Communicating spatial planning decisions at the landscape and farm level with landscape visualization

Landscape visualizations have the potential to support participatory environmental planning at different spatial scales and decision levels from international to farm level. However, it is yet unclear what specific demands are relevant for visualization on the different decision levels. In this context more knowledge is needed about visualization objectives and the respective tasks, intended effects and suitable techniques for the specific levels. Especially the farm level has been neglected in research, although farmers make many decisions that affects public interests in the visual landscape. Farmers need to communicate these decisions to the public in an understandable way. The question of how visualization can support participation in the planning process at the municipal level is examined by drawing on the findings of the Interactive Landscape Plan Koenigslutter, Germany (IALP) about the preferences and reactions of citizens to visualizations used in the landscape planning process at the local decision level. On this basis, we examined the applicability and differences of the findings for the farm level. Furthermore, in order to explore visualization opportunities at the farm scale, the farm management system MANUELA was used as an example of an information platform that could serve as a basis for farm scale visualizations. By transferring landscape planning results to the farm level, we developed recommentations about the application of visualization, intended effects and appropriate techniques at the farm scale. The general findings for the municipal level show that visualization can improve participation by providing participants with a common image of the planning proposals for discussion and collaborative decisions. Different visualization methods offer different capabilities for supporting participation in the different planning phases. At the farm scale, 2D visualizations and diagrams are often sufficient to communicate information to customers about farm performance for providing ecosystem services. They may consist of maps and supporting information that is easily generated from GIS data. However, for a higher (more interactive) level of communication and participation activities, such as discussions with affected neighbors about land use changes or the integration of citizens' proposals, more sophisticated visualization techniques would be required. Visualization techniques are needed that farmers can use to easily simulate visual impacts of land use changes at the landscape scale

A Collaborative Computational Infrastructure for Supporting Technical Debt Knowledge Sharing and Evolution

Keeping information systems useful during their evolution is a complex task. This complexity usually comes from the lack of concern with their maintainability. The monitoring of technical debt (TD) is one way to minimize the effects of low maintainability. But even before developers can monitor the debt, they need to understand what TD types can be incurred, how they can be identified, and which causes can lead developers to incur them into the project. Nevertheless, despite the importance of to know what TD is, this knowledge is still spread out hindering a common understanding of the area. In this context, this paper presents TD Wiki, a collaborative computational infrastructure for supporting TD knowledge sharing and evolution through the using of knowledge visualization techniques. TD Wiki is already available for use and provides useful information that can be used when developing strategies for TD monitoring during the development of information systems

Fostering collaborative knowledge construction with visualization tools

This study investigates to what extent collaborative knowledge construction can be fostered by providing students with visualization tools as structural support. Thirty-two students of Educational Psychology took part in the study. The students were subdivided into dyads and asked to solve a case problem of their learning domain under one of two conditions: 1) with content-specific visualization 2) with content-unspecific visualization. Results show that by being provided with a content-specific visualization tool, both the process and the outcome of the cooperative effort improved. More specifically, dyads under that condition referred to more adequate concepts, risked more conflicts, and were more successful in integrating prior knowledge into the collaborative solution. Moreover, those learning partners had a more similar individual learning outcome

Applying a User-centred Approach to Interactive Visualization Design

Analysing users in their context of work and finding out how and why they use different information resources is essential to provide interactive visualisation systems that match their goals and needs. Designers should actively involve the intended users throughout the whole process. This chapter presents a user-centered approach for the design of interactive visualisation systems. We describe three phases of the iterative visualisation design process: the early envisioning phase, the global specification hase, and the detailed specification phase. The whole design cycle is repeated until some criterion of success is reached. We discuss different techniques for the analysis of users, their tasks and domain. Subsequently, the design of prototypes and evaluation methods in visualisation practice are presented. Finally, we discuss the practical challenges in design and evaluation of collaborative visualisation environments. Our own case studies and those of others are used throughout the whole chapter to illustrate various approaches

Exploring the Potential of 3D Visualization Techniques for Usage in Collaborative Design

Best practice for collaborative design demands good interaction between its collaborators. The capacity to share common knowledge about design models at hand is a basic requirement. With current advancing technologies gathering collective knowledge is more straightforward, as the dialog between experts can be supported better. The potential for 3D visualization techniques to become the right support tool for collaborative design is explored. Special attention is put on the possible usage for remote collaboration. The opportunities for current state-of-the-art visualization techniques from stereoscopic vision to holographic displays are researched. A classification of the various systems is explored with respect to their tangible usage for augmented reality. Appropriate interaction methods can be selected based on the usage scenario

