Visual Analytics: Definition, Process and Challenges

Daniel Keim, Gennady Andrienko, Jean-Daniel Fekete, Carsten Görg, Jörn

Kohlhammer, Guy Melançon

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sual Analytics: Definition, Process and Challenges. Andreas Kerren and John T. Stasko and Jean-
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 Visual Analytics:
Definition, Process, and Challenges

Daniel Keim1 , Gennady Andrienko2 , Jean-Daniel Fekete3 , Carsten Görg4 ,

Jörn Kohlhammer5 , and Guy Melançon6
1
Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz,
78457 Konstanz, Germany,
keim@informatik.uni-konstanz.de
2
Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems(IAIS),
Schloss Birlinghoven 53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany,
gennady.andrienko@iais.fraunhofer.de
3
Université Paris-Sud, INRIA, Bât 490,
F-91405 Orsay Cedex, France,
Jean-Daniel.Fekete@inria.fr
4
School of Interactive Computing & GVU Center, Georgia Institute of Technology,
85 5th St., NW, Atlanta, GA 30332-0760, USA,
goerg@cc.gatech.edu
5
Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research,
Fraunhoferstraße 5, D-64283 Darmstadt, Germany,
joern.kohlhammer@igd.fraunhofer.de
6
INRIA Bordeaux – Sud-Ouest, CNRS UMR 5800 LaBRI,
Campus Université Bordeaux I,
351 Cours de la libération, 33405 Talence Cedex, France,
Guy.Melancon@labri.fr

1 Introduction and Motivation

We are living in a world which faces a rapidly increasing amount of data to be

dealt with on a daily basis. In the last decade, the steady improvement of data
storage devices and means to create and collect data along the way influenced our
way of dealing with information: Most of the time, data is stored without filtering
and refinement for later use. Virtually every branch of industry or business,
and any political or personal activity nowadays generate vast amounts of data.
Making matters worse, the possibilities to collect and store data increase at a
faster rate than our ability to use it for making decisions. However, in most
applications, raw data has no value in itself; instead we want to extract the
information contained in it.
The information overload problem refers to the danger of getting lost in
data which may be

– irrelevant to the current task at hand

– processed in an inappropriate way
– presented in an inappropriate way

A. Kerren et al. (Eds.): Information Visualization, LNCS 4950, pp. 154–175, 2008.


c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008
 Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges 155

Due to information overload, time and money are wasted, scientific and in-
dustrial opportunities are lost because we still lack the ability to deal with the
enormous data volumes properly. People in both their business and private lives,
decision-makers, analysts, engineers, emergency response teams alike, are often
confronted with massive amounts of disparate, conflicting and dynamic infor-
mation, which are available from multiple heterogeneous sources. We want to
simply and effectively exploit and use the hidden opportunities and knowledge
resting in unexplored data sources.
In many application areas success depends on the right information being
available at the right time. Nowadays, the acquisition of raw data is no longer
the driving problem: It is the ability to identify methods and models, which can
turn the data into reliable and provable knowledge. Any technology, that claims
to overcome the information overload problem, has to provide answers for the
following problems:
– Who or what defines the “relevance of information” for a given task?
– How can appropriate procedures in a complex decision making process be
identified?
– How can the resulting information be presented in a decision- or task-oriented
way?
– What kinds of interaction can facilitate problem solving and decision mak-
ing?
With every new “real-life” application, procedures are put to the test possibly
under circumstances completely different from the ones under which they have
been established. The awareness of the problem how to understand and analyse
our data has been greatly increased in the last decade. Even as we implement
more powerful tools for automated data analysis, we still face the problem of un-
derstanding and “analysing our analyses” in the future: Fully-automated search,
filter and analysis only work reliably for well-defined and well-understood prob-
lems. The path from data to decision is typically quite complex. Even as fully-
automated data processing methods represent the knowledge of their creators,
they lack the ability to communicate their knowledge. This ability is crucial: If
decisions that emerge from the results of these methods turn out to be wrong,
it is especially important to examine the procedures.
The overarching driving vision of visual analytics is to turn the information
overload into an opportunity: Just as information visualization has changed our
view on databases, the goal of Visual Analytics is to make our way of processing
data and information transparent for an analytic discourse. The visualization of
these processes will provide the means of communicating about them, instead
of being left with the results. Visual Analytics will foster the constructive eval-
uation, correction and rapid improvement of our processes and models and -
ultimately - the improvement of our knowledge and our decisions (see Figure 1).
On a grand scale, visual analytics solutions provide technology that combines
the strengths of human and electronic data processing. Visualization becomes
the medium of a semi-automated analytical process, where humans and machines
cooperate using their respective distinct capabilities for the most effective results.
156 D. Keim et al.

