A visualization-enhanced graphical user interface for geospatial resource discovery

Information visualization and user interaction play critical roles in geospatial resource discovery processes. Well-designed graphical user interfaces improve user experience and also help convey important information to assist decision-making. Existing approaches have visualization problems that impact the efficiency of geospatial resource discovery including (1) search portals lack intuitive and diverse information visualization methods to present search results; (2) functions to sort, filter, explore and analyse search results are inadequate and inefficient and (3) value-added information to help users make selection is missing. To address these problems, we propose a visualization- and interaction-enhanced discovery workflow. We use the latest Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies from Microsoft to implement the proposed methods for our search portal — GeoSearch. Specifically, (1) based on the Pivot Viewer, a multiple sorting, filtering and multi-level-zoom-enabled histogram clustering function is implemented to assist in records exploration. (2) A Bing Maps Viewer is built upon the Bing Maps Control to show geo-location (e.g. BoundingBox and server location) of resources and conduct map-based interactions. (3) Multiple data visualization tools are integrated to provide data preview and animation functions. (4) A service quality vieweris developed to help users select resources based on non-functional properties. Results show that the proposed visualization and interaction technologies improve user experience and can help users obtain required geospatial resources effectively and efficiently.