The other side of the social web: A taxonomy for social information access

The power of the modern Web, which is frequently called the Social Web or Web 2.0, is frequently traced to the power of users as contributors of various kinds of contents through Wikis, blogs, and resource sharing sites. However, the community power impacts not only the production of Web content, but also the access to all kinds of Web content. A number of research groups worldwide explore what we call social information access techniques that help users get to the right information using "collective wisdom" distilled from actions of those who worked with this information earlier. This invited talk offers a brief introduction into this important research stream and reviews recent works on social information access performed at the University of Pittsburgh's PAWS Lab lead by the author. Copyright © 2012 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM)

A debate dashboard to enhance on-line knowledge sharing

Purpose – Web 2.0 technologies have radically modified the way in which knowledge is created, managed and shared, improving productivity and accelerating innovation processes for the enterprises. These technologies have allowed enterprises to produce knowledge, leverage collective intelligence and build social capital on a scale that was unimaginable a few years ago. In this paper we focus on a particular kind of web-based collaborative platforms known as argument mapping tools and we discuss the main barriers to the adoption of them. Literature has proved that these argument mapping tools provide large and small and medium enterprise with several advantages, but nevertheless, they have low level adoption. In this paper we explore new technological solutions to support the adoption of argument mapping tools. In particular, we propose the design of a Debate Dashboard to provide visual feedback to support online deliberation. These visual feedback aims at compensating the loss of information due to the mediation of the technology. The Debate Dashboard is composed of a set of suitable visualization tools that have been selected on the basis of a literature review of the visualization tools. Design/methodology/approach - We propose a literature review of existing visualization tools. Building on the literature review we selected thirty visualization tools, which have been classified on the basis of the kind of feedback they are able to provide. We identify three classes of feedback: Community feedback (identikit of users), Interaction feedback (about how users interact) and Absorption feedback (about generated content and its organization). We distilled the Debate Dashboard features by building on results of a literature review on Web 2.0 tools for data visualization. As output of literature review we selected six visualization tools. We consider these selected tools as a sort of starting point. Indeed, our aim is the improvement of them through the addition of further features and functions in order to make them more effective in providing feedback. Originality/value – Our paper enriches the debate about computer mediated conversation and visualization tools. We propose a Dashboard prototype to augment collaborative knowledge mapping tools by providing visual feedback on conversations. The Dashboard will provide at the same time three different kinds of feedback about: details of the participants to the conversation, interaction processes and generated content. This will allow the improvement of the benefits and reduce the costs deriving from the use of mapping tools. Moreover, another important novelty is that visualization tools will be integrated to mapping tools, as until now they have been used only to visualize data contained in forums (as Usenet or Slash.dot), chat or email archives Practical implications – The Dashboard provides feedback about participants, interaction processes and generated contents, thus supporting the adoption of mapping tools as technologies able to foster knowledge sharing among remote workers or/and customers and supplier. The integration of Debate Dashboard with common online argument mapping tools aims at enabling the following advantages: 1. Reduction of misunderstanding; 2. Reduction of cognitive effort required to use argument mapping tools; 3. Improvement of the exploration and the analysis of the maps - the Debate Dashboard feedback improves the usability of the object (the map), thus allowing users to pitch into the conversation in the right place

Introduction

In recent years, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted, both in industry and academia, to improving maintenance. Time is a critical factor in maintenance, and efforts are placed to monitor, analyze, and visualize machine or asset data in order to anticipate to any possible failure, prevent damage, and save costs. The MANTIS Book aims to highlight the underpinning fundamentals of Condition-Based Maintenance related conceptual ideas, an overall idea of preventive maintenance, the economic impact and technical solution. The core content of this book describes the outcome of the Cyber-Physical System based Proactive Collaborative Maintenance project, also known as MANTIS, and funded by EU ECSEL Joint Undertaking under Grant Agreement nº 662189. The ambition has been to support the creation of a maintenance-oriented reference architecture that support the maintenance data lifecycle, to enable the use of novel kinds of maintenance strategies for industrial machinery. The key enabler has been the fine blend of collecting data through Cyber-Physical Systems, and the usage of machine learning techniques and advanced visualization for the enhanced monitoring of the machines. Topics discussed include, in the context of maintenance: Cyber-Physical Systems, Communication Middleware, Machine Learning, Advanced Visualization, Business Models, Future Trends. An important focus of the book is the application of the techniques in real world context, and in fact all the work is driven by the pilots, all of them centered on real machines and factories. This book is suitable for industrial and maintenance managers that want to implement a new strategy for maintenance in their companies. It should give readers a basic idea on the first steps to implementing a maintenance-oriented platform or information system.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio