This thesis project set out to find and implement a comfortable way to explore vast, multidimensional datasets using interactive multiscale visualizations to combat the ever-growing information overload that the digitized world is generating. Starting at the realization that even for people not working in the fields of information visualization and data science the size of interesting datasets often outgrows the capabilities of standard spreadsheet applications such as Microsoft Excel. This project established requirements for a system to overcome this problem. In this thesis report, we describe existing solutions, related work, and in the end designs and implementation of a working tool for initial data exploration that utilizes novel multiscale visualizations to make complex coherences comprehensible and has proven successful in a practical evaluation with two case studies.

Today, “zoomable” maps are a state-of-the-art way to explore the world, available to anyone with Internet access. However, the process of creating this visualization has been rather loosely investigated and documented. Nevertheless, with an increasing amount of available data, interactive maps have become a more integral approach to visualizing and exploring big datasets and user-generated data. OpenStreetMap and online platforms such as Twitter and Flickr offer application programming interfaces (APIs) with geographic information. They are well-known examples of this visualization challenge and are often used as examples. In addition, an increasing number of public administrations collect open data and publish their data sets, which makes the task of visualization even more relevant. This dissertation deals with the visualization of user-generated geodata as a multiscale map. The basics of today’s multiscale maps—their history, technologies, and possibilities—are explored and abstracted. This work introduces two new multiscale-focused visualization approaches for point data from volunteered geographic information (VGI) and location-based social media (LBSM). One contribution of this effort is a visualization methodology for spatially referenced information in the form of point geometries, using nominally scaled data from social media such as Twitter or Flickr. Typical for this data is a high number of social media posts in different categories—a post on social media corresponds to a point in a specific category. Due to the sheer quantity and similar characteristics, the posts appear generic rather than unique. This type of dataset can be explored using the new method of micro diagrams to visualize the dataset on multiple scales and resolutions. The data is aggregated into small grid cells, and the numerical proportion is shown with small diagrams, which can visually merge into heterogenous areas through colors depicting a specific category. The diagram sizes allow the user to estimate the overall number of aggregated points in a grid cell. A different visualization approach is proposed for more unique points, considered points of interest (POI), based on the selection method. The goal is to identify more locally relevant points from the data set, considered more important compared to other points in the neighborhood, which are then compared by numerical attribute. The method, derived from topographic isolation and called discrete isolation, is the distance from one point to the next with a higher attribute value. By using this measure, the most essential points can be easily selected by choosing a minimum distance and producing a homogenous spatial of the selected points within the chosen dataset. The two newly developed approaches are applied to multiscale mapping by constructing example workflows that produce multiscale maps. The publicly available multiscale mapping workflows OpenMapTiles and OpenStreetMap Carto, using OpenStreetMap data, are systematically explored and analyzed. The result is a general workflow for multiscale map production and a short overview of the toolchain software. In particular, the generalization approaches in the example projects are discussed and these are classified into cartographic theories on the basis of literature. The workflow is demonstrated by building a raster tile service for the micro diagrams and a vector tile service for the discrete isolation, able to be used with just a web browser. In conclusion, these new approaches for point data using VGI and LBSM allow better qualitative visualization of geodata. While analyzing vast global datasets is challenging, exploring and analyzing hidden data patterns is fruitful. Creating this degree of visualization and producing maps on multiple scales is a complicated task. The workflows and tools provided in this thesis will make map production on a worldwide scale easier.:1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation .................................................................................................. 3 1.2 Visualization of crowdsourced geodata on multiple scales ............ 5 1.2.1 Research objective 1: Visualization of point collections ......... 6 1.2.2 Research objective 2: Visualization of points of interest ......... 7 1.2.3 Research objective 3: Production of multiscale maps ............. 7 1.3 Reader’s guide ......................................................................................... 9 1.3.1 Structure ........................................................................................... 9 1.3.2 Related Publications ....................................................................... 