Fig. 1. Tight integration of visual and automatic data analysis methods with database
technology for a scalable interactive decision support.

The user has to be the ultimate authority in giving the direction of the analysis
along his or her specific task. At the same time, the system has to provide
effective means of interaction to concentrate on this specific task. On top of
that, in many applications different people work along the path from data to
decision. A visual representation will sketch this path and provide a reference
for their collaboration across different tasks and abstraction levels.
The diversity of these tasks can not be tackled with a single theory. Visual
analytics research is highly interdisciplinary and combines various related re-
search areas such as visualization, data mining, data management, data fusion,
statistics and cognition science (among others). Visualization has to continuously
challenge the perception by many of the applying sciences that visualization is
not a scientific discipline in its own right. Even if the awareness exists, that
scientific analysis and results must be visualized in one way or the other, this
often results in ad hoc solutions by application scientists, which rarely match
the state of the art in interactive visualization science, much less the full com-
plexity of the problems. In fact, all related research areas in the context of visual
analytics research conduct rigorous, serious science each in a vibrant research
community. To increase the awareness of their work and their implications for
visual analytics research clearly emerges as one main goal of the international
visual analytics community (see Figure 2).
Because visual analytics research can be regarded as an integrating discipline,
application specific research areas should contribute with their existing proce-
dures and models. Emerging from highly application-oriented research, dispersed
research communities worked on specific solutions using the repertoire and stan-
dards of their specific fields. The requirements of visual analytics introduce new
dependencies between these fields.
 Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges 157

Fig. 2. Visual analytics integrates scientific disciplines to improve the division of labor
between human and machine.

2 Definition of Visual Analytics

In “Illuminating the Path” [39], Thomas and Cook define visual analytics as the
science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. In this
chapter, however, we would like to give a more specific definition:
Visual analytics combines automated analysis techniques with interactive
visualizations for an effective understanding, reasoning and decision making on
the basis of very large and complex data sets.
The goal of visual analytics is the creation of tools and techniques to enable
people to:
– Synthesize information and derive insight from massive, dynamic, ambigu-
ous, and often conflicting data.
– Detect the expected and discover the unexpected.
– Provide timely, defensible, and understandable assessments.
– Communicate assessment effectively for action.
By integrating selected science and technology from the above discussed disci-
plines and as illustrated in Figure 2, there is the promising opportunity to form
the unique and productive field of visual analytics. Work in each of the partici-
pating areas focuses on different theoretical and practical aspects of users solving
real-world problems using Information Technology in an effective and efficient
way. These areas have in common similar scientific challenges and significant sci-
entific added-value from establishing close collaboration can be identified. Benefit
of collaboration between the fields is identified to be two-fold:
– Jointly tackling common problems will arrive at better results on the local
level of each discipline, in a more efficient way.
– Integrating appropriate results from each of the disciplines will lay the fun-
dament for significantly improved solutions in many important data analysis
applications.
158 D. Keim et al.

Visual Analytics versus Information Visualization

Many people are confused by the new term visual analytics and do not see a dif-
ference between the two areas. While there is certainly some overlay and some of
the information visualization work is certainly highly related to visual analytics,
traditional visualization work does not necessarily deal with an analysis tasks
nor does it always also use advanced data analysis algorithms.
Visual analytics is more than just visualization. It can rather be seen as an
integral approach to decision-making, combining visualization, human factors
and data analysis. The challenge is to identify the best automated algorithm for
the analysis task at hand, identify its limits which can not be further automated,
and then develop a tightly integrated solution with adequately integrates the best
automated analysis algorithms with appropriate visualization and interaction
techniques.
While some of such research has been done within the visualization commu-
nity in the past, the degree to which advanced knowledge discovery algorithms
have been employed is quite limited. The idea of visual analytics is to funda-
mentally change that. This will help to focus on the right part of the problem,
i.e. the parts that can not be solved automatically, and will provide solutions to
problems that we were not able to solve before.
One important remark should be made here. Most research efforts in Infor-
mation Visualization have concentrated on the process of producing views and
creating valuable interaction techniques for a given class of data (social network,
multi-dimensional data, etc.). However, much less has been suggested as to how
user interactions on the data can be turned into intelligence to tune underlying
analytical processes. A system might for instance observe that most of the user’s
attention concern only a subpart of an ontology (through queries or by repeated
direct manipulations of the same graphical elements, for instance). Why not then
use this knowledge about the user’s interest and update various parameters by
the system (trying to systematically place elements or components of interest in
center view, even taking this fact into account when driving a clustering algo-
rithm with a modularity quality criteria, for instance).
This is one place where Visual Analytics maybe differs most from Information
Visualization, giving higher priority to data analytics from the start and through
all iterations of the sense making loop. Creativity is then needed to understand
how perception issues can help bring more intelligence into the analytical process
by “learning” from users’ behavior and effective use of the visualization.

