Visual Data Mining of Large Spatial Data and Cartography

Extracting knowledge from large spatial databases is crucial for the development of spatial database systems. Visual Data Mining applies human visual perception to the exploration of these large data sets.

• CartoDraw Project
  
  Cartograms are a well-known technique for showing geography-related statistical information, such as population demographics and epidemiological data. The basic idea is to distort a map by resizing its regions according to a statistical parameter, but in a way that keeps the map recognizable.
  
  
• PixelMaps Project
  
  The basic idea of PixelMaps is to visualize a large number of data points as pixels on a map. To obtain a useful visualization, the PixelMap algorithm uses a local kernel-density-based clustering of the data points to achieve pixel coherence and then positions all pixels belonging to one cluster at close-by positions while at the same time avoiding overlap of pixels in the display.