Design decisions for multidimensional digital and interactive basemaps of urban environments

ABSTRACT

Multidimensional digital and interactive basemaps are of high interest for many different user groups coming from various domains. There are already some design principles available for creating digital 3D maps, many of them coming from classical 2D map design, but there is still a need for new design strategies and principles for digital and interactive 3D and 4D basemaps for urban environments. In this article, we present the results of a comprehensive online survey with 175 participants. The aim of this conducted survey was to find out more about the preferences of different user groups regarding the content of digital 3D and 4D basemaps for urban environments, the zoom levels at which different content (such as buildings, landmarks, vegetation, labels, live data) should be visible, the highest shown level of detail as well the overall design (with regard to color, classification and symbology) of these contents. In addition, we also deal with questions about desired map elements and functionalities for an interactive multidimensional basemap and present first assessments of a developed 4D basemap demonstrator. As a final result, we conclude with two tables that provide advice for specific design decisions for creating digital and interactive 3D and 4D basemaps of urban environments for orientation purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• 3D
• 4D
• basemap
• urban environment
• map design
• design decisions

Acknowledgments

The digital and interactive web map prototype, which is briefly described in section 3.2 and was evaluated in the course of the survey presented here, has been developed based on results from two research projects: FFG 4D-SDIs [reference number: 864697] and WISS 2025 aWHEREness:lab [reference number: 20102-PI900172-FTEOI-20019]. The development of the questionnaire presented here, the survey carried out and its evaluation were not part of these projects.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study (i.e. the Google forms survey as PDF and the answers of the 175 participants as CSV) are available at figsahre.com with the identifiers: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.17005825, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.17005828. The interactive 4D map demonstrator, that was assessed as one part of the online survey, is not open-source, secured by a login, contains also some confidential data of project partners and thus, is not available freely.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).