Extending Map-Based Visualizations to Support Visual Tasks: The Role of Ontological Properties

Map-based visualizations of document collections have become popular in recent times. However, most of these visualizations emphasize only geospatial properties of objects, leaving out other ontological properties. In this paper we propose to extend these visualizations to include non-geospatial properties of documents to support users with elementary and synoptic visual tasks. More specifically, additional suitable representations that can enhance the utility of map-based visualizations are discussed. To demonstrate the utility of the proposed solution, we have developed a prototype map-based visualization system using Google Maps (GM), which demonstrates how additional representations can be beneficial.