IEEE Network Magazine

Special Issue on Computer Network Visualization, Nov./Dec. 2012 issue

Background

Computer networks are dynamic, growing, and continually evolving. As complexity grows, it becomes harder to effectively communicate to human decision-makers the results of methods and metrics for monitoring networks, classifying traffic, and identifying malicious or abnormal events. Network administrators and security analysts require tools that help them understand, reason about, and make decisions about the information their analytic systems produce. To this end, information visualization and visual analytics hold great promise for making the information accessible, usable, and actionable by taking advantage of the human perceptual abilities. Information visualization techniques help network administrators and security analysts to quickly recognize patterns and anomalies; visually integrate heterogeneous data sources; and provide context for critical events.

Scope

This special issue seeks original articles examining the state of the art, open issues, research results, evaluations of visualization and visual analytic tools, and future research directions in computer network visualization and visual analytics. All submissions should be written to be understandable and appealing to a general audience. Research papers should contain a substantial amount of tutorial content and minimal mathematics. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Uses of visualization for network status monitoring and situational awareness
• Visualization methods employed in the classification of network traffic and its analysis
• Visualization methods enhancing network intrusion detection and anomaly detection
• Visualization methods for the analysis of network threats (e.g. botnets)
• Visualization methods for the analysis of network routing
• Methods for integrating analytics and visualization together for network analysis tasks
• Methods for visually integrating heterogeneous data sources to support network analysis tasks
• Case studies of open source visualization tools in network analysis tasks
• Evaluations of network visualization tools in situ

Manuscript Submission

Articles should be written in a style comprehensible and appealing to readers outside the speciality of the article. Authors must follow the IEEE Network Magazine guidelines regarding the manuscript and its format. For details, please refer to the “Guidelines for manuscripts” at the IEEE Network Magazine web site. Submitted papers must be original work and must not be under consideration for publication in other venues. Authors should submit their manuscripts in PDF through ScholarOne for IEEE Network Magazine. Choose this special issue from the drop down menu on the submission page. Authors uncertain about the relevance of their paper to this special issue should inquire with the guest editors before submission.

Schedule

• Submissions: April 1, 2012
• Author notifications: July 1, 2012
• Final papers: September 1, 2012
• Publication: November 2012

Guest Editors

John Goodall
Oak Ridge National Lab
jgoodallornlgov

John Gerth
Stanford University
gerthgraphicsstanfordedu

Florian Mansmann
University of Konstanz
FlorianMansmannuni-konstanzde

Computer networks are dynamic, growing, and continually evolving. As complexity grows, it becomes harder to effectively communicate to human decision-makers the results of methods and metrics for monitoring networks, classifying traffic, and identifying malicious or abnormal events. Network administrators and security analysts require tools that help them understand, reason about, and make decisions about the information their analytic systems produce. To this end, information visualization and visual analytics hold great promise for making the information accessible, usable, and actionable by taking advantage of the human perceptual abilities. Information visualization techniques help network administrators and security analysts to quickly recognize patterns and anomalies; visually integrate heterogeneous data sources; and provide context for critical events.

The primary sources for this book are the final reports of the thematic working groups set up by the consortium. Each group focused on a particular aspect of visual analytics and brought together interested parties from a wide range of disciplines to collaborate on this task. The main authors of each chapter are given on each page, however there were contributions from many of the full, secondary and community partners as well as helpful comments and suggestions from external reviewers.

The first chapter introduces the problem space in terms of making sense of very large, complex datasets and outlines the vision for visual analytics. The second chapter looks at some application areas for visual analytics and then defines visual analytics in terms of the knowledge discovery process and considers the many scientific disciplines that contribute towards visual analytics. Chapters 3 to 8 present the work of the specialised working groups within the VisMaster consortium. Each of these chapters starts by giving an outline of the problem area and some relevant background information. An overview of the state of the art in the particular domain is then presented, with reference to visual analytics; challenges and opportunities are then identified; and finally, suggestions that are pertinent to the subject of the chapter, are put forward for discussion. The higher-level recommendations for the direction for future research in visual analytics, as put forward by every chapter authors are collectively summarised and categorised in the final chapter.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the partners of VisMaster (including community partners) who have contributed to creating this book. Whilst some have produced chapters, others have been involved with the reviewing process and/or coordinating their work groups. Special thanks goes to Bob Spence and Devina Ramduny-Ellis for their most helpful comments and contributions.

We are appreciative of the excellent technical and creative support given by Florian Stoffel, Juri Buchmüller and Michael Regenscheit. We are truly grateful once more for the excellent support of Eurographics, and in particular Stefanie Behnke, for publishing this work. Last but not least, we are indebted to the European Commission, and especially, the project officer of VisMaster CA, Dr. Teresa de Martino, for supporting us throughout; her efforts have contributed appreciably to the success of this project.

