Collaborative Visualization: Terminology, Tools and Scrutiny
Ashish D. Patel Jatin D. Parmar
Computer Engineering / Information Technology
Department
Shri Sad Vidya Mandal Institute of Technology
Bharuch, India
adp_svmit@yahoo.co.in
Rutivij H. Jhaveri
Computer Engineering / Information Technology
Department
Shri Sad Vidya Mandal Institute of Technology
Bharuch, India
rutosoft@yahoo.com
AbstractThe motivation for scientific visualization
applications is to support the scientific data analysis process
through efficient visual representations which convey
significant information to researchers. With the help of this
representation they can explore the data for visual navigation
and querying processes. The study shows different
collaborative visualization methods and tools to analyze the
behavior on model building. More specifically, the study
considers the role of different techniques in facilitating
collaboration in the context of knowledge construction and
decision-making activities. First area is the evolution of
standard Web-based visualization components; the
opportunity to provide interactive electronic documents.
Second is the understanding of system that shows the design
and construction of effective data visualizations for complex
problem solving. The study also covers the collaborative effect
of different people working in geographically widely
distributed locations, fabricating and assembling very massive
datasets with their views in this area.
Keywords-Visualization, Collaborative Effect, Reporting Tools,
Visualization Tools
I. INTRODUCTION:
The collaborative visualization for a large set of data
arises in many contexts in statistics, data analysis and data
mining. The main motivation are practical problems over
large data sets that need to be solved many times for
different scenarios, e.g., the need to distribute state updates
to remote sites over the network to update the states of the
shared objects at these locations, Web-based visualization,
different people working in geographically widely
distributed locations etc. The popularity of the World Wide
Web has risen in the past three years making the Web
browser one of the most omnipresent applications on the
desktop. The Web is clearly going to be one of the most
important technologies of the future, indeed many
companies are already experimenting with Web based
software.
Computer Engineering / Information Technology
Department
Shri Sad Vidya Mandal Institute of Technology
Bharuch, India
jatindparmar@gmail.com
Bhavin I. Shah
Computer Engineering / Information Technology
Department
Shri Sad Vidya Mandal Institute of Technology
Bharuch, India
bhavin_bece@yahoo.co.in
Collaborative visualization involves serious efforts
among multiple participants using visual displays for
decision making. The collaborative visualization tools can
be expected to support a range from exploration and
analysis of scientific data through decision support to
education and training. Collaborative visualization tools
have been developed for use in a variety of fields in which
geospatial data are important. In order to support dynamic,
asynchronous and synchronous collaboration [4], research
has begun to focus on the identification and design of
interface features required for effective scientific
collaboration.
It is important to design a visualization system with
emphasis on the issues of performance, connectivity, and
interactivity. These issues are as follows.
A. Performance
Computer user expectations have risen significantly
regarding the system performances on most of the
workstations and personal computers. Moreover, these
performances have become critical for most of the
visualization design systems. Previously, such
performances could be achieved only with a system
designed on a high-performance workstation using a
propriety data visualization software system. However, in
the last few years, mid-range and high-end personal
computers became capable of having an acceptable
execution performance.
B. Interactivity
The current design calls for flexible as well as easy-to-
use intuitive interfaces to be made available to the users.
Many applications have an available interactive
environment that uses mouse operations for manipulating
visual objects. Typical operations include: rotate, zoom,
and translate. There are some other operations that can be
achieved through key presses.
C. Connectivity
Under internet connections, the requirements of
visualization with connections to different kinds of
operating systems and processing powers have to be
reconsidered. This feature is an important issue for the
design of new visualization systems. Many applications are
available on different computer platforms.
II. II. TOOLS FOR COLLABORATIVE VISUAL DATA
EXPLORATION
Information Management Magazine [6] has explained
deferent tools in their issue of June 2001. It covers
traditional reporting tools, Next-Generation Visualization
Tools and Selecting Visualization Tools in detail. The brief
introduction of these tools is given below.
A. Traditional Reporting Tools
On the basis of current situation in this field one can
say that it is possible to design a visualization system using
a personal computer, the design criteria are processing
power, interactivity, connectivity, and portability, the
design calls less for operating systems or computer
platforms, future visualization systems will evolve around
the advancement of World Wide Web technology. Years
ago the information sharing was done by printing hard
copies of analyses and circulating the information to the
appropriate employees. This system was more time
consuming and difficult to analyze the business conditions.
