Speaker: Antoni Moore

School of Surveying, University of Otago

There is an increasing trend and need to incorporate narratives in maps, matched by technologies and methods to enable this. One such attempt to insert stories into space-time visualisations relies on the comic strip and its matched linearity with the plotted line in a map. However, rarely do the characteristics of a story exactly match the (Euclidean) space and time extents that it has to be shoehorned into.

This presentation introduces such comic strip narratives in space-time before exploring how we can transform the spatiotemporal framework of a map to fit the story, touching upon topics of thematic mapping, generalisation and projection. This is part of "data-driven" approach to allocating map space, expanding feature-rich areas and contracting feature-poor areas. A part of the narrative where a lot happens in a small area of space and/or time is feature-rich; a more conventional example lies in mapping cities as opposed to the rather more feature-poor rural areas.

Antoni Moore is an associate professor in GIS at the School of Surveying, University of Otago. His research interests span geovisualisation, cartography and spatial analysis. In particular, he explores diverse approaches to the challenge of displaying contemporary mapped data, drawing from information visualization, novel digital technologies, geographical theory and popular media.