My research is dealing with the automatic analysis and visualization of spatial information. I'm aiming to develop mathematical models for problems in that context and to find efficient algorithms that provide quality guarantees and that excel in experiments under realistic conditions. To this end, I'm using methods from combinatorial optimization and computational geometry as well as graph-theoretical concepts. Large parts of my work are related to problems in which large and detailed spatial data sets are given as input and the aim is to compute a selection of information as well as an appropriate graphical or non-graphical representation of it. The result can be a map or a non-graphical model in which certain information such as large-scale patterns or relationships among spatial objects are explicitly modeled and thus more directly accessible than in the source data.