Intelligent geovisualizations for open government data (Vision Paper)

Abstract

Open government datasets (OGD) have been flooding the Web in recent years. Geovisualisations are the natural way of making sense of them, and have been gradually coming out. However, one key problem is the lack of flexibility of these visualizations, which severely limits their re-use in new scenarios. This article therefore proposes to increase the intelligence of existing geovisualisations by incorporating five features, to make better use of OGD: (i) automatic geographic data type recognition, (ii) generation of geovisualisation designs, (iii) monitoring of users’ understanding of geographic facts, (iv) self-optimization, and (v) user activity recognition. In addition to benefiting users of OGD, realizing these features presents rich scientific challenges and opportunities for Geovisualization research, the OGD landscape (and beyond).