Towards dynamic behavior-based profiling for reducing spatial information overload in map browsing activity

The quantity of available detailed spatial content over the Web is continually growing. This leads to the problems of information overload and lengthy map download and render times. In order to address these problems in an effective and unobtrusive manner, the available content must be implicitly filtered and prioritized according to the user’s interests. Personalization of the user’s map elides less relevant information and prioritizes relevant information. The authors previously introduced a novel technique for detailed behavior-based spatial profiling. This article provides an analysis of the technique while exploring the properties of user interactions with a typical Web-based map browsing system. A technique for the automatic identification of specific interaction patterns is introduced and explored in a bid to improve current behavior-based map personalization techniques. The goal of this work is to move towards real-time profiling to support spatial dataset personalization, thus improving the user experience by reducing information overload.