I have already seen maps using deformation to visualize information. For example, this map shows temporal distance between some French cities when traveling by train: http://www.nf-ameublement-pro.com/sc/images/new/newsletter/septembre/carte_france.jpg
Is there a name for this kind of map? Also, is this type of map available in any GIS software?
Answer
This is called a distance cartogram. Some add-ons for ArcGIS have been produced to create area cartograms. Mark Newman provides free GIS-independent software to implement his area cartogram method. Methods of creating distance cartograms are known in statistics as multidimensional scaling (MDS). I do not know of any GIS software that implements MDS, but it's available in full-featured statistical packages like Stata (commercial) and R (free).
No comments:
Post a Comment