Date of Award

6-2016

Degree Name

MS in Computer Science

Department/Program

Computer Science

Advisor

Zoë Wood

Abstract

Maps are as fundamental to society as language and the written word. Maps are an abstraction of reality that help people to better understand the world around them. Route maps, specifically, depict a path from one place to another. Many route maps generated today contain excessive information making it difficult for people to process visually. Previous work has been done in generating routes, searching for nearby points of interest, and path generalization. This thesis proposes a system, TRPINav, that will integrate terrain data, route data, points of interest, and navigation in a cartographic visualization. This prototype navigation application includes a system designed to unify data from various sources, such as Yelp, Google Maps, and Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) into a single coordinate frame for useful navigation and reference. This system presents a model to handle data acquisition and unification of these data sources and render them in a simplified and pleasing representation to the user. The prototype includes simple rendering techniques and a user study to validate which features are appealing and useful to the user. Analysis shows that users are generally pleased with features of the system, and that the system can help answer some geographic questions. The results of this analysis are used to determine future iterations of the system.

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