A Simple Pipeline for Coherent Grid Maps

Grid maps are spatial arrangements of simple tiles (often squares or hexagons), each which represents a element. They an established, effective way to show complex data per element, using visual encodings within tile ranging from coloring nested small-multiples visualizations. An grid map is coherent with the underlying geographic space: maintain contiguity, neighborhoods and identifiability corresponding elements, while as whole maintains global shape input. Of particular importance salient local features need be represented by assigned appropriate elements. State-of-the-art techniques can adequately deal only cases, such close-to-uniform distributions shapes that have few characteristic features. We introduce fully-automated 3-step pipeline for computing maps. Each step well-studied problem: decomposition based on features, tile-based Mosaic Cartograms, point-set matching. Our seamless composition existing these problems results in high-quality provide implementation, demonstrate efficacy our approach various datasets, compare it state-of-the-art.