3 Areas Related to Visual Analytics

Visual analytics builds on a variety of related scientific fields. At its heart, Visual
Analytics integrates Information and Scientific Visualization with Data Manage-
ment and Data Analysis Technology, as well as Human Perception and Cognition
research. For effective research, Visual Analytics also requires an appropriate In-
frastructure in terms of software and data sets and related analytical problems
repositories, and to develop reliable Evaluation methodology (see Figure 3).
 Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges 159

Fig. 3. Visual Analytics integrates Scientific and Information Visualization with core
adjacent disciplines: Data management and analysis, spatio-temporal data, and human
perception and cognition. Successful Visual Analytics research also depends on the
availability of appropriate infrastructure and evaluation facilities.

An example for a common problem in several of the disciplines is that of scalabil-

ity with data size. The larger the data set to be handled gets, the more difficult
it gets to manage, analyze, and visualize these data effectively. Researching ap-
propriate forms to represent large data volumes by smaller volumes containing
the most relevant information benefits each of the data management, analy-
sis, and visualization fields. On top of these individual progresses, a synergetic
collaboration of all these fields may lead to significantly improved processing
results. Consider a very large data stream. Appropriate data management tech-
nology gives efficient access to the stream, which is intelligently processed and
abstracted by an automatic analysis algorithm which has an interface to the
data management layer. On top of the analysis output, an interactive visual-
ization which is optimized for efficient human perception of the relevant infor-
mation allows the analyst to consume the analysis results, and adapt relevant
parameters of the data aggregation an analysis engines as appropriate. The com-
bination of the individual data handling steps into a Visual Analytics pipeline
leads to improved results and makes data domains accessible which are not ef-
fectively accessible by any of the individual data handling disciplines. Similar
argumentations apply to other related fields and disciplines. In many fields, vi-
sualization is already used and developed independently as a means for analyzing
the problems at hand. However, a unified, interdisciplinary perspective on using
visualization for analytical problem-solving will show beneficial for all involved
disciplines. As common principles, best practices, and theories will be developed,
these will become usable in the individual disciplines and application domains,
providing economies of scale, avoiding replication of work or application of only
sub-optimal techniques.
160 D. Keim et al.

3.1 Visualization

Visualization has emerged as a new research discipline during the last two dec-
ades. It can be broadly classified into Scientific and Information Visualization.
In Scientific Visualization, the data entities to be visualized are typically 3D
geometries or can be understood as scalar, vectorial, or tensorial fields with ex-
plicit references to time and space. A survey of current visualization techniques
can be found in [22,35,23]. Often, 3D scalar fields are visualized by isosurfaces or
semi-transparent point clouds (direct volume rendering) [15]. To this end, meth-
ods based on optical emission- or absorption models are used which visualize the
volume by ray-tracing or projection. Also, in the recent years significant work
focused on the visualization of complex 3-dimensional flow data relevant e.g.,
in aerospace engineering [40]. While current research has focused mainly on effi-
ciency of the visualization techniques to enable interactive exploration, more and
more methods to automatically derive relevant visualization parameters come
into focus of research. Also, interaction techniques such as focus&context [28]
gain importance in scientific visualization.
Information Visualization during the last decade has developed methods
for the visualization of abstract data where no explicit spatial references are
given [38,8,24,41]. Typical examples include business data, demographics data,
network graphs and scientific data from e.g., molecular biology. The data con-
sidered often comprises hundreds of dimensions and does not have a natural
mapping to display space, and renders standard visualization techniques such as
(x, y) plots, line- and bar-charts ineffective. Therefore, novel visualization tech-
niques are being developed by employing e.g., Parallel Coordinates and their
numerous extensions [20], Treemaps [36], and Glyph [17]- and Pixel-based [25]
visual data representations. Data with inherent network structure may be visual-
ized using graph-based approaches. In many Visualization application areas, the
typically huge volumes of data require the appropriate usage of automatic data
analysis techniques such as clustering or classification as preprocessing prior to
visualization. Research in this direction is just emerging.

