Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
  • Publication
    Visual Analytics for Human-Centered Machine Learning
    ( 2022-01-25)
    Andrienko, Natalia
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    Andrienko, Gennady
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    Adilova, Linara
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    We introduce a new research area in visual analytics (VA) aiming to bridge existing gaps between methods of interactive machine learning (ML) and eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), on one side, and human minds, on the other side. The gaps are, first, a conceptual mismatch between ML/XAI outputs and human mental models and ways of reasoning, and second, a mismatch between the information quantity and level of detail and human capabilities to perceive and understand. A grand challenge is to adapt ML and XAI to human goals, concepts, values, and ways of thinking. Complementing the current efforts in XAI towards solving this challenge, VA can contribute by exploiting the potential of visualization as an effective way of communicating information to humans and a strong trigger of human abstractive perception and thinking. We propose a cross-disciplinary research framework and formulate research directions for VA.
  • Publication
    A theoretical model for pattern discovery in visual analytics
    (Elsevier B.V., 2021-01-21)
    Andrienko, Natalia
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    Andrienko, Gennady
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    Miksch, Silvia
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    Schumann, Heidrun
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    The word 'pattern' frequently appears in the visualisation and visual analytics literature, but what do we mean when we talk about patterns? We propose a practicable definition of the concept of a pattern in a data distribution as a combination of multiple interrelated elements of two or more data components that can be represented and treated as a unified whole. Our theoretical model describes how patterns are made by relationships existing between data elements. Knowing the types of these relationships, it is possible to predict what kinds of patterns may exist. We demonstrate how our model underpins and refines the established fundamental principles of visualisation. The model also suggests a range of interactive analytical operations that can support visual analytics workflows where patterns, once discovered, are explicitly involved in further data analysis.
  • Publication
    Constructing Spaces and Times for Tactical Analysis in Football
    ( 2021)
    Andrienko, Gennady
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    Andrienko, Natalia
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    Anzer, Gabriel
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    Bauer, Pascal
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    Budziak, Guido
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    ; ;
    Weber, Hendrik
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    A possible objective in analyzing trajectories of multiple simultaneously moving objects, such as football players during a game, is to extract and understand the general patterns of coordinated movement in different classes of situations as they develop. For achieving this objective, we propose an approach that includes a combination of query techniques for flexible selection of episodes of situation development, a method for dynamic aggregation of data from selected groups of episodes, and a data structure for representing the aggregates that enables their exploration and use in further analysis. The aggregation, which is meant to abstract general movement patterns, involves construction of new time-homomorphic reference systems owing to iterative application of aggregation operators to a sequence of data selections. As similar patterns may occur at different spatial locations, we also propose constructing new spatial reference systems for aligning and matching movements irrespective of their absolute locations. The approach was tested in application to tracking data from two Bundesliga games of the 2018/2019 season. It enabled detection of interesting and meaningful general patterns of team behaviors in three classes of situations defined by football experts. The experts found the approach and the underlying concepts worth implementing in tools for football analysts.
  • Publication
    Scalable analysis of movement data for extracting and exploring significant places
    ( 2013)
    Andrienko, Gennady
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    Andrienko, Natalia
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    Hurter, C.
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    Rinzivillo, Salvatore
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    Place-oriented analysis of movement data, i.e., recorded tracks of moving objects, includes finding places of interest in which certain types of movement events occur repeatedly and investigating the temporal distribution of event occurrences in these places and, possibly, other characteristics of the places and links between them. For this class of problems, we propose a visual analytics procedure consisting of four major steps: 1) event extraction from trajectories; 2) extraction of relevant places based on event clustering; 3) spatiotemporal aggregation of events or trajectories; 4) analysis of the aggregated data. All steps can be fulfilled in a scalable way with respect to the amount of the data under analysis; therefore, the procedure is not limited by the size of the computer's RAM and can be applied to very large data sets. We demonstrate the use of the procedure by example of two real-world problems requiring analysis at different spatial scales.
  • Publication
    A conceptual framework and taxonomy of techniques for analyzing movement
    ( 2011)
    Andrienko, Gennady
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    Andrienko, Natalia
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    Bak, Peter
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    Keim, Daniel A.
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    Kisilevich, S.
