INVISIP: Usage of information visualization techniques to access geospatial data archives

Complex application examples or scenarios such as site planning need a lot of information, especially spatially referenced data 1 in order to find a best place for a new building or an industrial area and to solve individual planning tasks such as generating ecological, environmental or traffic reports. Recent initiatives to geospatial data archives offer access to a wealth of distributed data covered by the widespread information spectrum of different geodata disciplines (e.g. environmental data, geologic data, cadastral data, remote sensing data or socio-demographic data), but offer only basic levels of interactivity and user assistance. The EU-funded project INVISIP (Information Visualization in Site Planning, IST-2000-29640) addresses this lack of usability and aims to develop new concepts and methods to support all involved parties within the different phases of the multi-step site planning process. This paper describes INVISIP and introduces GeoCrystal and SuperTable as new information visualization techniques to support users in this process.