In a recent paper (soon available from IEEE TVCG), we present a systematic approach to the interactive visual analysis of heterogeneous data.  The data consists of interrelated parts that are given on spatial grids over time (e.g., the atmosphere and ocean part from a coupled climate model).  By integrating both data parts in a framework [...]

One of the main Visual Analytics characteristics is the tight integration between automatic computation and interactive visualization. This generally corresponds to the availability of complex and powerful algorithms that allow for manipulating the data under analysis, transforming it in order to feed suitable visualizations. As an example, some Visual Analytics tools devoted to text analysis are based on the idea of extracting new data from the text (e.g., computing word frequencies or paragraph lengths) in order to produce visualizations that are based on these new derived pieces of information.

The adoption of Visual Analytics methodologies in security applications is an approach that could lead to interesting results. Usually, the data that has to be analyzed finds in a graphical representation its preferred nature, such as spatial or temporal relationships. Due to the nature of these applications, it is very important that key-details are made easy to identify. This article presents a visualization tool that graphically displays the movement of 82 employees of a department during an evacuation, of the building in which they were working, caused by an explosion of a bomb. Thirteen casual users were asked to identify potential suspects and observe what happened.

The overall goal of the Humanitics project, financed mainly by the Swiss National Science Foundation, is to develop visual analytics tools for public organizations to enhance collaborative knowledge discovery, information exchange and communication.

It was initiated as a collaboration between the University of Fribourg and the United Nations in Geneva. Each year, the United Nation manipulates and reports numerous data and information concerning world-wide health, illicit drug trade, environment and global climate change, diseases, energy, conflict, and humanitarian development concerns.

The increasing adoption of video surveillance makes it possible to watch over sensitive areas and identify people responsible for damage, theft and violence. However, when such events are not detected immediately, the subsequent video analysis can be a long and tedious task. In this article is presented a technique that allows a human investigator to focus only on those parts of a video showing the event as it unfolds, and so helping to save on the time needed to identify and understand how it happened. The presented technique creates a single interactive image of the whole video that shows everything that happened in the scene.

The research focusses on methods and techniques to integrate data from different sources and dimensions (2D, 3D, Time). The data are offered via a variety of map representations in multi-functional visual (online) environments that allow exploration and data analysis. To justify the solutions produced, usability research is an integral part of the activities.

Geographic data is characterized by a locational, attribute and temporal component. The time component can be a typical indicator of change of all sorts. For instance, movement data holds information about where the movement took place (the path), what was moving (the object), and especially when it was moving (the time frame). Examples are travel time between cities, the daily trips of commuters, or the possible average speed along a path etc.

The field of visual analytics has opened new directions for smart data analysis and knowledge discovery. Utilizing rich and novel visualization methods and appropriate interaction mechanisms, visual analytics technologies exploit the perceptual abilities and intuition of humans, capacities that have not been matched by machines yet. CERTH / ITI has an active interest in the field of visual analytics and is investing effort into developing relevant technologies.This article presents some of the the current research conducted in CERTH / ITI in the field of visual analytics.

Today’s digital libraries and data centers store huge amounts of data, collected, for example, by scientific experimentation, earth observation, or simulation. The common approach to support user navigation and retrieval in these libraries operates on meta-information that is manually appended to the datasets.

Especially for large datasets, this approach quickly reaches its limits due to scalability with respect to manual annotation.

Infrared images or so-called thermal images are increasingly available. Usually the data is acquired and stored, but a thorough interpretation and presentation of the data is done insufficiently. Within ongoing research at the TUM/LfK we deal with the innovative representation of thermal building information.

These include coating steps, rectangular shapes or homogeneous network structures in a three-dimensional environment. Adapted methods concerning the cartographic representations are applied and modified to fit the specific requirements.

Exploring video data by simply watching does not scale for large databases.This problem arises in a wide variety of domains, such as scientificvideo analysis, digital life streams, and video surveillance.

Motivated by a mini challenge of the contest of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology 2009 (Detecting the encounter of persons in a provided video stream utilizing the techniques of visual analytics), we propose an approach for fast identification of relevant objects based on the properties of their trajectories.