Zuo, Mengyao Gao & Liqiu Meng

  2. KRDB Research Centre, Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Piazza Domenicani 3, 39100, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

    Linfang Ding

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 7A, Trondheim, Norway

    Linfang Ding

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  1. Chenyu Zuo
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  2. Mengyao Gao
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  3. Linfang Ding
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  4. Liqiu Meng
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Correspondence to Linfang Ding.

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Zuo, C., Gao, M., Ding, L. et al. Space-Time Cube for Visual Queries over Metadata of Heterogeneous Geodata. KN J. Cartogr. Geogr. Inf. 72, 29–39 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42489-022-00096-5

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