Abstract
Abstract. For various reasons statistical mapping is receiving increased interest within the technological shift towards service-oriented web cartography. At the same time new teaching approaches are required at universities which combine both, the motivating of students to get a grip on active programming while learning also about less common thematic mapping methods. The paper points to those cartographic representation methods of visualizing areal distributions of quantitative area characteristics which are often overlooked either due to not being readily available in GIS software or because they are simply not known. Of the nine methods discussed in regard to their abilities and limitations, five are not readily implemented or supported by the ArcGIS Pro software. Within the new teaching course on web processing services (WPS) as part of the International Geomatics master programme at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, the students learn how to conceptualize, program and publish a WPS by gaining a solution for those less common methods. The alternate band map method serves as teaching example, but students are asked to independently work on other methods, too. The WPS course acts here as an eye-opener for the students to the wider pool of cartographic visualization options, of how to get around the limitations of GIS software, and of how to automate processes including making them available to others. With that we hope to contribute to automatically rendered thematic maps becoming more versatile again.
Highlights
At the same time new teaching approaches are required at universities which combine both, the motivating of students to get a grip on active programming while learning about less common thematic mapping methods
The attempts described by Bürgener (1957) to achieve to assign multiple or partial sets of 100 grid cells to differently shaped and sized enumeration units, should nowadays not be a challenge anymore through the use of computer algorithms
Due to the automation efforts related to visualizing big data and the capabilities of nowadays interactive dynamic, web GIS-based visualization tools, we increasingly experience a mixing and interconnecting of thematic mapping methods including some of the described above
Summary
The widely available and accessibly data asks for easy ways of interaction (Kraak et al, 2018) These developments explain why statistical mapping is receiving increased interest within the technological shift towards service-oriented web cartography which builds on software functionality known from desktop GIS and traditional web mapping. To meet the new amount of data and its versatility, thematic map making requires the support of diversity among visualization options (Schaab et al, 2021). The students learn how to implement cartographic web services, which deliver the geometries required for designing thematic maps, for which GIS software is not readily providing. The paper is rounded off (section 5) with a discussion and conclusions
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