If the polygons are not going to be massive in number you could try using a
clustering approach that takes the centroids of the polygons and uses
k-means to set a clustered point with number of polygons there.  Then on
click it could provide a breakdown of the individual polygons as a labeled
gallery or other layout.  Then on click would load that polygon for closer
inspection.  Maybe overkill but quick mock up here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/89545988@N00/8169410554/

Cheers,
Sean


On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 8:42 AM, Andrew Turner
<[email protected]>wrote:

> I don't have any solid solutions, but it's a problem I've run into as well
> in many uses. How do you simply visualize tribal or ethnic affiliation
> areas with within a city where the populations overlap? How about comparing
> multiple areal demographics data - most recently comparing poverty rates
> with access to clean toilets [1]
>
> One potential solution are to use non-contiguous surfaces, such as
> dot-density maps. This seems to work well for Eric Fischers maps of Flickr
> populations [2]. The New York Times used it as well in the mix-received
> census demographic maps [3,4].
>
> [1] http://www.sanitationhackathon.org/
> [2] http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?ref=us
> [3] http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/
> [4] http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624812674967/
>
> I'm also curious what others have seen or tried.
>
> Andrew
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Andy Allan <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I've been working for a while on a system[1] that lets people log
>> "issues" or "problem reports" geographically. A reporter can log the
>> issue as having a point, line or polygon geometry.
>>
>> The problem that I'm facing is how to best show a map of issues for a
>> given region, e.g. a town. They come in all shapes and sizes, often
>> overlapping, and that causes an unintelligible mess[2].
>>
>> Any geowankers know of any sites that show multiple overlapping
>> features in a useful fashion? Any guides to how to approach the
>> problem?
>>
>> So far we've put in place to order by size (biggest at the back, of
>> course), make fills translucent (but it still sucks if too many
>> overlap), ignore polygons that entirely encompass the bbox - all
>> certainly worth doing, but it's a long way from something to be proud
>> of.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Andy
>>
>> [1] https://github.com/cyclestreets/toolkit
>> [2] e.g. http://i.imgur.com/GafGb.png and http://i.imgur.com/Tl877.png
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> [email protected]
>> http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew Turner
> t: @ajturner
> b: http://highearthorbit.com
> m: 248.982.3609
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> [email protected]
> http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
>
>


-- 
Sean Gorman PhD.
GeoIQ
2200 Wilson Blvd. Suite 307
Arlington VA, 22201
mobile: 202-321-3914
office: 703-647-2151
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