Borders: visualizing temporal changes in border disputes

Disputes and changes of international borders have been an area of study for cartographers since long ago. Now, with online maps growing faster than printed maps, the task also transfers to online map creators. Companies like Google and Bing provide personalized maps where disputed international borders are in compliance with national laws based on the users' location. Knowing these disputes, the presentation of the differences of international borders between countries as well as on geographical time is an unexplored topic in visualization. In this paper, we propose a fluid visualization method on displaying temporal border changes. We build a tool, Borders, with such fluid visualization to present border events (border disputes and land delivery) and the history of them. In Borders, there are three views, namely general view, detail view, and timeline view, focusing on different aspects of the border events and supporting user exploration of the background knowledge. To provide better learning and comprehension of the border events, contextual cues of border events are integrated in the interface explaining the causes and evolution of events. Case studies show Borders has an advantage over other tools in the fluid visualization of border changes, smooth zooming and panning effect, and rich contextual cues.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2016

Author dc:creator

• Zhang, Jingxian

Contributors dc:contributor

• Karahalios, Karrie G.

• Border disputes
• Map
• Visualization
• Geographical time
• Contextual cues

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2016 Jingxian Zhang

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/90820

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/90820