Visual attention-guided augmented representation of geographic scenes: a case of bridge stress visualization

Abstract

Efficient geovisualization is beneficial for understanding geospatial phenomena, an important research direction for GISers and Cartographers. However, the current research on geovisualization overemphasizes the visual effects while neglecting the prominent representation of crucial information and failing to consider the user’s cognitive workload of information processing. Following the laws of visual perception of the human eyes, this article proposes a visual attention-guided augmented representation approach of geographic scenes that involves area of interest computation, background simplification, and compound graphic variables. Finally, we select bridge stress visualization as a case study for experimental analysis. The experimental results of eye-tracking show that augmented representation could draw the participants’ attention to areas of interest in a short time, increasing their duration of fixations and the accuracy of completing given tasks. These findings suggest that our approach can enhance geographic scenes’ cognitive efficiency, offers a new idea for the theoretical studies of geovisualization, and holds promising potential for broader application in various geographical phenomena visualization.