A geovisual analytics approach to spatial and visual feature organization and exploration

Rahman, Md. Asikur (2013) A geovisual analytics approach to spatial and visual feature organization and exploration. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

[English] PDF - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (6MB)

Abstract

Marine sonar data sets often cover large spatial regions and consist of many hundreds of thousands of sonar pings. The visual representations of the sonar data (echograms) are normally shown as long and narrow ribbons of data. The main challenge with analyzing sonar data using echograms is that the ratio of the length to the height can be very high. As analysts zoom in to show the echogram in sufficient detail, much of the contextual information is lost and horizontal scrolling is necessary to explore and compare the data. In this thesis, a novel approach is proposed that couples a technique for visually clustering slices of the echogram based on visual similarity, with a geovisualization method that shows the spatial location of echogram slices on a virtual globe. A field trial with real-world data analysts was conducted and the results of the field trial illustrate the benefits of this approach.

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