Visual Analytics

Visual analytics is the current focus of Jim Thomas, director of the U.S. Homeland Security Department-sponsored National Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC), who describes the field as "the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces." A 2006 paper posits that visual analytics integrates visualization with human factors, geospatial, scientific analytics, and information so that people can extract individual fragments of a whole from a vast volume of unstructured data, and then piece the whole together. NVAC's mission is fivefold: To understand the vulnerabilities of and risk to critical U.S. infrastructure, reduce the terrorism threat, devise a visual communication infrastructure for response teams, cultivate an enduring talent base, and produce effective communications metaphors that can encompass the conclusions of risk evaluations as well as the evidence and chain of logic. Among the users of NVAC's products are intelligence analysts who must sift through the Web information streams and first responders managing a crisis as it occurs. Thomas says the presentation of information in a context that is apropos to individual users is vital, while discovery, comprehension, and confirmation requires interaction. He says the visual analytics field has expanded to more than 1,000 researchers up from 40 researchers just a few years ago. Thomas says about 50 percent of NVAC's funding is committed to basic research via a quintet of university-led research centers, each of which has a regional partner to help focus its research.