This project was funded by the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme within the Seventh Framework Programme for Research of the European Commission, under FET-Open grant number: 225924.

We hope that the content of this book will inspire you to apply current visual analytics technology to solve your real-world data problems, and to engage in the community effort to define and develop visual analytics technologies to meet future challenges.

The editors:

Daniel Keim (Scientific Coordinator of VisMaster), Jörn Kohlhammer (Coordinator of VisMaster), Geoffrey Ellis and Florian Mansmann

VisMaster Book (25MB) [note that the images are lower resolution to reduce the file size]

EuroVA 2012 – EuroVis Workshop on Visual Analytics in Vienna, Austria
June 4th – 5th, 2012 – conference website

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 2nd, 2012

• Short paper submissions, 4 pages in length + 1 extra page of references (maximum), are solicited.
• Submitted short papers should clearly relate to visual analytics and show the integration of computational data analysis and interactive visualization.
• Short papers should address either focused mature and concise contributions or interesting preliminary results of work in progress.
• The EuroVA 2012 Conference Proceedings will be published by the Eurographics Association.

EuroVA 2012 is the third international Eurovis workshop on visual analytics held in Europe and aims at continuing the success of the previous editions, held in Bordeaux, France, on June 8th, 2010, and in Bergen, Norway, on May 31st, 2011. Also this year the goal of the workshop is to promote and advance the combination and integration of visualization and analytics methods for the purpose of problem solving in a variety of application domains including engineering, business, public policy, medicine, security, etc. EuroVA will be held on June 4th-5th, 2012, in Vienna, Austria, as a workshop of the annual EuroVis 2012 Conference.

The EuroVA 2012 program will include a two keynote talks, from Jean-Daniel Fekete and Helwig Hauser, and short paper presentations. Visual Analytics is the science of analytical reasoning supported by interactive visual techniques, which requires interdisciplinary science integrating techniques from visualization and computer graphics, statistics and mathematics, data management and knowledge representation, data analysis and machine learning, cognitive and perceptual sciences, and more.

TOPICS of interest include but are not limited to:

• Visual representations and interaction techniques
• Data management and knowledge representation
• Data analysis and machine learning
• Cognitive and perceptual aspects
• Infrastructure and Evaluation
• Applications, as far as they are strictly related to visual analytics.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Short Paper submission deadline: March 2nd, 2012
• Notification of acceptance: April 2nd, 2012
• Camera-ready papers due: April 17th, 2012
• EuroVA Workshop: June 4th – 5th, 2012

SHORT PAPERS SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Short papers, 4 pages in length + 1 extra page for references (maximum), must be prepared using the formatting guidelines (size of fonts, illustrations,…) which can be found at http://www.eurova.org/wp-content/uploads/egPublStyle-EuroVA2012.rar. Authors of accepted short papers will give an oral presentation. Submission site: TBA

WORKSHOP CHAIRS

• Kresimir Matkovic, VRVis Forschungs-GmbH, Austria
• Giuseppe Santucci, Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

• Aigner Wolfgang – Centre of Visual Analytics Science and Technology, Austria
• Andrienko Natalia – Fraunhofer IAIS, Germany
• Bak Peter – IBM Haifa Research Lab, Israel
• Baudel Thomas – ILOG-IBM, France
• Bertini Enrico – University of Konstanz, Germany
• Chang Remco – Tufts University, USA
• Chen Min – University of Oxford, England
• Ebert David – Purdue University, USA
• Ertl Thomas – Stuttgart University, Germany
• Fekete Jean-Daniel – INRIA, France
• Fisher Brian – Simon Fraser University, Canada
• Hauser Helwig – University of Bergen, Norway
• Isenberg Petra – INRIA, France
• Johansson Jimmy – Linkoping University, Sweden
• Keim Daniel – University of Konstanz, Germany
• Kienreich Wolfgang – Know Center in Graz, Austria
• Kohlhammer Jorn – Fraunhofer IGD, Germany
• Miksch Silvia – Vienna University of Technology, Austria
• Pike Bill – Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA
• Pohl Margit – Vienna University of Technology, Austria
• Ribarsky Bill – UNC Charlotte, USA
• Roberts Jonathan – Bangor University
• Scholtz Jean – National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA
• Schumann Heidrun – University of Rostock, Germany
• Telea Alexandru – University of Groningen, Netherlands
• Tominski Christian – University of Rostock, Germany
• Van Wijk Jarke – Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
• Ward Matt – Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
• Weaver Chris – University of Oklahoma, USA
• Weiskopf Daniel – University of Stuttgart, Germany
• Wittenburg Kent – MERL, USA
• Wong Pak – Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA
• Wrobel Stefan – University of Bonn, Germany

The iVAC Newsletter is envisioned as a coordinating function for the various activities coming out of the BFR program, international university partners and other government agencies. The thought is to present and share knowledge of these initiatives, accomplishments in various areas (technology, publications, new funding, etc.), up-coming conferences and events, and other significant happenings to the entire community.

