Graceful Degradation for Real-time Visualization of Streaming Geospatial Data

Abstract

The availability of devices that can record locations and are connected to the Internet creates a huge amount of geospatial data that are continuously streamed. The informative visualization of such data is a challenging problem, given their sheer volume, and the real-time nature of the incoming stream. A simple approach like plotting all datapoints would generate visual noise, and not scale well. To tackle this problem, we have developed a visualization technique based on graceful degradation along three overlaid time periods (ongoing, recent, and history), each with a different visual idiom. A usability test of the proposed technique showed promising results.