Parallel Hierarchies: Interactive Visualization of Multidimensional Hierarchical Aggregates

Exploring multi-dimensional hierarchical data is a long-standing problem present in a wide range of fields such as bioinformatics, software systems, social sciences and business intelligence. While each hierarchical dimension within these data structures can be explored in isolation, critical information lies in the relationships between dimensions. Existing approaches can either simultaneously visualize multiple non-hierarchical dimensions, or only one or two hierarchical dimensions. Yet, the challenge of visualizing multi-dimensional hierarchical data remains open. To address this problem, we developed a novel data visualization approach -- Parallel Hierarchies -- that we demonstrate on a real-life SAP SE product called SAP Product Lifecycle Costing. The starting point of the research is a thorough customer-driven requirement engineering phase including an iterative design process. To avoid restricting ourselves to a domain-specific solution, we abstract the data and tasks gathered from users, and demonstrate the approach generality by applying Parallel Hierarchies to datasets from bioinformatics and social sciences. Moreover, we report on a qualitative user study conducted in an industrial scenario with 15 experts from 9 different companies. As a result of this co-innovation experience, several SAP customers requested a product feature out of our solution. Moreover, Parallel Hierarchies integration as a standard diagram type into SAP Analytics Cloud platform is in progress. This thesis further introduces different uncertainty representation methods applicable to Parallel Hierarchies and in general to flow diagrams. We also present a visual comparison taxonomy for time-series of hierarchically structured data with one or multiple dimensions. Moreover, we propose several visual solutions for comparing hierarchies employing flow diagrams. Finally, after presenting two application examples of Parallel Hierarchies on industrial datasets, we detail two validation methods to examine the effectiveness of the visualization solution. Particularly, we introduce a novel design validation table to assess the perceptual aspects of eight different visualization solutions including Parallel Hierarchies.:1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation and Problem Statement 1.2 Research Goals 1.3 Outline and Contributions 2 Foundations of Visualization 2.1 Information Visualization 2.1.1 Terms and Definition 2.1.2 What: Data Structures 2.1.3 Why: Visualization Tasks 2.1.4 How: Visualization Techniques 2.1.5 How: Interaction Techniques 2.2 Visual Perception 2.2.1 Visual Variables 2.2.2 Attributes of Preattentive and Attentive Processing 2.2.3 Gestalt Principles 2.3 Flow Diagrams 2.3.1 Classifications of Flow Diagrams 2.3.2 Main Visual Features 2.4 Summary 3 Related Work 3.1 Cross-tabulating Hierarchical Categories 3.1.1 Visualizing Categorical Aggregates of Item Sets 3.1.2 Hierarchical Visualization of Categorical Aggregates 3.1.3 Visualizing Item Sets and Their Hierarchical Properties 3.1.4 Hierarchical Visualization of Categorical Set Aggregates 3.2 Uncertainty Visualization 3.2.1 Uncertainty Taxonomies 3.2.2 Uncertainty in Flow Diagrams 3.3 Time-Series Data Visualization 3.3.1 Time & Data 3.3.2 User Tasks 3.3.3 Visual Representation 3.4 Summary ii Contents 4 Requirement Engineering Phase 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Environment 4.2.1 The Product 4.2.2 The Customers and Development Methodology 4.2.3 Lessons Learned 4.3 Visualization Requirements for Product Costing 4.3.1 Current Visualization Practice 4.3.2 Visualization Tasks 4.3.3 Data Structure and Size 4.3.4 Early Visualization Prototypes 4.3.5 Challenges and Lessons Learned 4.4 Data and Task Abstraction 4.4.1 Data Abstraction 4.4.2 Task Abstraction 4.5 Summary and Outlook 5 Parallel Hierarchies 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The Parallel Hierarchies Technique 5.2.1 The Individual Axis: Showing Hierarchical Categories 5.2.2 Two Interlinked Axes: Showing Pairwise Frequencies 5.2.3 Multiple Linked Axes: Propagating Frequencies 5.2.4 Fine-tuning Parallel Hierarchies through Reordering 5.3 Design Choices 5.4 Applying Parallel Hierarchies 5.4.1 US Census Data 5.4.2 Yeast Gene Ontology Annotations 5.5 Evaluation 5.5.1 Setup of the Evaluation 5.5.2 Procedure of the Evaluation 5.5.3 Results from the Evaluation 5.5.4 Validity of the Evaluation 5.6 Summary and Outlook 6 Visualizing Uncertainty in Flow Diagrams 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Uncertainty in Product Costing 6.2.1 Background 6.2.2 Main Causes of Bad Quality in Costing Data 6.3 Visualization Concepts 6.4 Uncertainty Visualization using Ribbons 6.4.1 Selected Visualization Techniques 6.4.2 Study Design and Procedure 6.4.3 Results 6.4.4 Discussion 6.5 Revised Visualization Approach using Ribbons 6.5.1 Application to Sankey Diagram 6.5.2 Application to Parallel Sets 6.5.3 Application to Parallel Hierarchies 6.6 Uncertainty Visualization using Nodes 6.6.1 Visual Design of Nodes 6.6.2 Expert Evaluation 6.7 Summary and Outlook 7 Visual Comparison Task 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Comparing Two One-dimensional Time Steps 7.2.1 Problem Statement 7.2.2 Visualization Design 7.3 Comparing Two N-dimensional Time Steps 7.4 Comparing Several One-dimensional Time Steps 7.5 Summary and Outlook 8 Parallel Hierarchies in Practice 8.1 Application to Plausibility Check Task 8.1.1 Plausibility Check Process 8.1.2 Visual Exploration of Machine Learning Results 8.2 Integration into SAP Analytics Cloud 8.2.1 SAP Analytics Cloud 8.2.2 Ocean to Table Project 8.3 Summary and Outlook 9 Validation 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Nested Model Validation Approach 9.3 Perceptual Validation of Visualization Techniques 9.3.1 Design Validation Table 9.3.2 Discussion 9.4 Summary and Outlook 10 Conclusion and Outlook 10.1 Summary of Findings 10.2 Discussion 10.3 Outlook A Questionnaires of the Evaluation B Survey of the Quality of Product Costing Data C Questionnaire of Current Practice Bibliograph