9 1.3.3 Formatting and layout ................................................................. 10 1.3.4 Online examples ........................................................................... 10 2 Foundations of crowdsourced mapping on multiple scales 11 2.1 Types and properties of crowdsourced data .................................. 11 2.2 Currents trends in cartography ......................................................... 11 2.3 Definitions .............................................................................................. 12 2.3.1 VGI .................................................................................................. 12 2.3.2 LBSM .............................................................................................. 13 2.3.3 Space, place, and location......................................................... 13 2.4 Visualization approaches for crowdsourced geodata ................... 14 2.4.1 Review of publications and visualization approaches ........... 14 2.4.2 Conclusions from the review ...................................................... 15 2.4.3 Challenges mapping crowdsourced data ................................ 17 2.5 Technologies for serving multiscale maps ...................................... 17 2.5.1 Research about multiscale maps .............................................. 17 2.5.2 Web Mercator projection ............................................................ 18 2.5.3 Tiles and zoom levels .................................................................. 19 2.5.4 Raster tiles ..................................................................................... 21 2.5.5 Vector tiles .................................................................................... 23 2.5.6 Tiling as a principle ..................................................................... 25 3 Point collection visualization with categorized attributes 26 3.1 Target users and possible tasks ....................................................... 26 3.2 Example data ......................................................................................... 27 3.3 Visualization approaches .................................................................... 28 3.3.1 Common techniques .................................................................... 28 3.3.2 The micro diagram approach .................................................... 30 3.4 The micro diagram and its parameters ............................................ 33 3.4.1 Aggregating points into a regular structure ............................ 33 3.4.2 Visualizing the number of data points ...................................... 35 3.4.3 Grid and micro diagrams ............................................................ 36 3.4.4 Visualizing numerical proportions with diagrams .................. 37 3.4.5 Influence of color and color brightness ................................... 38 3.4.6 Interaction options with micro diagrams .................................. 39 3.5 Application and user-based evaluation ............................................ 39 3.5.1 Micro diagrams in a multiscale environment ........................... 39 3.5.2 The micro diagram user study ................................................... 41 3.5.3 Point collection visualization discussion .................................. 47 4 Selection of POIs for visualization 50 4.1 Approaches for point selection .......................................................... 50 4.2 Methods for point selection ................................................................ 51 4.2.1 Label grid approach .................................................................... 52 4.2.2 Functional importance approach .............................................. 53 4.2.3 Discrete isolation approach ....................................................... 54 4.3 Functional evaluation of selection methods .................................... 56 4.3.1 Runtime comparison .................................................................... 56 4.3.2 Use cases for discrete isolation ................................................ 57 4.4 Discussion of the selection approaches .......................................... 61 4.4.1 A critical view of the use cases ................................................. 61 4.4.2 Comparing the approaches ........................................................ 62 4.4.3 Conclusion ..................................................................................... 64 5 Creating multiscale maps 65 5.1 Examples of multiscale map production .......................................... 65 5.1.1 OpenStreetMap Infrastructure ................................................... 66 5.1.2 OpenStreetMap Carto ................................................................. 67 5.1.3 OpenMapTiles ............................................................................... 73 5.2 Methods of multiscale map production ............................................ 80 5.2.1 OpenStreetMap tools ................................................................... 80 5.2.2 Geoprocessing .............................................................................. 80 5.2.3 Database ........................................................................................ 80 5.2.4 Creating tiles ................................................................................. 82 5.2.5 Caching .......................................................................................... 