3.2 Data Management

An efficient management of data of various types and qualities is a key com-

ponent of Visual Analytics as this technology typically provides the input of
the data which are to be analyzed. Generally, a necessary precondition to per-
form any kind of data analysis is an integrated and consistent data basis [18,19].
Database research has until the last decade focused mainly on aspects of effi-
ciency and scalability of exact queries on homogeneous, structured data. With
the advent of the Internet and the easy access it provides to all kinds of hetero-
geneous data sources, the database research focus has shifted toward integration
of heterogeneous data. Finding integrated representation of different data types
such as numeric data, graphs, text, audio and video signals, semi-structured
data, semantic representations and so on is a key problem of modern database
 Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges 161

technology. But the availability of heterogeneous data not only requires the map-
ping of database schemata but includes also the cleaning and harmonization of
uncertainty and missing data in the volumes of heterogeneous data. Modern ap-
plications require such intelligent data fusion to be feasible in near real-time and
as automatically as possible [32]. New forms of information sources such as data
streams [11], sensor networks [30] or automatic extraction of information from
large document collections (e.g., text, HTML) result in a difficult data analysis
problem which to support is currently in the focus of database research [43].
The relationship between Data Management, Data Analysis and Visualization
is characterized such that Data Management techniques developed increasingly
rely on intelligent data analysis techniques, and also interaction and visualiza-
tion to arrive at optimal results. On the other hand, modern database systems
provide the input data sources which are to be visually analyzed.

3.3 Data Analysis

Data Analysis (also known as Data Mining or Knowledge Discovery) researches
methods to automatically extract valuable information from raw data by means
of automatic analysis algorithms [29,16,31]. Approaches developed in this area
can be best described by the addressed analysis tasks. A prominent such task
is supervised learning from examples: Based on a set of training samples, deter-
ministic or probabilistic algorithms are used to learn models for the classification
(or prediction) of previously unseen data samples [13]. A huge number of algo-
rithms have been developed to this end such as Decision Trees, Support Vector
Machines, Neuronal Networks, and so on. A second prominent analysis task is
that of cluster analysis [18,19], which aims to extract structure from data with-
out prior knowledge being available. Solutions in this class are employed to au-
tomatically group data instances into classes based on mutual similarity, and to
identify outliers in noisy data during data preprocessing for subsequent analysis
steps. Further data analysis tasks include tasks such as association rule mining
(analysis of co-occurrence of data items) and dimensionality reduction. While
data analysis initially was developed for structured data, recent research aims at
analyzing also semi-structured and complex data types such as web documents
or multimedia data [34].
It has recently been recognized that visualization and interaction are highly
beneficial in arriving at optimal analysis results [9]. In almost all data analysis
algorithms a variety of parameters needs to be specified, a problem which is
usually not trivial and often needs supervision by a human expert. Visualization
is also a suitable means for appropriately communicating the results of the au-
tomatic analysis, which often is given in abstract representation, e.g., a decision
tree. Visual Data Mining methods [24] try to achieve exactly this.

3.4 Perception and Cognition

Effective utilization of the powerful human perception system for visual analysis
tasks requires the careful design of appropriate human-computer interfaces. Psy-
chology, Sociology, Neurosciences and Design each contribute valuable results to
162 D. Keim et al.

the implementation of effective visual information systems. Research in this area

focuses on user-centered analysis and modeling (Requirement Engineering), the
development of principles, methods and tools for design of perception-driven,
multimodal interaction techniques for visualization and exploration of large in-
formation spaces, as well as usability evaluation of such systems [21,12]. On the
technical side, research in this area is influenced by two main factors: (1.) The
availability of improved display resources (hardware), and (2.) Development of
novel interaction algorithms incorporating machine recognition of the actual user
intent and appropriate adaptation of main display parameters such as the level
of detail, data selection and aggregation, etc. by which the data is presented[44].
Important problems addressed in this area include the research of perceptual,
cognitive and graphical principles which in combination lead to improved visual
communication of data and analysis results; The development of perception-
theory-based solutions for the graphical representation of static and dynamic
structures; And development of visual representation of information at several
levels of abstraction, and optimization of existing focus-and-context techniques.

