Gaining overview with transient focus+context maps

Abstract

Gaining an overview of large spatial data sets presents a challenge common to various domains. 'Overviewing' spatial data involves viewing different areas of focus and context at different scales and requires access to detail from zoomed-out views. Standard pan and zoom interfaces provide limited support with this. Motivated by the application scenario of flood risk monitoring, we extend pan and zoom affordances with a combination of focus+context techniques and multiple maps to support 'overviewing' spatial data with a graph-like information structure. A combination of transient overlays to preview context-on-demand as well as detail-on-demand with the option to decouple additional maps enables fast navigation through the graph-like information space. User-created and -positioned, resizable multiple maps allow for simultaneous exploration of distant regions at flexible scales. The seamless integration of these concepts and the versatility of its components allow for continuously adaptable, user-defined layouts that support various analysis situations. We present a prototype implementation of this interaction model and illustrate its working in application to a hydrometric network, but we believe the model could be transferred to graph-like data in other domains.