This week’s Kraak article was a rather pleasant read. I thought that framing the article around a specific example of Charles Minard’s famous map of Napoleon’s March on Moscow to better illustrate the topic of geovisualization was an intelligent choice. This article was well structured and the flow of ideas made for easy comprehension of the subject; from introduction of what a geovisualization is, to what Minard’s map depicted, to different types of maps/geovisualization etc. What struck me about this article was the sheer amount of alternative ways of presenting the same information and how those different presentations can drastically affect the way the information is retained. For example, how slider maps can both aid in the presentation of temporal information (versus a static map) but also affect how the data is perceived (i.e. slider moves at even time frames, however the original route involved stops that could last up to a month). Furthermore, the different applications of geovisualization demonstrated how traditional cartographic rules or traditional static maps can be restricting in portraying information. Take for example the 3D model depicted in Figure 5, in this portrayal if information shows not only the aforementioned month long stop that a similar map (figure 4) did not. Overall I found this article very eye-opening as it showed that geovisualization is not just colours and making maps look pretty – it’s a dynamic science that can help us draw conclusions and retrieve more information than we ever thought possible.
Until next time,
Nod