3.5 Human-Computer Interaction

Human-computer interaction is the research area that studies the interaction
between people and computers. It involves the design, implementation and eval-
uation of interactive systems in the context of the user’s task and work [12].
Like visual analytics itself, human-computer interaction is a multi-disciplinary
research area that draws on many other disciplines: computer science, system
design, and behavioral science are some of them. The basic underlying research
goal is to improve the interaction between users and computers: how to make
computers more receptive to the users’ intentions and needs. Thus, the research
areas discussed in the previous section about perception and cognition are also
much related to human-computer interaction [21].
As pointed out in the introduction, visual analytics aims to combine and
integrate the strengths of computers and humans into an interactive process to
extract knowledge from data. To effectively switch back and forth between tasks
for the computer and tasks for the human it is crucial to develop an effective
user interface that minimizes the barrier between the human’s cognitive model
of what they want to accomplish and the computer’s understanding of the hu-
man’s task. The design of user interfaces focuses on human factors of interactive
software, methods to develop and assess interfaces, interaction styles, and design
considerations such as effective messages and appropriate color choice [37].

3.6 Infrastructure and Evaluation

The above described research disciplines require cross-discipline support regard-
ing the evaluation of the found solutions, and need certain infrastructure and
standardization grounding to build on effectively. In the field of information vi-
sualization, standardization and evaluation came into the focus of research only
recently. It has been realized that a general understanding of the taxonomies
 Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges 163

regarding the main data types and user tasks [2] to be supported are highly de-
sirable for shaping visual analytics research. A common understanding of data
and problem dimensions and structure, and acceptance of evaluation standards
will make research results better comparable, optimizing research productivity.
Also, there is an obvious need to build repositories of available analysis and vi-
sualization algorithms, which researchers can build upon in their work, without
having to re-implement already proven solutions.
How to assess the value of visualization is a topic of lively debate [42,33]. A
common ground that can be used to position and compare future developments
in the field of data analysis is needed. The current diversification and dispersion
of visual analytics research and development resulted from its focus onto specific
application areas. While this approach may suit the requirements of each of
these applications, a more rigorous and overall scientific perspective will lead to
a better understanding of the field and a more effective and efficient development
of innovative methods and techniques.

3.7 Sub-communities

Spatio-Temporal Data: While many different data types exist, one of the
most prominent and ubiquitous data types is data with references to time and
space. The importance of this data type has been recognized by a research
community which formed around spatio-temporal data management and anal-
ysis [14]. In geospatial data research, data with references in the real world
coming from e.g., geographic measurements, GPS position data, remote sensing
applications, and so on is considered. Finding spatial relationships and patterns
among this data is of special interest, requiring the development of appropriate
management, representation and analysis functions. E.g., developing efficient
data structures or defining distance and similarity functions is in the focus of re-
search. Visualization often plays a key role in the successful analysis of geospatial
data [6,26].
In temporal data, the data elements can be regarded as a function of time.
Important analysis tasks here include the identification of patterns (either lin-
ear or periodical), trends and correlations of the data elements over time, and
application-dependent analysis functions and similarity metrics have been pro-
posed in fields such as finance, science, engineering, etc. Again, visualization of
time-related data is important to arrive at good analysis results [1].
The analysis of data with references both in space and in time is a chal-
lenging research topic. Major research challenges include [4]: scale, as it is often
necessary to consider spatio-temporal data at different spatio-temporal scales;
the uncertainty of the data as data are often incomplete, interpolated, collected
at different times, or based upon different assumptions; complexity of geograph-
ical space and time, since in addition to metric properties of space and time
and topological/temporal relations between objects, it is necessary to take into
account the heterogeneity of the space and structure of time; and complexity of
spatial decision making processes, because a decision process may involve hetero-
164 D. Keim et al.

geneous actors with different roles, interests, levels of knowledge of the problem
domain and the territory.

Network and Graph Data: Graphs appear as flexible and powerful math-
ematical tools to model real-life situations. They naturally map to transporta-
tion networks, electric power grids, and they are also used as artifacts to study
complex data such as observed interactions between people, or induced interac-
tions between various biological entities. Graphs are successful at turning seman-
tic proximity into topological connectivity, making it possible to address issues
based on algorithmics and combinatorial analysis.
Graphs appear as essential modeling and analytical objects, and as effective
visual analytics paradigms. Major research challenges are to produce scalable
analytical methods to identify key components both structurally and visually.
Efforts are needed to design process capable of dealing with large datasets while
producing readable and usable graphical representations, allowing proper user
interaction. Special efforts are required to deal with dynamically changing net-
works, in order to assess of structural changes at various scales.