This iVAC Newsletter features:

• 2nd Annual Maritime Risk Symposium
• CCICADA Student Conference on Discrete Math
• Flood Mitigation on the Raritan River
• IN-SPIRE Tool Transitioned to DHS ICE
• Morgan State Students Visit VACCINE
• SensePlace2: Acknowledged for Enabling Social Media Analysis
• VACCINE Intern Wins SURF Poster Award
• VACCINE Receives Excellence Award for Work with US Coast Guard
• VACCINE Utilizing Latest Technology with Liferay
• VACCINE Working with Police on Gang-Graffiti, Hazmat Tools
• VAST: a IEEE Conference for First Time

Read the newsletter here:

iVAC Newsletter December 2011

Call for Participation – Registration deadline: 30 September 2011

PROMISE Winter School 2012 on Information Retrieval meets Information Visualization

Zinal, Valais – Switzerland
23 – 27 January 2012

Website

AIM AND SCOPE

The aim of the Promise Winter School on information retrieval and information visualization is to give participants a grounding in the core topics that constitute the multidisciplinary area of multilingual and multimedia information retrieval. Other topics of the school will include usability of systems, system evaluation, social media and several other related fields.

The school is a week-long event consisting of guest lectures from invited speakers who are recognized experts in the field of information retrieval and information visulization.

The school mainly targets PhD and Master students but all other researchers or participation from industry is welcome. Some scholarships are available and prices are kept reasonable to allow for a wide participation.

Time is also foreseen to get in contact with the experts and the participants are encouraged to prepare a poster on their personal research project for a general poster session during the first day.

LECTURES

• Introduction to Information Retrieval (Keith van Rijsbergen, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK)
• Introduction to Information Visualization (Robert Spence, Imperial College London, UK)
• Human Computer Interaction Principles (Francesca Costabile, University of Bari, Italy)
• Human Computer Interaction View of Information Retrieval Evaluation (Tiziana Catarci, Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy
• User-oriented Information Retrieval (Peter Ingwersen, Royal School of Information and Library Science, Copenhagen, Denmark
• Evaluating User-oriented Information Retrieval (Kalervo Järvelin, University of Tampere, Finland)
• Multilingual Information Retrieval (Jacques Savoy, University of Neuchatel, Neuchatel, Switzerland)
• Multimedia Information Retrieval (Stéphane Marchand-Maillet, University of Geneva, Switzerland)
• TREC Style Evaluation (Donna Harman, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, USA)
• Metrics, Statistics, Tests (Stephen Robertson, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK)
• Number Visualization (Giuseppe Santucci, Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy)
• Visual Analytics (Silvia Miksch, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria)
• Web Personalisation (Vincent P. Wade, Centre for Next Generation Localisation, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
• Log File Analysis (Maarten de Rijke, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
• Crowdsourcing (Gareth Jones, Centre for Next Generation Localisation, Dublin City University, Ireland)
• Retrieval from Social Media (Alejandro Jaimes, Yahoo! Research Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain)

IMPORTANT DATES

• Registration deadline: 30 September 2011
• Notification: Mid October 2011
• Winter School: 23 – 27 January 2012

ORGANIZATION

General Chair

• Tiziana Catarci, Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy

Program Commitee

• Maristella Agosti, University of Padua, Italy
• Nicola Ferro, University of Padua, Italy
• Henning Müller, University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Switzerland
• Giuseppe Santucci, Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy

Publicity Chair

• Centre for the Evaluation of Language and Communication Technologies (CELCT), Italy
• Evaluations and Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA), France

Local Organization

• Alexandre Cotting, University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Switzerland
• Henning Müller, University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Switzerland

CONTACT

For any information please contact:

winter-school[at]promise-noe.eu

or visit the Winter School Website.

The iVAC Newsletter is envisioned as a coordinating function for the various activities coming out of the BFR program, international university partners and other government agencies. The thought is to present and share knowledge of these initiatives, accomplishments in various areas (technology, publications, new funding, etc.), up-coming conferences and events, and other significant happenings to the entire community.

