V.I.P. – Supporting Digital Earth Ideas Through Visualization, Interaction and Presentation Screens

The concept of digital earth can be described as a large knowledge database for various application areas, such as geography, economic sciences, social sciences, environmental sciences, biology, and urban planning and development. Nevertheless, not only the gathering and compiling of data is important; extracting, mediating and representing the information to the human user is at the core of this entire process. How can this massive amount of complex information from the various application fields be made accessible to expert users working with the data, but also to citizens using the data as a public knowledge base? For us, the three components visualization, interaction techniques and choice of presentation display are inextricably linked and therefore have to be considered when it comes to the question of information perception. Visualization can be used to make complex data more accessible, especially for nonexpert users. It helps both expert users and non-expert users acquire the desired data faster. All this can be achieved by tapping into the rules and particularities of how humans perceive and process information. Furthermore, the display type can be crucial for the perception of information. Small, low-resolution screens are not suitable to display multi-dimensional data due to the limitation of both precision and screen real estate. These facts lead to flaws regarding workflow and information accessibility: the user has to perform permanent "zoom & pan" operations to perceive certain data.