4 The Visual Analytics Process

A number of systems for information visualization, as well as specific visual-

ization techniques, motivate their design choice from Shneiderman’s celebrated
mantra “Overview first, Filter and zoom, Details on demand”. As is, the mantra
clearly emphasizes the role of visualization in the knowledge discovery process.
Recently, Keim adjusted the mantra to bring its focus toward Visual Analytics:
“Analyze first, Show the Important, Zoom, filter and analyze further, Details
on demand”. In other words, this mantra is calling for astute combinations of
analytical approaches together with advanced visualization techniques.
The computation of any visual representation and/or geometrical embedding
of large and complex datasets requires some analysis to start with. Many scalable
graph drawing algorithms try to take advantage of any knowledge on topology
to optimize the drawing in terms of readability. Other approaches offer repre-
sentations composed of visual abstractions of clusters to improve readability.
The challenge then is to try to come up with a representation that is as faithful
as possible to avoid introducing uncertainty. We must not fall into the naı̈ve
assumption that visualization can offer a virgin view on the data: any represen-
tation will inevitably favor an interpretation over all possible ones. The solution
offered by Visual Analytics is then to let the user enter into a loop where data
can be interactively manipulated to help gain insight both on the data and the
representation itself.
The sense-making loop structures the whole knowledge discovery process
supported through Visual Analytics. A generic scenario can be given following a
schema developed by van Wijk [42], which furthermore admits to be evaluated
and measured in terms of efficiency or knowledge gained. A choice for an initial
representation and adequate interactions can be made after applying different
 Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges 165

statistical and mathematical techniques, such as spatio-temporal data analysis or

link mining depending on the nature of the dataset under study. The process then
enters a loop where the user can gain knowledge on the data, ideally driving the
system toward more focused and more adequate analytical techniques. Dually,
interacting on the visual representation, the user will gain a better understanding
of the visualization itself commanding for different views helping him or her to
go beyond the visual and ultimately confirm hypotheses built from previous
iterations (see Figure 4).

Fig. 4. The sense-making loop for Visual Analytics based on the simple model of
visualization by Wijk [42].

5 Application Challenges
Visual Analytics is a highly application oriented discipline driven by practical
requirements in important domains. Without attempting a complete survey over
all possible application areas, we sketch the potential applicability of Visual
Analytics technology in a few key domains.
In the Engineering domain, Visual Analytics can contribute to speed-up de-
velopment time for products, materials, tools and production methods by offering
more effective, intelligent access to the wealth of complex information resulting
from prototype development, experimental test series, customers’ feedback, and
many other performance metrics. One key goal of applied Visual Analytics in
the engineering domain will be the analysis of the complexity of the production
systems in correlation with the achieved output, for an efficient and effective
improvement of the production environments.
Financial Analysis is a prototypical promising application area for Visual
Analytics. Analysts in this domain are confronted with streams of heterogeneous
information from different sources available at high update rates, and of varying
166 D. Keim et al.

reliability. Arriving at a unifying, task-centered view on diverse streams of data

is a central goal in financial information systems. Integrated analysis and visu-
alization of heterogeneous data types such as news feeds, real-time trading data,
and fundamental economic indicators poses a challenge for developing advanced
analysis solutions in this area. Research based on results from Information Vi-
sualization is regarded as promising in this case.
Socio-economic considerations often form the basis of political decision
processes. A modern society can be regarded as a complex system of interre-
lationships between political decisions and economic, cultural and demographic
effects. Analysis and Visualization of these interrelationships is promising in de-
veloping a better understanding of these phenomena, and to arrive at better
decisions. Successful Visual Analytics applications in this domain could start
being developed based on currently existing Geo-Spatial analysis frameworks.
Public Safety & Security is another important application area where Vi-
sual Analytics may contribute with advanced solutions. Analysts need to con-
stantly monitor huge amounts of heterogeneous information streams, correlating
information of varying degrees of abstraction and reliability, assessing the cur-
rent level of public safety, triggering alert in case of alarming situations being
detected. Data integration and correlation combined with appropriate analysis
and interactive visualization is promising to develop more efficient tools for the
analysis in this area.
The study of Environment and Climate change often requires the ex-
amination of long term weather records and logs of various sensors, in a search
for patterns that can be related to observations such as changes in animal pop-
ulations, or in meteorological and climatic processes for instance. These require-
ments call for the development of systems allowing visual and graphical access
to historical monitoring data and predictions from various models in search for
or in order to validate patterns building over time.
These diverse fields of applications share many problems on an abstract level,
most of which are addressed by Visual Analytics. The actual (software) solution
must be adapted to the specific needs and terminologies of the application area
and consequently, many researchers currently focus on a specific customer seg-
ment. Much can be achieved, if the European research infrastructure in this field
becomes strong enough to encourage the exchange of ideas on a broad scale, to
foster development of solutions applicable to multiple domains, achieving syn-
ergy effects.

