Maps are rapidly becoming fully interactive interfaces to geographic information. We use them as tools to plan our journeys, to decide where we are going to live, to visualize data, or for gaming. We want to inspect relationships between entities, navigate through large result sets, and to quickly identify the best options amongst many alternatives. Whatever it is, we need to express our needs such that algorithms can provide the answer.

However, working with maps is still surprisingly awkward. Simple queries can require a lot of interaction and workarounds, formulating complex queries is sometimes not even possible. To transform maps into intelligent and interactive interfaces, we need to anticipate users, contexts, and tasks and adapt interaction and visualization towards their needs and capabilities.

With MapInteract 2014 we want to explore the future of maps as fully interactive interfaces. We are seeking contributions addressing different facets of interactivity with maps: from interaction design and user studies to algorithms enabling interaction with complex spatio-temporal data. The application areas of maps are very diverse but we aim to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners from many domains with an interest in map interaction.

We invite submissions of research papers, position statements as well as interactive demos to discuss and experience new map-based interaction techniques and modalities, algorithms involved in interaction and visualization, user studies, adaptation, research agendas, common challenges etc.

Programme

Organizers

Prof. Dr. Christian Kray, Director, Institute for Geoinformatics (ifgi), University of Münster (WWU)
Holger Fritze, Institute for Geoinformatics (ifgi), University of Münster (WWU)
Falko Schmid, University of Bremen