GeoSneakPique: Visual Autocompletion for Geospatial Queries

TL;DR

GeoSneakPique introduces an interactive visual system that helps users specify and refine geospatial regions in natural language queries through direct manipulation and data-driven guidance, improving spatial data analysis.

Contribution

It presents a novel mapping widget interface that supports natural language geospatial queries with interactive region specification and reuse capabilities.

Findings

Qualitative evaluation shows the interface is useful for geospatial analysis.

The system aids in defining fuzzy or data-driven regions.

Opportunities identified for enhancing geospatial workflows.

Abstract

How many crimes occurred in the city center? And exactly which part of town is the 'city center'? While location is at the heart of many data questions, geographic location can be difficult to specify in natural language (NL) queries. This is especially true when working with fuzzy cognitive regions or regions that may be defined based on data distributions instead of absolute administrative location (e.g., state, country). GeoSneakPique presents a novel method for using a mapping widget to support the NL query process, allowing users to specify location via direct manipulation with data-driven guidance on spatial distributions to help select the area of interest. Users receive feedback to help them evaluate and refine their spatial selection interactively and can save spatial definitions for re-use in subsequent queries. We conduct a qualitative evaluation of the GeoSneakPique that indicates the usefulness of the interface as well as opportunities for better supporting geospatial workflows in visual analysis tasks employing cognitive regions.