6 Technical Challenges

The primary goal of Visual Analytics is the analysis of vast amounts of data to
identify and visually distill the most valuable and relevant information content.
The visual representation should reveal structural patterns and relevant data
properties for easy perception by the analyst. A number of key requirements
need to be addressed by advanced Visual Analytics solutions. We next outline
important scientific challenges in this context.
 Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges 167

Scalability with Data Volumes and Data Dimensionality: Visual Ana-

lytics techniques need to be able to scale with the size and dimensionality of
the input data space. Techniques need to accommodate and graphically repre-
sent high-resolution input data as well as continuous input data streams of high
bandwidth. In many applications, data from multiple, heterogeneous sources
need to be integrated and processed jointly. In these cases, the methods need
to be able to scale with a range of different data types, data sources, and levels
of quality. The visual representation algorithms need to be efficient enough for
implementation in interactive systems.

Quality of Data and Graphical Representation: A central issue in Visual

Analytics is the avoidance of misinterpretations by the analyst. This may result
due to uncertainty and errors in the input data, or limitations of the chosen
analysis algorithm, and may produce misleading analysis results. To face this
problem, the notion of data quality, and the confidence of the analysis algorithm
needs to be appropriately represented in the Visual Analytics solutions. The user
needs to be aware of these data and analysis quality properties at any stage in
the data analysis process.

Visual Representation and Level of Detail: To accommodate vast streams

of data, appropriate solutions need to intelligently combine visualizations of
selected analysis details on the one hand, and a global overview on the other
hand. The relevant data patterns and relationships need to be visualized on
several levels of detail, and with appropriate levels of data and visual abstraction.

User Interfaces, and Interaction Styles and Metaphors: Visual Analytics

systems need to be easily used and interacted with by the analyst. The analyst
needs to be able to fully focus on the task at hand, not on overly technical or
complex user interfaces, which potentially distract. To this end, novel interaction
techniques need to be developed which fully support the seamless, intuitive visual
communication with the system. User feedback should be taken as intelligently
as possible, requiring as little manual user input as possible, which guarantees
the full support of the user in navigating and analyzing the data, memorizing
insights and making informed decisions.

Display Devices: In addition to high-resolution desktop displays, advanced

display devices such as large-scale power walls and small portable personal assis-
tant, graphically-enabled devices need to be supported. Visual Analytics systems
should adapt to the characteristics of the available output devices, supporting
the Visual Analytics workflow on all levels of operation.

Evaluation: Due to the complex and heterogeneous problem domains addressed

by Visual Analytics, so far it has been difficult to perform encompassing evalua-
tion work. A theoretically founded evaluation framework needs to be developed
which allows assessing the contribution of any Visual Analytics system toward
the level of effectiveness and efficiency achieved regarding their requirements.
168 D. Keim et al.

Infrastructure: Managing large amounts of data for visualization or analysis

requires special data structures and mechanisms, both in memory and disks.
Achieving interactivity means refreshing the display in 100ms at worst whereas
analyzing data with standard techniques such as clustering can take hours to
complete. Achieving the smooth interaction required by the analysts to perform
their tasks while providing high-quality analytical algorithms need the combi-
nation of asynchronous computation with hybrid analytical algorithms that can
trade time with quality. Moreover, to fully support the analytical process, the
history of the analysis should also be recorded and interactively edited and an-
notated. Altogether, these requirements call for a novel software infrastructure,
built upon well understood technologies such as databases, software components
and visualization but augmented with asynchronous processing, history manage-
ments and annotations.

7 Examples for Visual Analytics Applications

7.1 Visual Analytics Tools for Analysis of Movement Data
With widespread availability of low cost GPS devices, it is becoming possible to
record data about the movement of people and objects at a large scale. While
these data hide important knowledge for the optimization of location and mobil-
ity oriented infrastructures and services, by themselves they lack the necessary
semantic embedding which would make fully automatic algorithmic analysis pos-
sible. At the same time, making the semantic link is easy for humans who however
cannot deal well with massive amounts of data. In [5] we argue that by using
the right visual analytics tools for the analysis of massive collections of move-
ment data, it is possible to effectively support human analysts in understanding
movement behaviors and mobility patterns.
Figure 5 shows a subset of raw GPS measurements presented in so-called
space-time cube. The large amount of position records referring to the same
territory over a long time period makes it virtually impossible to do the analysis
by purely visual methods.
The paper [5] proposes a framework where interactive visual interfaces are
synergistically combined with database operations and computational process-
ing. The generic database techniques are used for basic data processing and ex-
traction of relevant objects and features. The computational techniques, which
are specially devised for movement data, aggregate and summarize these objects
and features and thereby enable the visualization of large amounts of informa-
tion. The visualization enables human cognition and reasoning, which, in turn,
direct and control the further analysis by means of the database, computational,
and visual techniques. Interactive visual interfaces embrace all the tools.
Thus, in order to detect and interpret significant places visited by the mov-
ing entities, the positions of stops are extracted from the data by means of
appropriate database queries. Then, clustering methods are applied to detect
frequently visited places. Interactive visual displays put the results in the spa-
tial and temporal contexts. The spatial positions of the stops can be observed on
 Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges 169