82 5.2.6 Styling tiles .................................................................................... 82 5.2.7 Viewing tiles ................................................................................... 83 5.2.8 The stackless approach to tile creation ................................... 83 5.3 Example workflows for creating multiscale maps ........................... 84 5.3.1 Raster tiles: OGC services and micro diagrams .................... 84 5.3.2 Vector tiles: Slippy map and vector tiles ................................. 87 5.4 Discussion of approaches and workflows ....................................... 90 5.4.1 Map production as a rendering pipeline .................................. 90 5.4.2 Comparison of OpenStreetMap Carto and OpenMapTiles .. 92 5.4.3 Discussion of the implementations ........................................... 93 5.4.4 Generalization in map production workflows .......................... 95 5.4.5 Conclusions ................................................................................. 101 6 Discussion 103 6.1 Development for web mapping ........................................................ 103 6.1.1 The role of standards in map production .............................. 103 6.1.2 Technological development ..................................................... 103 6.2 New data, new mapping techniques? ............................................. 104 7 Conclusion 106 7.1 Visualization of point collections ..................................................... 106 7.2 Visualization of points of interest ................................................... 107 7.3 Production of multiscale maps ........................................................ 107 7.4 Synthesis of the research questions .............................................. 108 7.5 Contributions ....................................................................................... 109 7.6 Limitations ............................................................................................ 110 7.7 Outlook ................................................................................................. 111 8 References 113 9 Appendix 130 9.1 Zoom levels and Scale ...................................................................... 130 9.3 Full information about selected UGC papers ................................ 131 9.4 Timeline of mapping technologies .................................................. 133 9.5 Timeline of map providers ................................................................ 133 9.6 Code snippets from own map production workflows .................. 134 9.6.1 Vector tiles workflow ................................................................. 134 9.6.2 Raster tiles workflow.................................................................. 137 / Heute sind zoombare Karten Alltag für jeden Internetznutzer. Die Erstellung interaktiv zoombarer Karten ist allerdings wenig erforscht, was einen deutlichen Gegensatz zu ihrer aktuellen Bedeutung und Nutzungshäufigkeit darstellt. Die Forschung in diesem Bereich ist also umso notwendiger. Steigende Datenmengen und größere Regionen, die von Karten abgedeckt werden sollen, unterstreichen den Forschungsbedarf umso mehr. Beispiele für stetig wachsende Datenmengen sind Geodatenquellen wie OpenStreetMap aber auch freie amtliche Geodatensätze (OpenData), aber auch die zunehmende Zahl georeferenzierter Inhalte auf Internetplatformen wie Twitter oder Flickr zu nennen. Das Thema dieser Arbeit ist die Visualisierung eben dieser nutzergenerierten Geodaten mittels zoombarer Karten. Dafür wird die Entwicklung der zugrundeliegenden Technologien über die letzten zwei Jahr-zehnte und die damit verbundene Möglichkeiten vorgestellt. Weitere Beiträge sind zwei neue Visualisierungsmethoden, die sich besonders für die Darstellung von Punktdaten aus raumbezogenen nutzergenerierten Daten und georeferenzierte Daten aus Sozialen Netzwerken eignen. Ein Beitrag dieser Arbeit ist eine neue Visualisierungsmethode für raumbezogene Informationen in Form von Punktgeometrien mit nominal skalierten Daten aus Sozialen Medien, wie beispielsweise Twitter oder Flickr. Typisch für diese Daten ist eine hohe Anzahl von Beiträgen mit unterschiedlichen Kategorien. Wobei die Beiträge, bedingt durch ihre schiere Menge und ähnlicher Ei-genschaften, eher generisch als einzigartig sind. Ein Beitrag in den So-zia len Medien entspricht dabei einem Punkt mit einer bestimmten Katego-rie. Ein solcher Datensatz kann mit der neuen Methode der „micro diagrams“ in verschiedenen Maßstäben und Auflösungen visualisiert und analysiert werden. Dazu werden die Daten in kleine Gitterzellen aggregiert. Die Menge und Verteilung der über die Kategorien aggregierten Punkte wird durch kleine Diagramme dargestellt, wobei die Farben die verschiedenen Kategorien visualisieren. Durch die geringere Größe der einzelnen Diagramme verschmelzen die kleinen Diagramme visuell, je nach der Verteilung der Farben für die Kategorien. Bei genauerem Hinsehen ist die Schätzung der Menge der aggregierten Punkte über die Größe der Diagramme die Menge und die Verteilung über die Kategorien möglich. Für einzigartigere Punkte, die als Points of Interest (POI) angesehen werden, wird ein anderer Visualisierungsansatz vorgeschlagen, der auf einer Auswahlmethode basiert. Ziel ist es dabei lokal relevantere Punkte aus dem Datensatz zu identifizieren, die im Vergleich zu anderen Punkten in der Nachbarschaft des Punktes verglichen nach einem numerischen Attribut wichtiger sind. Die