Nowadays a substantial trend occurs that vast amounts of geospatial data are supplied, managed, and processed over distributed GIS. It is important to provide users with the capability of visualising spatial data quality information in a meaningful way for distributed GIS, since it will significantly enhance user understanding of data quality and aid them in assessing the data fitness for their application requirements. This thesis investigates the issue of visualisation of spatial data quality for distributed GIS. Based on a review of core concepts associated with spatial data quality, metadata standards, and major research areas related to data quality, the limitations of current data quality presentation are highlighted. To overcome some of these limitations, the research topic of this thesis is proposed, namely, adding visualisation functionality to the presentation of spatial data quality to convey uncertainty information to users in an interactive and graphical manner. Based on a review of the theories on visualisation and the frameworks developed for visualisation of spatial data quality in literature, an extended framework is developed incorporating several aspects of visualisation such as contexts, contents, and techniques, where the hierarchical nature of data quality and error models are two main parts of the visualisation contents. A brief framework of visualisation of spatial data quality for distributed GIS is proposed, where data storage with quality information and web services for visualising data quality are two key components. To satisfy a series of requirements for representing spatial data quality, a new object-oriented data model is proposed based on the review of developments of data models. This data model can specifically deal with the hierarchical nature of data quality and error propagation, recognising data quality as a dynamic process. Further, The implementation of the data model using GML and SVG is discussed. The details of a web service for visualising spatial data quality are addressed. After proposing the requirements on building a system for spatial data quality visualisation for distributed GIS, the design of a prototype visualisation system for distributed GIS is addressed in detail. The prototype visualisation system for spatial data quality is developed and implemented with an example data set, where SVG and JavaScript are used to illustrate how various graphic methods such as animation, data quality filters, and colour gradients can be used for distributed GIS. In addition to the visualisation of positional accuracy at the feature level, in this pilot system, the hierarchical structure of data quality information is also presented. Limitations of the research in this thesis are also addressed. However, in general, this research is of great significance for the contributions made to a relatively new research area in terms of theories, procedures, and software developments.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/242969 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Yang, Ting, Surveying & Spatial Information Systems, Faculty of Engineering, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Ting Yang, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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