impressionable maps

by devin hunt

Path tracing within cartography systems is a popular visualization system to implement. Modern man has developed a spatial insecurity that can only be satiated by known his position in relation to the absolute world, whether that be purely physical or even something more abstract, say, financial.

The Impressionable Map system addresses mans location to the absolute world not as point locations but as concentrations. An area has a high concentration of a person's presence when they exist in or near that area for extended periods of time. These concentrations are then mapped onto a 2D plane and faces of high concentration are extruded to create a deformed surface. Subsequently a map with the impression of the person's positions of a discreet time interval is created. Impressionable Maps allows a viewer to quickly identify locations in the physical world that he or she inhabits most often with the longest durations and the flux that occur at these critical points.

Impressionable Maps uses location points measured at fixed intervals to create the deformed surface. Therefore, this system can be scaled to any period of time and any map size as long as the data set provided to the system is statistically significant.

The current dataset used in the demo is Devin's day from 8am to 8pm on Monday, September 19 th taken at ten minutes intervals. It's easy to see that most time is spent this day in the area of the Architecture buildings and Tech Square .

The current incarnation is simple but has great potential for growth, including real-time positional data gathering and streaming map systems for crowd migration patterns.