The giCentre is engaged in high quality research and education involving the use of Geographic Information (GI).
We develop the theory, practice and technology that support Geographic Information Science and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), offer innovative and high quality learning opportunities and play a leading role in the international GI research community.
The giCentre has released a library of classes for writing data visualization programs with the software Processing. Includes classes for statistical graphics, colour management, animated transitions and geographic transformations. The utilities are fully documented with examples and are open source. See gicentre.org/utils.
A new application written by the giCentre uses live data from the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme to reveal patterns in docking station use across London. It uses spatial treemaps to show the last 24 hours use of all London docking stations in a grid. To use the BikeGrid application, go to gicentre.org/bikegrid.
Our new paper in the Journal of Maps describes how we've added geography to treemaps in order to represent spatial hierarchical data and how this results in a hierarchical rectangular cartogram. We demonstrate the value of these for socio-economic data for more than a million postcode units. For more information about our related work, click here.
Our graphs of the new London bike hire scheme show the availability of bikes over the last 24 hours for over 300 docking stations and allow comparision with yesterday's usage. Sort docking stations by distance from the station of your choice and explore patterns of use through time; for example, which times of day docking stations are popular destinations or where and when it is difficult to find a bike to hire.
Aidan presented visual analysis techniques for comparing catastrophe (CAT) model outputs at the Ninth International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at Leicester University in July. This was joint work with Willis as part of the Willis Research Network.
Christos has successfully defended his thesis "Evaluating Non-Photorealistic Rendering for 3D Urban Models in the Context of Mobile Navigation". We're pleased to say that Prof. Jonathan Briggs awarded the PhD with no corrections.
Christos' work was undertaken through a EPSRC Industrial CASE award with Alcatel Lucent Telecom Limited UK with Dr. Vesna Brujic-Okretic.
Christos is now a Lecturer in Media Techology at Bournemouth University and maintains a log of his activities through a scientific diary.
The results of our vizLib project are published in a short graphical report as part of the UPTAP Research Findings series.
In 'Developing Capacity for Exploratory Analysis in Local Government Visualization of Library Usage Data' we present a number of graphical methods and comment on library user characteristics and geography for libraries in Leicestershire.
Variable 'performance' in terms of user recency and frequency is evident along with differing local patterns of usage. The importance of the geography of library location amongst frequent recent users is evident.
Our paper on OD maps has just been published in the Cartographic Journal. It describes our new technique for visualising origin and destination data that avoids some of the problems of other techniques, such as occlusion. We do this nesting spatially arranged destination matrices inside origin matricies to produce an OD map. This technique is similar to that of an OD matrix but with the spatial arrangement of origins and destinations preserved. This work is based on the award-winning paper that Jo presented at GISRUK last year.
Jason Dykes attended the Dagstuhl Seminar on Information Visualization.
The meeting provided a great opportunity to discuss giCentre work with international colleagues in the context of the latest advances and ideas in Information Visualization.
Jason participated in research groups working on 'The Analytic Process' and 'Visualization Aesthetics' and led a session on 'Information Visualization Education'. He is contributing to ongoing efforts to develop the ideas generated at the meeting.
Aidan, Jo and Jason's paper which demonstrates a treemap-based approach to cartography for presenting spatial and temporal characteristics of traffic has just been published in the Journal of Maps. It enables multiple aspects of traffic to be viewed concurrently. We also have an interactive demo of the technique.
Aidan presented our vizTweets project for collaborative visual data analysis at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly 2010 in Vienna. We are extending our Hierarchical Visualisation Expression (HiVE) language to support the types of graphics used in insurance natural hazard risk management. Aidan demonstrated how HiVE could be used with microblogging sites to discuss data asynchronously, using graphics.
The giCentre won best paper at GIS Research UK 18th Annual Conference (GISRUK) for the fourth year running. Aidan presented OAC Explorer [see paper], demonstrating techniques for visually analysing uncertainty and variation within the OAC geodemographic classifier through a fast and responsive visual interface that makes effective use of interaction, layout and colour. Thank you to everyone who voted!
The giCentre won the UKMap challenge at GISRUK. The challenge was to demonstrate an "innovative way in which UKMap [could] be used and displayed for the potential benefit of a specific market sector, organisation or research area". Our entry responded to this by applying some ideas from our vizLegends work with EDINA to produce a responsive map legend to support map interpretation in an interactive environment. You can try it out here.
The giCentre was well-represented at the UK's annual GIS research conference, presenting a wide cross-section of its work. Susanne and David contributed to the pre-conference useability workshop that was also attended by Jason and Lian-Chee; Naz represented work on uncertainty in home locations from volunteered geographic information [pdf]; Jo and Aidan presented work on looking at uncertainty within OAC [pdf and pdf]; Jason presented new ways thinking about map legends [pdf]; Rob showcased the vizLib work and described how it was having an impact in Leicestershire County Council [pdf]; and Aidan led the giCentre UKMap challenge entry.
Jo Wood, Jason Dykes and Aidan Slingsby's research has been recognised in the university's annual Staff Research Prize scheme. They received a "commendation" for their novel approaches to information visualisation, their engagement with data users and their research outputs over the past year which include best paper (GISRUK), honorable mention (IEEE InfoVis), visual analytics prize (VAST) and "KML in research" prize (Google).
The latest version of LandSerf has been released after extensive testing.
New features include the LandScript scripting language for macro programming and map algebra processing, flow magnitude calculations, new map projections, significantly enhanced Ordnance Survey NTF and MasterMap import and USB GPS communication.
Use RAEViewer to explore the RAE Results and Funding through an interactive graphical representation of the 67 Units of Assessment. Institutions can be ordered according to the selectable criteria. City has improved its research ratings across the University following the publication of the 2008 RAE results, with over 80% of submitted activity rated as recognised internationally or better. Our visualization application helps identify trends in research quality and funding.