GIS icon based visualization technique and system implementation for multivariate geospatial data

• 1、Institute of Remote Sensing and GIS, Peking University
• 2、 School of Resources and Environmental Science, Sichuan Agricultural University

Abstract：The visualization of multivariate geospatial data is an important concern in environmental modeling, exploratory data analysis, and geographic/spatial applications. This paper presents an GIS icon-based visualization technique designed for co-visualizing multiple layers of geospatial information. GIS Icon image maps are based on a three-tiered image structure consisting of pixel, icon block and image levels. In icon image maps it is icons rather than pixels that form meaningful visualization primitives. The extension from pixels to icons in the icon image map technique enables raster GIS to represent multiple variables at a single location in the 'simple' raster data model. Due to the fact that no commercial GIS package is currently available for the implementation of the proposed technique, a prototype software system, termed IconMapper was developed as an implementation of the GIS icon based visualization technique. The VB programming language and MFCOM software control were used to implement the system and test the proposed approach. The results show that the IconMapper system allows the user to create GIS icon image maps using pre-designed static or dynamic GIS icon templates and facilitate visualization analysis. An application of the approach and IconMapper system was presented to verify the usefulness of them. The relative simplicity and flexibility of the GIS icon based approach makes it a powerful tool for non-fused visualization of multivariate geospatial data.

Keywords： icon IconMap visualization multivariate IconMapper