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    Movement data link together space, time, and objects positioned in space and time. They hold valuable and multifaceted information about moving objects, properties of space and time as well as events and processes occurring in space and time. We present a conceptual framework that describes in a systematic and comprehensive way the possible types of information that can be extracted from movement data and on this basis defines the respective types of analytical tasks. Tasks are distinguished according to the type of information they target and according to the level of analysis, which may be elementary (i.e. addressing specific elements of a set) or synoptic (i.e. addressing a set or subsets). We also present a taxonomy of generic analytic techniques, in which the types of tasks are linked to the corresponding classes of techniques that can support fulfilling them. We include techniques from several research fields: visualization and visual analytics, geographic informa tion science, database technology, and data mining. We expect the taxonomy to be valuable for analysts and researchers. Analysts will receive guidance in choosing suitable analytic techniques for their data and tasks. Researchers will learn what approaches exist in different fields and compare or relate them to the approaches they are going to undertake.
  • Publication
    Challenging problems of geospatial visual analytics
    ( 2011)
    Andrienko, Gennady
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    Andrienko, Natalia
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    Keim, Daniel A.
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    MacEachren, Alan M.
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  • Publication
    Movement data anonymity through generalization
    ( 2010)
    Monreale, Anna
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    Andrienko, Gennady
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    Andrienko, Natalia
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    Giannotti, Fosca
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    Pedreschi, Dino
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    Rinzivillo, Salvatore
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    Wireless networks and mobile devices, such as mobile phones and GPS receivers, sense and track the movements of people and vehicles, producing society-wide mobility databases. This is a challenging scenario for data analysis and mining. On the one hand, exciting opportunities arise out of discovering new knowledge about human mobile behavior, and thus fuel intelligent info-mobility applications. On other hand, new privacy concerns arise when mobility data are published. The risk is particularly high for GPS trajectories, which represent movement of a very high precision and spatio-temporal resolution: the de-identification of such trajectories (i.e., forgetting the ID of their associated owners) is only a weak protection, as generally it is possible to re-identify a person by observing her routine movements. In this paper we propose a method for achieving true anonymity in a dataset of published trajectories, by defining a transformation of the original GPS trajectories based on spatial generalization and k-anonymity. The proposed method offers a formal data protection safeguard, quantified as a theoretical upper bound to the probability of re-identification. We conduct a thorough study on a real-life GPS trajectory dataset, and provide strong empirical evidence that the proposed anonymity techniques achieve the conflicting goals of data utility and data privacy. In practice, the achieved anonymity protection is much stronger than the theoretical worst case, while the quality of the cluster analysis on the trajectory data is preserved.
  • Publication
    Geovisual analytics for spatial decision support
    ( 2007)
    Andrienko, Gennady
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    Andrienko, Natalia
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    Jankowski, P.
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    Keim, Daniel A.
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    Kraak, M.-J.
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    MacEachren, Alan M.
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    This article summarizes the results of the workshop on Visualization, Analytics & Spatial Decision Support, which took place at the GIScience conference in September 2006. The discussions at the workshop and analysis of the state of the art have revealed a need in concerted cross-disciplinary efforts to achieve substantial progress in supporting space-related decision making. The size and complexity of real-life problems together with their ill-defined nature call for a true synergy between the power of computational techniques and the human capabilities to analyze, envision, reason, and deliberate. Existing methods and tools are yet far from enabling this synergy. Appropriate methods can only appear as a result of a focused research based on the achievements in the fields of geovisualization and information visualization, human-computer interaction, geographic information science, operations research, data mining and machine learning, decision science, cognitive science, and other disciplines. The name 'Geovisual Analytics for Spatial Decision Support' suggested for this new research direction emphasizes the importance of visualization and interactive visual interfaces and the link with the emerging research discipline of Visual Analytics. This article, as well as the whole special issue, is meant to attract the attention of scientists with relevant expertise and interests to the major challenges requiring multidisciplinary efforts and to promote the establishment of a dedicated research community where an appropriate range of competences is combined with an appropriate breadth of thinking.
  • Publication
    Visual analytics tools for analysis of movement data
    ( 2007)
    Andrienko, Gennady
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    Andrienko, Natalia
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    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 mobility oriented infrastructures and services, by themselves they lack the necessary semantic embedding which would make fully automatic algorithmic analysis possible. At the same time, making the semantic link is easy for humans who however cannot deal well with massive amounts of data. In this paper, we argue that by using the right visual analytics tools for the analysis of massive collections of movement data, it is possible to effectively support human analysts in understanding movement behaviors and mobility patterns. We suggest a framework for analysis combining interactive visual displays, which are essential for supporting human perception, cognition, and reasoning, with database operations and computational methods, which are necessary for handling large amounts of data. We demonstrate the synergistic use of these techniques in case studies of two real datasets.