Fig. 5. A visual display of a large amount of position records is unreadable and not
suitable for analysis.

Fig. 6. Positions of stops have been extracted from the database. By means of cluster-
ing, frequently visited places have been detected.
170 D. Keim et al.

Fig. 7. The temporal histograms show the distribution of the stops in the frequently
visited places (Figure 6) with respect to the weekly (left) and daily (right) cycles.

a map (Figure 6) or 3D spatial view. Temporal histograms (Figure 7) are used

to explore the temporal distribution of the stops throughout the time period and
within various temporal cycles (daily, weekly, etc.). These complementary views
allow a human analyst to understand the meanings or roles of the frequently
visited places.
In order to detect and interpret typical routes of the movement between the
significant places, the analyst first applies a database query to extract sequences
of position records between the stops, from which trajectories (time-referenced
lines) are constructed. Then, clustering is applied with the use of specially de-
vised similarity measures. The results are computationally generalized and sum-
marized and displayed in the spatial context (Figure 8).

7.2 Multilevel Visualization of the Worldwide Air

Transportation Network
The air transportation network has now become more dense and more complex
at all geographical levels. Its dynamic no more rests on simple territorial logics.
The challenge is to gain insightful understandings on how the routes carrying the
densest traffic organize themselves and impact the organization of the network
into sub-communities at lower levels. At the same time, subnetworks grow on
their own logic, involving tourism, economy or territorial control, and influence
or fight against each other. Because of the network size and complexity, its study
can no more rely on traditional world map and requires novel visualization. A
careful analysis of the network structural properties, requiring recent results on
small world phenomenon, reveals its multilevel community structure.
The original network is organized into a top level network of communi-
ties (Figure 9(a)). Each component can then be further decomposed into sub-
communities. Capitals such as New York, Chicago, Paris or London (Figure 9(b))
clearly attract most of the international traffic and impose routes to fly the world
around because of airline partnerships (economical logic). Asia (Figure 9(c))
clearly stands apart from these core hubs because of strong territorial ties en-
dorsed by national Asian airline companies (territorial logic). Visualization of
social networks such as the worldwide air transportation is challenged by the
necessity to scale with the growing size of network data while being able to offer
 Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges 171

Fig. 8. A result of clustering and summarization of movement data: the routes between
the significant places.

readable visual representations and fluid interaction. Visualization today brings

the field of social sciences close to the study of complex systems and promises
to deliver new knowledge across these disciplines [7,3,10].

8 Conclusions
The problems addressed by Visual Analytics are generic. Virtually all sciences
and many industries rely on the ability to identify methods and models, which
can turn data into reliable and provable knowledge. Ever since the dawn of mod-
ern science, researchers needed to find methodologies to create new hypotheses,
to compare them with alternative hypotheses, and to validate their results. In
a collaborative environment this process includes a large number of specialized
people each having a different educational background. The ability to commu-
nicate results to peers will become crucial for scientific discourse.
Currently, no technological approach can claim to give answers to all three
key questions that have been outlined in the first section, regarding the
– relevance of a specific information
– adequacy of data processing methods and validity of results
– acceptability of the presentation of results for a given task
172 D. Keim et al.

(a) World air transportation network.

(b) USA and world hubs. (c) Asia.

Fig. 9. Multilevel Visualization of the Worldwide Air Transportation Network

 Visual Analytics: Definition, Process, and Challenges 173

Visual Analytics research does not focus on specific methods to address these
questions in a single “best-practice”. Each specific domain contributes a reper-
toire of approaches to initiate an interdisciplinary creation of solutions.
Visual Analytics literally maps the connection between different alternative
solutions, leaving the opportunity for the human user to view these options in
the context of the complete knowledge generation process and to discuss these
options with peers on common ground.

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