2021-02, Meschenmoser, Philipp, Buchmüller, Juri F., Seebacher, Daniel, Wikelski, Martin, Keim, Daniel A.

Segmenting biologging time series of animals on multiple temporal scales is an essential step that requires complex techniques with careful parameterization and possibly cross-domain expertise. Yet, there is a lack of visual-interactive tools that strongly support such multi-scale segmentation. To close this gap, we present our MultiSegVA platform for interactively defining segmentation techniques and parameters on multiple temporal scales. MultiSegVA primarily contributes tailored, visual-interactive means and visual analytics paradigms for segmenting unlabeled time series on multiple scales. Further, to flexibly compose the multi-scale segmentation, the platform contributes a new visual query language that links a variety of segmentation techniques. To illustrate our approach, we present a domain-oriented set of segmentation techniques derived in collaboration with movement ecologists. We demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of MultiSegVA in two real-world use cases from movement ecology, related to behavior analysis after environment-aware segmentation, and after progressive clustering. Expert feedback from movement ecologists shows the effectiveness of tailored visual-interactive means and visual analytics paradigms at segmenting multi-scale data, enabling them to perform semantically meaningful analyses. A third use case demonstrates that MultiSegVA is generalizable to other domains.

2019, Angelini, Marco, Buchmüller, Juri F., Keim, Daniel A., Meschenmoser, Philipp, Santucci, Giuseppe

Visualizing contextual information to a map often comes at the expense of overplotting issues. Especially for use cases with relevant map features in the immediate vicinity of an information to add, occlusion of the relevant map context should be avoided. We present SurgeryCuts, a map manipulation technique for the creation of additional canvas area for contextual visualizations on maps. SurgeryCuts is occlusion-free and does not shift, zoom or alter the map viewport. Instead, relevant parts of the map can be cut apart. The affected area is controlledly distorted using a parameterizable warping function fading out the map distortion depending on the distance to the cut. We define extended metrics for our approach and compare to related approaches. As well, we demonstrate the applicability of our approach at the example of tangible use cases and a comparative user study.

2021, Buchmüller, Juri F., Schlegel, Udo, Cakmak, Eren, Keim, Daniel A., Dimara, Evanthia

Compact visualization techniques such as dense pixel displays find application in displaying spatio-temporal datasets in a space-efficient way. While mostly focusing on feature development, the depiction of spatial distributions of the movers in these techniques is often traded against better scalability towards the number of moving objects. We propose SpatialRugs, a technique that can be applied to reintroduce spatial positions in such approaches by applying 2D colormaps to determine object locations and which enables users to follow spatio-temporal developments even in non-spatial representations. Geared towards collective movement datasets, we evaluate the applicability of several color maps and discuss limitations. To mitigate perceptional artifacts, we also present and evaluate a custom, time-aware color smoothing method.

2019-01, Buchmüller, Juri F., Jäckle, Dominik, Cakmak, Eren, Brandes, Ulrik, Keim, Daniel A.

Understanding the movement patterns of collectives, such as flocks of birds or fish swarms, is an interesting open research question. The collectives are driven by mutual objectives or react to individual direction changes and external influence factors and stimuli. The challenge in visualizing collective movement data is to show space and time of hundreds of movements at the same time to enable the detection of spatiotemporal patterns. In this paper, we propose MotionRugs, a novel space efficient technique for visualizing moving groups of entities. Building upon established space-partitioning strategies, our approach reduces the spatial dimensions in each time step to a one-dimensional ordered representation of the individual entities. By design, MotionRugs provides an overlap-free, compact overview of the development of group movements over time and thus, enables analysts to visually identify and explore group-specific temporal patterns. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach in the field of fish swarm analysis and report on initial feedback of domain experts from the field of collective behavior.

2020, Cakmak, Eren, Schäfer, Hanna, Buchmüller, Juri F., Fuchs, Johannes, Schreck, Tobias, Jordan, Alex, Keim, Daniel A.

Domain experts for collective animal behavior analyze relationships between single animal movers and groups of animalsover time and space to detect emergent group properties. A common way to interpret this type of data is to visualize it as aspatio-temporal network. Collective behavior data sets are often large, and may hence result in dense and highly connectednode-link diagrams, resulting in issues of node-overlap and edge clutter. In this design study, in an iterative design process, wedeveloped glyphs as a design for seamlessly encoding relationships and movement characteristics of a single mover or clustersof movers. Based on these glyph designs, we developed a visual exploration prototype, MotionGlyphs, that supports domainexperts in interactively filtering, clustering, and animating spatio-temporal networks for collective animal behavior analysis. Bymeans of an expert evaluation, we show how MotionGlyphs supports important tasks and analysis goals of our domain experts,and we give evidence of the usefulness for analyzing spatio-temporal networks of collective animal behavior.

2015, Buchmüller, Juri F., Janetzko, Halldor, Andrienko, Gennady, Andrienko, Natalia, Fuchs, Georg, Keim, Daniel A.

The environmental and noise impact of airports often causes extensive political discussion which in some cases even lead to transnational tensions. Analyzing local approach and departure patterns around an airport is difficult since it depends on a variety of complex variables like weather, local and general regulations and many more. Yet, understanding these movements and the expected amount of flights during arrival and departure is of great interest to both casual and expert users, as planes have a higher impact on the areas beneath during these phases. We present a Visual Analytics framework that enables users to develop an understanding of local flight behavior through visual exploration of historical data and interactive manipulation of prediction models with direct feedback, as well as a classification quality visualization using a random noise metaphor. We showcase our approach using real world data from the Zurich International Airport region, where aircraft noise has led to an ongoing conflict between Germany and Switzerland. The use cases, findings and expert feedback demonstrate how our approach helps in understanding the situation and to substantiate the otherwise often subjective discourse on the topic.