Simple identification tools in FishBase

Simple identification tools for fish species were included in the FishBase information system from its inception. Early tools made use of the relational model and characters like fin ray meristics. Soon pictures and drawings were added as a further help, similar to a field guide. Later came the computerization of existing dichotomous keys, again in combination with pictures and other information, and the ability to restrict possible species by country, area, or taxonomic group. Today, www.FishBase.org offers four different ways to identify species. This paper describes these tools with their advantages and disadvantages, and suggests various options for further development. It explores the possibility of a holistic and integrated computeraided strategy

B!SON: A Tool for Open Access Journal Recommendation

Finding a suitable open access journal to publish scientific work is a complex task: Researchers have to navigate a constantly growing number of journals, institutional agreements with publishers, funders’ conditions and the risk of Predatory Publishers. To help with these challenges, we introduce a web-based journal recommendation system called B!SON. It is developed based on a systematic requirements analysis, built on open data, gives publisher-independent recommendations and works across domains. It suggests open access journals based on title, abstract and references provided by the user. The recommendation quality has been evaluated using a large test set of 10,000 articles. Development by two German scientific libraries ensures the longevity of the project

Ecology-based planning. Italian and French experimentations

This paper examines some French and Italian experimentations of green infrastructures’ (GI) construction in relation to their techniques and methodologies. The construction of a multifunctional green infrastructure can lead to the generation of a number of relevant bene fi ts able to face the increasing challenges of climate change and resilience (for example, social, ecological and environmental through the recognition of the concept of ecosystem services) and could ease the achievement of a performance-based approach. This approach, differently from the traditional prescriptive one, helps to attain a better and more fl exible land-use integration. In both countries, GI play an important role in contrasting land take and, for their adaptive and cross-scale nature, they help to generate a res ilient approach to urban plans and projects. Due to their fl exible and site-based nature, GI can be adapted, even if through different methodologies and approaches, both to urban and extra-urban contexts. On one hand, France, through its strong national policy on ecological networks, recognizes them as one of the major planning strategies toward a more sustainable development of territories; on the other hand, Italy has no national policy and Regions still have a hard time integrating them in already existing planning tools. In this perspective, Italian experimentations on GI construction appear to be a simple and sporadic add-on of urban and regional plans

Desertification in Europe: mitigation strategies, land use planning: Proceedings of the advanced study course held in Alghero, Sardinia, Italy from 31 May to 10 June 1999

The present volume is based on lectures given at the course held in Alghero, Sardinia, Italy, from 31 May to 10 June 1999 on ‘Desertification in Europe: Mitigation Strategies, Land Use Planning’. It also contains presentations, given by the participating students, on their own research activities and interests. With the adoption of the International Convention to Combat Desertification, which represents a follow up of the Rio recommendations, this publication is timely. It highlights the specific situation of the Southern European regions and provides a comprehensive and state-of-the-art review of this complex issue

