Motivation

Geoportals are great platforms to show and give access to available spatial data to the users: all the topics are in one place and you can preview the data before you start downloading them. However, the visualization of the spatial data often lacks cartographic quality, because geoportals are focused on their role as data sharing platforms and not on adequate visualizations of spatial data.

Cartography has entered a new era with the advent of Web 2.0, crowdsourcing and open data movement and thus opening the field to a wider audience. Cartography is not any more only in the hands of national and military agencies! A new type, or rather many new types, of cartographers emerged from this new audience. They create and modify maps online by combining various resources and cartographic tools available. But, even though the access to spatial data and tools became much easier and open, the integration of cartographic principles for the visualization and combination of existing spatial data within geoportals trails behind in its transition to Webmapping 2.0.

Thus this work is motivated by improving the symbolization of spatial data on geoportals, not just because one can make pretty maps, but because well-designed and uncluttered data visualization help gathering more insight about the organization of the spatial phenomenon at hand and creating added value on top of the raw data.

Goals

• Provide cartographic functions to improve the visualization of spatial data on geoportals in user maps
• Integrate these functions as tools in an actual geoportal
• Share and open cartographic knowledge through these tools
• Make pretty and useful maps with available open data