Data-driven Expansion of Dense Regions – A Cartographic Approach in Literary Geography

TLDR: A method that allows increasing the representable amount of information, depending on its density is presented that makes use of the diffusion algorithm that is used to create value-by-area cartograms.

Abstract: Cartographic visualisation of the literary space is facing a major challenge resulting from different levels of detail within which the textual descriptions of settings are made by authors. Those range between very detailed descriptions within parts of a city to spatially spread events within a country, or long journeys across continents. Depending on the fictional texts, fictional action often concentrates on a few main places, resulting in high information density – in the form of various individual settings. As well, they are also embedded in a larger environment. When interactively analysing or choosing a section to print a literary map with individual spatial elements, the user has to choose a map scale, which will result in the output of either a detailed representation of a main place or the geographical overview of the fictional space having a small level of detail. However, it would be a great advantage to receive as much information as possible from one single map view. In order to achie...