GeoSpy: a Web3D platform for geospatial visualization

Broadband networks are key utilities in driving the information economy. In the United States multiple publicly available web APIs provide broadband service quality data by geographic location. However, views into this data have usually been two-dimensional and limited in the amount of information that they can portray at once. In this paper, we detail a location-aware Web3D application for visualization of high-dimensional georeferenced data, such as broadband quality information, on desktop and mobile devices. The application presents a wide variety of two- and three-dimensional visualization methods and uses HTML5 for novel user interaction via access to onboard location and orientation sensors on equipped devices. Considering that the application uses geospatial web APIs as a data source, we describe its applicability in domains beyond broadband. GeoSpy is hosted at http://filebox.vt.edu/users/sharni/gs