This iVAC Newsletter features:

• The PIE Research Roadmap
• Emergency Management Gap Analysis
• Activity Awareness Dashboard
• PIE Recommender Systems
• LiveWall
• PIE Stakeholder Advisory Group

Read the newsletter here:

iVAC Newsletter August 2011

The iVAC Newsletter is envisioned as a coordinating function for the various activities coming out of the BFR program, international university partners and other government agencies. The thought is to present and share knowledge of these initiatives, accomplishments in various areas (technology, publications, new funding, etc.), up-coming conferences and events, and other significant happenings to the entire community.

This iVAC Newsletter features:

• Enterprise Resiliency Experiment – a technology experiment with end users in the Northwest Region of Canada and the U.S.
• Health Emergency Situational Awareness on Smart Phones – work underway at CCICADA through a grant from the New Jersey Department of Health
• Multimedia Analytics – the Canopy Suite being developed by PNNL
• UKVAC Kick-off Meeting – Phase II of the UKVAC begins!
• Datasets for Visual Analytics Research – made available by the UKVAC
• An AWSM Experiment! – CCICADA conducts a social media experiment on the campus of Rutgers University
• IEEE 2011 VisWeek Discovery Exhibition – learn how Visual Analytics is impacting users!
• Proceedings Published for 2011 DHS S&T University Summit – 37 white papers from the Summit are now available in a special on-line edition of the Journal of Homeland Security

Read the newsletter here:

iVAC Newsletter June 2011

The iVAC Newsletter is envisioned as a coordinating function for the various activities coming out of the BFR program, international university partners and other government agencies. The thought is to present and share knowledge of these initiatives, accomplishments in various areas (technology, publications, new funding, etc.), up-coming conferences and events, and other significant happenings to the entire community.

This iVAC Newsletter features:

• US-Sweden Workshop: A Visualization and Analytics Approach to Flooding and Pandemics
• VAW2011: 3rd International UKVAC Workshop on Visual Analytics
• “What is Watson?”
• 2011 DHS University Network Summit
• Infrastructure Protection and Evacuation Planning Symposium
• Student Workshop on Mathematical & Computational Modeling in Service of Society

Read the newsletter here:

iVAC Newsletter May 2011

The iVAC Newsletter is envisioned as a coordinating function for the various activities coming out of the BFR program, international university partners and other government agencies. The thought is to present and share knowledge of these initiatives, accomplishments in various areas (technology, publications, new funding, etc.), up-coming conferences and events, and other significant happenings to the entire community.

This iVAC Newsletter features:

• A CCICADA Student Workshop on Mathematical & Computational Modeling in Service of Society,
• The 2011 DHS University Network Summit,
• The Infrastructure Protection and Evacuation Planning Symposium,
• CCICADA Researchers work with IBM on the Next Watson. (What is Watson? Read the article and find out!),
• Call for proposals for the 3rd International UKVAC Workshop on Visual Analytics, and
• The US-Sweden Workshop: A Visualization and Analytics Approach to Flooding and Pandemics.

Read the newsletter here:

iVAC Newsletter February 2011

IEEE PacificVis 2012: Call for Papers

The 5th IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis 2012) will be held in Songdo, Korea, from February 28 to March 2, 2012.  PacificVis is an IEEE sponsored international visualization symposium held in the Asia-Pacific region, with the objective to foster greater exchange between visualization researchers and practitioners, and to draw more researchers in the Asia-Pacific region to enter this rapidly growing area of research.

Authors are invited to submit original and unpublished research and practical applications in all areas of visualization. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Visualization Taxonomies and Models
• Spatial Data in Visualization
• Non-Spatial Data in Visualization
• Display and Interaction Technology
• Hardware for Visualization
• Evaluation and User Studies
• Large Data Visualization
• Visual Analysis and Knowledge Discovery
• Time-varying Data Visualization
• Applications
• Graph Drawing
• Collaborative / Social Visualization
• Security Visualization
• Network Visualization

All accepted papers will be published by IEEE and also included in the IEEE Digital Library.  Authors of selected research papers of outstanding quality will be invited to submit an extended version to IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

Important Dates
Paper submission deadline: September 26, 2011, 11:59pm (KST)
Notification of acceptance: November 14, 2011
Camera-ready papers due: December 5, 2011
Symposium: February 28 — March 2, 2012

The Symposium website (click)

Conference Co-Chairs:
Arie Kaufman, Stony Brook University
Yeoung Gil Shin, Seoul National University

Organization Chair:
Jinwook Seo, Seoul National University

Program Co-Chairs:
Helwig Hauser, University of Bergen
Stephen Kobourov, University of Arizona
Huamin Qu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology