The applications of geo-referenced data visualization technologies for GIS

摘要

Geo-referenced data visualization is one of the most important components of geographic information systems. Over the past several years, geospatial data are growing much more in size and complexity than ever before, and researchers are engaged in doing a lot of works to visualize these diverse geospatial data by taking advantage of computer graphics which helps to convey information and amplify cognition and makes possible for more powerful participating exploration and discovery experience. This paper will discuss the related works on visualization for GIS. The first chapter of this paper is an introduction which will present an overview. In the second chapter, we will talk about the geo-virtual environment which closely related to the virtual reality concept. We will focus on representation of urban models, terrain rendering algorithms, and the problems we currently face. For the third part, we will talk about two young but promising fields, which are scientific visualization and information visualization. The brief history and the research issues of these two disciplines will be the main topic. Finally, we will make a outlook on the future works about human-computer interaction, and hardware acceleration.