[Preliminary note: The following article refers in parts to features of VA_WEB that are currently being developed and are not yet accessible to the public].
In addition to qualitative mapping, the interactive online map of VerbaAlpina also allows for the visualisation of aggregated data for the purpose of a quantitative spacial presentation. This aggregation is always based on geographical regions. The user can choose between aggregation on the basis of municipality areas (small area), the so-called NUTS-3 regions (medium-sized area) and finally the regions of the three major language families: Germanic, Romanic and Slavic (large area). In addition, there is the option of defining any municipality area as an individual region, which then can act as the reference value for the aggregation. The latter option can counteract distorting effects that may arise during the aggregation of the administrative – and thus, from the perspective of linguistics, irrelevant – areas of the municipalities or NUTS-3 regions. Naturally, the individual approach can only be heuristic, but once discovered, the user has the option of saving meaningful regional coherences, commenting on them, reusing them and making them available to the general public.
All qualitative data selected up to the point of activating the quantifying representation are then aggregated in relation to the selected regions or areas. The size and colour of the different map symbols correlate with the number of individual qualitative data bundled within a symbol. The underlying arithmetic maximum value, which always results in the maximum size and colouring of a symbol, corresponds by default to the highest number of aggregated data occurring in one of the selected areas or regions. Optionally, this maximal reference value can be converted to the total number of aggregated individual data, which leads to a change in the map display.
When quantification is activated, the corresponding qualitative data can be removed from the calculation of the quantities by deactivating individual list entries in the map legend and others can be selected additionally.
Alongside quantification in the context of a geo-referenced map depicting the physical borders, VerbaAlpina also allows for the display of quantified data on a so-called honeycomb map. The design model is a Wikipedia graphic that visualises the election results of the British House of Commons election of 2015. In the following, the map (referred to in the following as the "geographical map"), which is true to the points, lengths and angles, with the election results in the individual constituencies is reproduced first. This is followed by the honeycomb map, on which each constituency is represented by a hexagon of identical size.
The comparison of the two map types shows the respective advantages and disadvantages. The honeycomb map has geographical inaccuracies or even misinformation in this respect. For example, in the Greater London district there is an isolated red honeycomb surrounded by blue honeycombs – an ostensible circumstance that is not supported by the geographical map. On the other hand, the honeycomb map has the advantage of better visualising the real numerical relationships between the individual colours, since a large number of constituencies that are very small in terms of surface area are perceived by the viewer as subordinate on the geographical map, although their political significance is equal to that of the constituencies that are large in terms of surface area. Thus, the two types of maps complement each other and the real added value is the possibility to consult both maps and to contrast their visualisation.
VerbaAlpina's honeycomb map is characterised by the fact that all political municipalities in the Alpine region are represented by hexagons of the same size. In doing so, an attempt is made to preserve the geographical logic at least approximately. The calculation of the colouring of the individual hexagons is done in the same way as described above for the point symbol map. The advantage of such a honeycomb map compared to the simple colouring of the municipality areas on a geo-referenced map is that suggestive effects due to strongly differing sizes of the municipality areas are prevented.