SIS 2017. Statistics and Data Science: new challenges, new generations

The 2017 SIS Conference aims to highlight the crucial role of the Statistics in Data Science. In this new domain of ‘meaning’ extracted from the data, the increasing amount of produced and available data in databases, nowadays, has brought new challenges. That involves different fields of statistics, machine learning, information and computer science, optimization, pattern recognition. These afford together a considerable contribute in the analysis of ‘Big data’, open data, relational and complex data, structured and no-structured. The interest is to collect the contributes which provide from the different domains of Statistics, in the high dimensional data quality validation, sampling extraction, dimensional reduction, pattern selection, data modelling, testing hypotheses and confirming conclusions drawn from the data

Tools for identifying biodiversity: progress and problems

The correct identification of organisms is fundamental not only for the assessment and the conservation of biodiversity, but also in agriculture, forestry, the food and pharmaceutical industries, forensic biology, and in the broad field of formal and informal education at all levels. In this book, the reader will find short presentations of current and upcoming projects (EDIT, KeyToNature, STERNA, Species 2000, Fishbase, BHL, ViBRANT, etc.), plus a large panel of short articles on software, taxonomic applications, use of e-keys in the educational field, and practical applications. Single-access keys are now available on most recent electronic devices; the collaborative and semantic web opens new ways to develop and to share applications; the automatic processing of molecular data and images is now based on validated systems; identification tools appear as an efficient support for environmental education and training; the monitoring of invasive and protected species and the study of climate change require intensive identifications of specimens, which opens new markets for identification research

Environmental and territorial modelling for planning and design

Between 5th and 8th September 2018 the tenth edition of the INPUT conference took place in Viterbo, guests of the beautiful setting of the University of Tuscia and its DAFNE Department. INPUT is managed by an informal group of Italian academic researchers working in many fields related to the exploitation of informatics in planning. This Tenth Edition pursed multiple objectives with a holistic, boundary-less character, to face the complexity of today socio-ecological systems following a systemic approach aimed to problem solving. In particular, the Conference will aim to present the state of art of modeling approaches employed in urban and territorial planning in national and international contexts. Moreover, the conference has hosted a Geodesign workshop, by Carl Steinitz (Harvard Graduate School of Design) and Hrishi Ballal (on skype), Tess Canfield, Michele Campagna. Finally, on the last day of the conference, took place the QGIS hackfest, in which over 20 free software developers from all over Italy discussed the latest news and updates from the QGIS network. The acronym INPUT was born as INformatics for Urban and Regional Planning. In the transition to graphics, unintentionally, the first term was transformed into “Innovation”, with a fine example of serendipity, in which a small mistake turns into something new and intriguing. The opportunity is taken to propose to the organizers and the scientific committee of the next appointment to formalize this change of the acronym. This 10th edition was focused on Environmental and Territorial Modeling for planning and design. It has been considered a fundamental theme, especially in relation to the issue of environmental sustainability, which requires a rigorous and in-depth analysis of processes, a theme which can be satisfied by the territorial information systems and, above all, by modeling simulation of processes. In this topic, models are useful with the managerial approach, to highlight the many aspects of complex city and landscape systems. In consequence, their use must be deeply critical, not for rigid forecasts, but as an aid to the management decisions of complex systems

Advances in Artificial Intelligence: Models, Optimization, and Machine Learning

The present book contains all the articles accepted and published in the Special Issue “Advances in Artificial Intelligence: Models, Optimization, and Machine Learning” of the MDPI Mathematics journal, which covers a wide range of topics connected to the theory and applications of artificial intelligence and its subfields. These topics include, among others, deep learning and classic machine learning algorithms, neural modelling, architectures and learning algorithms, biologically inspired optimization algorithms, algorithms for autonomous driving, probabilistic models and Bayesian reasoning, intelligent agents and multiagent systems. We hope that the scientific results presented in this book will serve as valuable sources of documentation and inspiration for anyone willing to pursue research in artificial intelligence, machine learning and their widespread applications

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN ROMANIA

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main opportunities and limitations of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The survey was defined with the aim to involve the highest possible number of relevant CSR topics and give the issue a more wholesome perspective. It provides a basis for further comprehension and deeper analyses of specific CSR areas. The conditions determining the success of CSR in Romania have been defined in the paper on the basis of the previously cumulative knowledge as well as the results of various researches. This paper provides knowledge which may be useful in the programs promoting CSR.Corporate social responsibility, Supportive policies, Romania