Methode ist von dem geographischen Prinzip der Dominanz von Bergen abgeleitet und wird „discrete isolation“ genannt. Es handelt sich dabei um die Distanz von einem Punkt zum nächsten mit einem höheren Attributwert. Durch die Verwendung dieses Maßes können lokal bedeutende Punkte leicht ausgewählt werden, indem ein minimaler Abstand gewählt und so räumlich gleichmäßig verteilte Punkte aus dem Datensatz ausgewählt werden. Die beiden neu vorgestellten Methoden werden in den Kontext der zoombaren Karten gestellt, indem exemplarische Arbeitsabläufe erstellt werden, die als Er-gebnis eine zoombare Karte liefern. Dazu werden die frei verfügbaren Beispiele zur Herstellung von weltweiten zoombaren Karten mit nutzergenerierten Geo-daten von OpenStreetMap, anhand der Kartenprojekte OpenMapTiles und O-penStreetMap Carto analysiert und in Arbeitsschritte gegliedert. Das Ergebnis ist ein wiederverwendbarer Arbeitsablauf zur Herstellung zoombarer Karten, ergänzt durch eine Auswahl von passender Software für die einzelnen Arbeits-schritte. Dabei wird insbesondere auf die Generalisierungsansätze in den Beispielprojekten eingegangen und diese anhand von Literatur in die kartographische Theorie eingeordnet. Zur Demonstration des Workflows wird je ein Raster Tiles Dienst für die „micro diagrams“ und ein Vektor Tiles Dienst für die „discrete isolation“ erstellt. Beide Dienste lassen sich mit einem aktuellen Webbrowser nutzen. Zusammenfassend ermöglichen diese neuen Visualisierungsansätze für Punkt-daten aus VGI und LBSM eine bessere qualitative Visualisierung der neuen Geodaten. Die Analyse riesiger globaler Datensätze ist immer noch eine Herausforderung, aber die Erforschung und Analyse verborgener Muster in den Daten ist lohnend. Die Erstellung solcher Visualisierungen und die Produktion von Karten in verschiedenen Maßstäben ist eine komplexe Aufgabe. Die in dieser Arbeit vorgestellten Arbeitsabläufe und Werkzeuge erleichtern die Erstellung von Karten in globalem Maßstab.:1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation .................................................................................................. 3 1.2 Visualization of crowdsourced geodata on multiple scales ............ 5 1.2.1 Research objective 1: Visualization of point collections ......... 6 1.2.2 Research objective 2: Visualization of points of interest ......... 7 1.2.3 Research objective 3: Production of multiscale maps ............. 7 1.3 Reader’s guide ......................................................................................... 9 1.3.1 Structure ........................................................................................... 9 1.3.2 Related Publications ....................................................................... 9 1.3.3 Formatting and layout ................................................................. 10 1.3.4 Online examples ........................................................................... 10 2 Foundations of crowdsourced mapping on multiple scales 11 2.1 Types and properties of crowdsourced data .................................. 11 2.2 Currents trends in cartography ......................................................... 11 2.3 Definitions .............................................................................................. 12 2.3.1 VGI .................................................................................................. 12 2.3.2 LBSM .............................................................................................. 13 2.3.3 Space, place, and location......................................................... 13 2.4 Visualization approaches for crowdsourced geodata ................... 14 2.4.1 Review of publications and visualization approaches ........... 14 2.4.2 Conclusions from the review ...................................................... 15 2.4.3 Challenges mapping crowdsourced data ................................ 17 2.5 Technologies for serving multiscale maps ...................................... 17 2.5.1 Research about multiscale maps .............................................. 17 2.5.2 Web Mercator projection ............................................................ 18 2.5.3 Tiles and zoom levels .................................................................. 19 2.5.4 Raster tiles ..................................................................................... 21 2.5.5 Vector tiles .................................................................................... 23 2.5.6 Tiling as a principle ..................................................................... 25 3 Point collection visualization with categorized attributes 26 3.1 Target users and possible tasks ....................................................... 26 3.2 Example data ......................................................................................... 27 3.3 Visualization approaches .................................................................... 28 3.3.1 Common techniques .................................................................... 28 3.3.2 The micro diagram approach .................................................... 30 3.4 The micro diagram and its parameters ............................................ 33 3.4.1 Aggregating points into a regular structure ............................ 33 3.4.2 Visualizing the number of data points ...................................... 35 3.4.3 Grid and micro diagrams ............................................................ 