NEWS SITE for National Center for Visual Analytics

November 2009

Denmark Statistics joins NCVA as a new partner

Director Lars Thygesen, one of the initiator to the OECD eXplorer project that was the first successful Flash implementation of eXplorer in the fall of 2008, now returns to the NCVA board representing Statistics Denmark. Lars will become a valuable resource with his long experience in statistics and eXplorer technology. More information at:

Statistics Denmark

SMHI and Swedish Road Administration adopt GeoAnalytics tools from NCVA

During the winter months, the Swedish roads are dangerous for driving. Ice, rain and snow make the roads slippery and hundreds of people are killed or injured. The Swedish road administration based on measurements from 700 road stations prevents accidents by preparing the roads based on real-time weather forecasting. Today, this is done by accessing static pictures over Internet and direct contacts with meteorologists. The Road Warning Prediction application was developed in collaboration with the SMHI and assembled from GAV Flash components (map with layer support, glyph layer, PCP, line diagram) demonstrates that advanced geovisual analytics tools are suitable for developing highly interactive and tailor-made applications applied to early warning management. The map shows stations coloured according to temperature or ice slipperiness. This application is published on the Web by the Swedish Road Administrator.

SMHI

Göteborg Stad joins NCVA as a new partner

Göteborg Stad joins NCVA as a domain expert in statistics for Geovisual Analytics and will help move our strategic eXplorer development forward. NCVA also supports Goteborg Stad as associate partner in the EC project URBACT II-project LC-FACIL providing state-of-the-art statistics visualization tools for regional development. See also Goteborg eXplorer at:

Göteborg Stad eXplorer

NCVA is awarded 1,5 Mkr from VINNOVA for collaboration with Ericsson Research

NCVA develops advanced Visual Analytics technology in close collaboration with partner Ericsson Research in Linkoping. This research was the foundation for a proposal to VINNOVA’s program: Smarter, faster, converging solutions within IT and data/tele communication as part of "Tomorrow's Communication". NCVA targets Visual Analytics, where novel techniques is being developed and applied to smart network management prototypes for mobile communication networks (MCN). The application area is network management of MCN in 3GPP defined systems, e.g. LTE. Additionally, we target solutions for Self Organizing Networks means, managing the complexity in large networks promoted by operators. The figure below shows a snapshot where large temporal and multivariate network data is analysed by operators.

A scientific research paper was recently presented at the VAST09 IEEE conference in Atlantic City USA. "Geovisual Analytics for Self-Organizing Network Data" by Ho Van Quan, Tobias Åström and Mikael Jern

July 2009

NCVA’s OECD eXplorer on the BBC News

On July 2nd BBC News showed a 3 minutes long program demonstrating OECD eXplorer in live action to explore and visualize complex regional statistical world data – a geovisual analytics technique developed by NCVA at VITA/ITN.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8130554.stm

June 2009

See links to all eXplorer applications here

Eurostat is a new partner to NCVA and user of eXplorer V3

new EU eXplorer version available here

OECD announces Factbook eXplorer and OECD eXplorer V2.5

OECD in collaboration with NCVA are proud to launch a completely updated version of OECD eXplorer and the new Factbook eXplorer – the interactive graphical tool to analyze, compare and communicate OECD regional and world statistics. eXplorer is a leading edge tool for exploring and analysing statistics, using a very dynamic interface that combines maps with other visual presentations for selecting the groups of regions of interest to the user and include:

• Time Animation - dynamic time linked Views (Map, Parallel Coordinates, Time Graph and Scatter Plot);
• Novel functions for integrated Storytelling - Explore, Discover, Capture, Include reasoning text and Save Story;
• Load and explore your own data, write your own stories and share them with others;
• ...and more

Figure:Factbook eXplorer helps the analyst see patterns of events, relationships, and interactions over time within a geospatial context. This state-of-the-art space-time-attribute eXplorer demonstrator is developed in Adobe Flash and support dynamic time-linked multiple views. The analyst can also capture a complete time-step animation scenario and save the discovery and related knowledge in a story with attached analytics reasoning text, save as an XML file and then communicate the discovery to team members or public. The panel to the right shows the storytelling board where the related meta text is available.

OECD regional eXplorer is available here

or see our new OECD regional eXplorer V3 at Vitagate

or see our new OECD regional eXplorer V3 at Vitagate

See the new OECD eXplorer Video Demo

January 2009

NCVA accepted as "Associate" Partner in the Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies

http://www.oecd.org/progress

NCVA has been accepted as an “Associate” partner of the Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies - with an assigned objective to supply Geovisual Analytics 100% web-compliant tools that transform statistics and information into knowledge by means of innovative communicative and collaborative visualization. Global Project or WikiProgress seeks to become the world wide statistical meeting and reference point for those who wish to measure, and assess the progress of their societies and is open to all sectors of society, building both on good practice and innovative research work. The mission is to foster the development of sets of key economic, social and environmental indicators to provide a comprehensive picture of how the well-being of a society is evolving. It also seeks to encourage the use of indicator sets to inform and promote evidence-based decision-making, within and across the public, private and citizen sectors. The project is organised by the OECD (now also a partner in the NCVA consortium) in collaboration with national (such as SCB) and international organisations (World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UNICEF, European Commission, etc).

List of Partners

Project Summary objectives
In 2008, NCVA developed a comprehensive and 100% web-compliant GeoAnalytics Visualization "GAV" Flash framework and toolkit. The objective for this project is to further enhance and validate generic “GAV eXplorer” demonstrators to be applied in the Global Project WikiProgress with the aim to explore, animate, communicate and collaborate statistical measures and knowledge of economic, social and environmental conditions in both countries and sub-regions. These GAV eXplorer demonstrators validated in close collaboration with WikiProgress partners will be presented at the Global Project’s third World Forum on “Charting Progress, Building Visions, Improving Life”, to be held in Busan, Korea on 27-30 October 2009.

Project Summary objectives
In 2008, NCVA developed a comprehensive and 100% web-compliant GeoAnalytics Visualization "GAV" Flash framework and toolkit. The objective for this project is to further enhance and validate generic “GAV eXplorer” demonstrators to be applied in the Global Project WikiProgress with the aim to explore, animate, communicate and collaborate statistical measures and knowledge of economic, social and environmental conditions in both countries and sub-regions. These GAV eXplorer demonstrators validated in close collaboration with WikiProgress partners will be presented at the Global Project’s third World Forum on “Charting Progress, Building Visions, Improving Life”, to be held in Busan, Korea on 27-30 October 2009.

October 2008

OECD launches OECD eXplorer

OECD has launched a powerful, interactive tool for visualising and analyzing regional statistics. OECD eXplorer combines maps and other graphics via the Internet, to increase the user's understanding of regional differences and structures across and within OECD countries. To try out the regional maps and statistics using OECD eXplorer, go to:

OECD Regional Statistics Visualization

The development of OECD eXplorer is the result of a fruitful cooperation between OECD and NCVA,at Linköping University, Sweden. In the seminar on generating knowledge from statistics, organised by Statistics Sweden and OECD in Stockholm in May, Professor Mikael Jern from NCVA presented a first version with some OECD statistics. Since then, the development team at NCVA has worked intensively on improving the tool and adapting it to all the needs expressed by OECD.

Figure: The multiple view OECD eXplorer application presents three views Map, Scatter Plot and Parallel Coordinates Plot. The chosen colour indicator is Elderly dependency rate %. A German region is highlighted in all views. The green line is the OECD mean value for Europe.