Vario-scale geo-information (11185)

Humans have been using the concept of map scale since the early days.
When moving to a digital environment, the old map scale concept is maintained and for each different scale the whole data of a map are separately produced and stored. This is a labor intensive and expensive process and in practice results in inconsistencies. We propose a new concept named "vario-scale" where the data once stored in a vario-scale data structure can be used for generating all wanted scales in a smooth digital way. There are already map user interfaces providing the feeling of vario-scale by supporting smooth zoom; e.g. Google Maps and/or Microsoft Bing Maps. However, this is just an illusion as the solution behind the ‘curtains’ is still based on a large number of redundant and fixed map scale representations. The central question that drives the research is: How can we realize a paradigm shift towards dynamic vario-scale geo-information with minimal redundancy, supporting delivery of representations at arbitrary scale for different user contexts and progressive transfer for the delivery of refinements?