TGVE: a tool for analysis and visualization of geospatial data

EuroVIS 2023 - Leipzig

Layik Hama

2023-05-18

Who?

  • Layik Hama
    • Research Fellow in data visualization
  • Nik Lomax
    • Professor of Population Geography
  • Roger Beecham
    • Lecturer in Geographic Data Science, co-leader of the Centre for Spatial Analysis and Policy (CSAP)

What?

The Turing Geovisualisation Engine (TGVE) is an open source, web-based, interactive visual analytics tool for geospatial(Zou et al. 2018) data analysis, built using R and React (JavaScript).

tgve home

why (rationale)?

  • We needed it even before the funding (2019)
  • Geovisualization is tough
  • Mainstream data science workflows has gaps for geovisualization
  • Web enables interactivity in data science (both in R and Python)
  • To discover new methods and techniques
  • We can and are inspired by giants like Tableau et al.

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear”

~ (Weiser 1991)

So far

SaferActive TGVE

  • “stable” but still labelled “beta” npm package
  • showcased two national scale datasets
  • new R package tgver (not on CRAN yet)
  • scalable, decoupled and production grade application

The npm package

  • Easy usage in various environments (web, mobile, desktop and GitHub pages)
    • data democratization
  • API driven development
  • Automating laborious tasks (Smart)
  • Current challenge: modular and extensible

R package: tgver

# eval=FALSE
tgver::tgve()
knitr::include_url("https://tgve.github.io/app/?defaultURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tgve/example-data/main/casualties_100.geojson")

Showcase SPENSER

knitr::include_url("https://geospenser.com")

Showcase SaferActive

knitr::include_url("https://map.saferactive.org?")

Q & A

SaferActive TGVE

References

Weiser, Mark. 1991. “The Computer for the 21 St Century.” Scientific American 265 (3): 94–105.
Zou, Taotao, Wenshu Li, Pengyuan Liu, Xianchuang Su, Hai Huang, Yang Han, and Xiaoying Guo. 2018. “An Overview of Geospatial Information Visualization.” In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Progress in Informatics and Computing (PIC), 250–54. IEEE.