Browsing by Author "Van den Heever, Johannes Lodewikus"

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    The development of a visualization tool to assist topographic map users
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2002-12) Van den Heever, Johannes Lodewikus; Van Niekerk, Adriaan; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Geography and Environmental Studies.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The recognition and description of relief features from their contour patterns is recognized as the main challenge in topographic map education. Conducting field exercises can solve this problem, but can be very time consuming. Modern technology, however, provides an alternative teaching technique by creating depictions of terrain. Important issues raised by this new approach include questions such as what these depictions should look like and how it should be presented to the user. Research presented here aims to address these issues by constructing design guidelines for terrain depiction. These design guidelines were derived from previous research and case studies. The guidelines focussed on research about how people perceive different representations of terrain and how these representations should optimally be presented. The design guidelines were constructed from research done in diverse fields such as cognitive psychology, cartography and engineering. Results of this research revealed that in order to develop an effective terrain visualization tool, it is crucial to incorporate different fields of expertise. The design guidelines were implemented with ArcView GIS and its 3D Analyst extension, which has the ability to display spatial data in three dimensions. The final product is called Terrain Visualization Tool 1.1 (TVT) and was created by customizing an ArcView GIS project (TV BUILDER) and constructing a Website (TV VIEWER). TV BUILDER creates the visualization data in the form of 20 web pages per topographic area and links them to TV VIEWER that serves as a platform to view the data. The design guidelines were implemented successfully and show the advantages of using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in related research.