36 3.4.4 Visualizing numerical proportions with diagrams .................. 37 3.4.5 Influence of color and color brightness ................................... 38 3.4.6 Interaction options with micro diagrams .................................. 39 3.5 Application and user-based evaluation ............................................ 39 3.5.1 Micro diagrams in a multiscale environment ........................... 39 3.5.2 The micro diagram user study ................................................... 41 3.5.3 Point collection visualization discussion .................................. 47 4 Selection of POIs for visualization 50 4.1 Approaches for point selection .......................................................... 50 4.2 Methods for point selection ................................................................ 51 4.2.1 Label grid approach .................................................................... 52 4.2.2 Functional importance approach .............................................. 53 4.2.3 Discrete isolation approach ....................................................... 54 4.3 Functional evaluation of selection methods .................................... 56 4.3.1 Runtime comparison .................................................................... 56 4.3.2 Use cases for discrete isolation ................................................ 57 4.4 Discussion of the selection approaches .......................................... 61 4.4.1 A critical view of the use cases ................................................. 61 4.4.2 Comparing the approaches ........................................................ 62 4.4.3 Conclusion ..................................................................................... 64 5 Creating multiscale maps 65 5.1 Examples of multiscale map production .......................................... 65 5.1.1 OpenStreetMap Infrastructure ................................................... 66 5.1.2 OpenStreetMap Carto ................................................................. 67 5.1.3 OpenMapTiles ............................................................................... 73 5.2 Methods of multiscale map production ............................................ 80 5.2.1 OpenStreetMap tools ................................................................... 80 5.2.2 Geoprocessing .............................................................................. 80 5.2.3 Database ........................................................................................ 80 5.2.4 Creating tiles ................................................................................. 82 5.2.5 Caching .......................................................................................... 82 5.2.6 Styling tiles .................................................................................... 82 5.2.7 Viewing tiles ................................................................................... 83 5.2.8 The stackless approach to tile creation ................................... 83 5.3 Example workflows for creating multiscale maps ........................... 84 5.3.1 Raster tiles: OGC services and micro diagrams .................... 84 5.3.2 Vector tiles: Slippy map and vector tiles ................................. 87 5.4 Discussion of approaches and workflows ....................................... 90 5.4.1 Map production as a rendering pipeline .................................. 90 5.4.2 Comparison of OpenStreetMap Carto and OpenMapTiles .. 92 5.4.3 Discussion of the implementations ........................................... 93 5.4.4 Generalization in map production workflows .......................... 95 5.4.5 Conclusions ................................................................................. 101 6 Discussion 103 6.1 Development for web mapping ........................................................ 103 6.1.1 The role of standards in map production .............................. 103 6.1.2 Technological development ..................................................... 103 6.2 New data, new mapping techniques? ............................................. 104 7 Conclusion 106 7.1 Visualization of point collections ..................................................... 106 7.2 Visualization of points of interest ................................................... 107 7.3 Production of multiscale maps ........................................................ 107 7.4 Synthesis of the research questions .............................................. 108 7.5 Contributions ....................................................................................... 109 7.6 Limitations ............................................................................................ 110 7.7 Outlook ................................................................................................. 111 8 References 113 9 Appendix 130 9.1 Zoom levels and Scale ...................................................................... 130 9.3 Full information about selected UGC papers ................................ 131 9.4 Timeline of mapping technologies .................................................. 133 9.5 Timeline of map providers ................................................................ 133 9.6 Code snippets from own map production workflows .................. 134 9.6.1 Vector tiles workflow ................................................................. 134 9.6.2 Raster tiles workflow.................................................................. 137