Communicating research via data visualization

Presented at the National data integrity conference: enabling research: new challenges & opportunities held on May 7-8, 2015 at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. Researchers, administrators and integrity officers are encountering new challenges regarding research data and integrity. This conference aims to provide attendees with both a high level understanding of these challenges and impart practical tools and skills to deal with them. Topics will include data reproducibility, validity, privacy, security, visualization, reuse, access, preservation, rights and management.Joseph Ryan is the Research Visualization Engineer, Center for Statistics and Visualization, University of Denver. Joe is a technologist with a passion for bringing research to life. He has worked in premiere research universities, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Syracuse University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has built award-winning projects in a number of domains, including digital humanities, library wayfinding, and campus cyberinstrastructure. At DU, he is focused on helping researchers bring their data to life. He uses a range of tools, including d3.js, to make beautiful things happen with data.PowerPoint presentation given on May 8, 2015

Large-scale data systems at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

Presented at the National data integrity conference: enabling research: new challenges & opportunities held on May 7-8, 2015 at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. Researchers, administrators and integrity officers are encountering new challenges regarding research data and integrity. This conference aims to provide attendees with both a high level understanding of these challenges and impart practical tools and skills to deal with them. Topics will include data reproducibility, validity, privacy, security, visualization, reuse, access, preservation, rights and management.Anke Kamrath is the Director of Operations and Services, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.PowerPoint presentation given on May 8, 2015

Server Sounds and Network Noises

Abstract-For server and network administrators, it is a challenge to keep an overview of their systems to detect potential intrusions and security risks in real-time as well as in retrospect. Most security tools leverage our inherent ability for pattern detection by visualizing different types of security data. Several studies suggest that complementing visualization with sonification (the presentation of data using sound) can alleviate some of the challenges of visual monitoring (such as the need for constant visual focus). This paper therefore provides an overview of the current state of research regarding auditory-based and multimodal tools in computer security. Most existing research in this area is geared towards supporting users in real-time network and server monitoring, while there are only few approaches that are designed for retrospective data analysis. There exist several sonification-based tools in a mature state, but their effectiveness has hardly been tested in formal user and usability studies. Such studies are however needed to provide a solid basis for deciding which type of sonification is most suitable for which kind of scenarios and how to best combine the two modalities, visualization and sonification, to support users in their daily routines

Experiences in deploying metadata analysis tools for institutional repositories

Current institutional repository software provides few tools to help metadata librarians understand and analyze their collections. In this article, we compare and contrast metadata analysis tools that were developed simultaneously, but independently, at two New Zealand institutions during a period of national investment in research repositories: the Metadata Analysis Tool (MAT) at The University of Waikato, and the Kiwi Research Information Service (KRIS) at the National Library of New Zealand. The tools have many similarities: they are convenient, online, on-demand services that harvest metadata using OAI-PMH; they were developed in response to feedback from repository administrators; and they both help pinpoint specific metadata errors as well as generating summary statistics. They also have significant differences: one is a dedicated tool wheres the other is part of a wider access tool; one gives a holistic view of the metadata whereas the other looks for specific problems; one seeks patterns in the data values whereas the other checks that those values conform to metadata standards. Both tools work in a complementary manner to existing Web-based administration tools. We have observed that discovery and correction of metadata errors can be quickly achieved by switching Web browser views from the analysis tool to the repository interface, and back. We summarize the findings from both tools' deployment into a checklist of requirements for metadata analysis tools

Experiences in deploying metadata analysis tools for institutional repositories

Current institutional repository software provides few tools to help metadata librarians understand and analyze their collections. In this article, we compare and contrast metadata analysis tools that were developed simultaneously, but independently, at two New Zealand institutions during a period of national investment in research repositories: the Metadata Analysis Tool (MAT) at The University of Waikato, and the Kiwi Research Information Service (KRIS) at the National Library of New Zealand. The tools have many similarities: they are convenient, online, on-demand services that harvest metadata using OAI-PMH; they were developed in response to feedback from repository administrators; and they both help pinpoint specific metadata errors as well as generating summary statistics. They also have significant differences: one is a dedicated tool wheres the other is part of a wider access tool; one gives a holistic view of the metadata whereas the other looks for specific problems; one seeks patterns in the data values whereas the other checks that those values conform to metadata standards. Both tools work in a complementary manner to existing Web-based administration tools. We have observed that discovery and correction of metadata errors can be quickly achieved by switching Web browser views from the analysis tool to the repository interface, and back. We summarize the findings from both tools' deployment into a checklist of requirements for metadata analysis tools

Sonification of Network Traffic Flow for Monitoring and Situational Awareness

Maintaining situational awareness of what is happening within a network is challenging, not least because the behaviour happens within computers and communications networks, but also because data traffic speeds and volumes are beyond human ability to process. Visualisation is widely used to present information about the dynamics of network traffic dynamics. Although it provides operators with an overall view and specific information about particular traffic or attacks on the network, it often fails to represent the events in an understandable way. Visualisations require visual attention and so are not well suited to continuous monitoring scenarios in which network administrators must carry out other tasks. Situational awareness is critical and essential for decision-making in the domain of computer network monitoring where it is vital to be able to identify and recognize network environment behaviours.Here we present SoNSTAR (Sonification of Networks for SiTuational AwaReness), a real-time sonification system to be used in the monitoring of computer networks to support the situational awareness of network administrators. SoNSTAR provides an auditory representation of all the TCP/IP protocol traffic within a network based on the different traffic flows between between network hosts. SoNSTAR raises situational awareness levels for computer network defence by allowing operators to achieve better understanding and performance while imposing less workload compared to visual techniques. SoNSTAR identifies the features of network traffic flows by inspecting the status flags of TCP/IP packet headers and mapping traffic events to recorded sounds to generate a soundscape representing the real-time status of the network traffic environment. Listening to the soundscape allows the administrator to recognise anomalous behaviour quickly and without having to continuously watch a computer screen.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures plus supplemental material in Github repositor