So there are reasons to develop a new system:
Manage massive, rapidly changing databases.
Use more sophisticated analytics.
Implement easy, visual ways to find relationships in
corporate data.
Deliver analytics using browser or Java-based interfaces.
Integrate with e-CRM applications and information
portals.
B. Next-Generation Visualization Tools
There is a need to integrate perspectives from
geographic information science, cognitive science, human-
computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative
work, and semiotics. Corporate intranets are providing an
organized, intuitive way of presenting business information
to decision-makers enterprise-wide.
The available commercial visualization systems fall
into two categories; Turnkey systems and Modular
Visualization Environments (MVEs). Turnkey systems,
which include Data Visualizer and PV Wave, expect the
user to supply data and then select visualizations from a
predefined set; hence no functional extension is possible. If
the system does not include the required algorithm, then
that task cannot be performed by the user. The advantage
of this type of system is that they are easy for
inexperienced users to use. Visualization tools can provide
decision-makers with specialized views, reports, graphs
and charts of corporate data. These tools help decision-
makers interpret information, understand relationships and,
more importantly, present and communicate justifiable
conclusions to others. Visualization tools are becoming
more interesting with the involvement of 3D technologies
for greater understanding of corporate data.
C. Selecting Visualization Tools
Another area for visualization is the selection of the
different tools currently available. One requirement may
be the system that uses a map fixed by the publisher to
service a specific visualization need. It may be that users
wish to submit their own visualization tasks to the server
and receive the result. For this to happen some form of
generic description language is needed that can simply
describe the required visualization.
With the widespread use of WWW, new technologies
were introduced, and a growing number of users aim to
change their systems platforms into this new environment.
One of such tendencies is the use of the Web as a wide
collaboration environment. At present, we can find several
collaborative systems that were developed for the Web as
well as frameworks that were designed to allow the
development of Web based collaborative environments.
Choose visualization tools that offer organized multipanel,
multipage views. This allows the user better flexibility in
decision making based on the analysis. Select Web-based
visualization tools that integrate with powerful server-
based analytical software. Flexible, Web-based tools allow
decision-makers to interact with data. New visualization
tools allow people to interact with the graphic
representation. Well-organized graphic information can
provide decision-makers with greater access to mission-
critical information faster than traditional tabular reports
for more responsive decision making.
III. COLLABORATIVE EFFECT IN GEOGRAPHICAL AREAS
The term "collaborative visualization" refers
applications in which one requires control over parameters
of the scientific visualization process and they may want to
share the data from very different geographic areas.
Consider a scientist working with a researcher at a remote
company to find a new drug, by cooperatively studying a
shared representation of the matter. Such examples really
raise the requirement of the systems which are capable of
handling such problems. The datasets generated by scientist
of a large-scale science projects require software tools that
support, not only insight into complex data, but
collaborative science discovery. Scientific analytics
approaches, combining statistical algorithms and advanced
analysis techniques with highly interactive visual interfaces
that support data exploration and collaborative work, offer
scientists the opportunity for in-depth understanding of
massive, noisy, and high-dimensional data.
IV. DIFFERENT VIEWS ON COLLABORATIVE
VISUALIZATION
Numbers of researchers have worked out different
methods for the betterment of collaborative visualization
theory. Li., L. and Li, F. and Lau, R. [10] have suggested
synchronization method to support collaborative
visualization. It considers how interaction with dynamic
objects is perceived by application participants under the
existence of network latency, and remedies the motion
trajectory of the dynamic objects. It also handles the false
positive and false negative collision detection problems.
Alan M. MacEachren, Isaac Brewer and Erik Steiner
[4] have suggested different tools to Support Different-
Place Knowledge Construction and Decision-Making. They
focused on extending revisualization methods and tools to
support the work of groups. More specifically, they
considered the role of map-based displays in facilitating
collaboration in the context of geospatial knowledge
construction and decision-making activities. Over the last
10 years the discipline has matured because of the
theoretical work has been done to set out an underlying
reference model for visualization, improved algorithms for
the visualization of 2D and 3D, regular and irregular, and
large volumes of data have emerged and the range of
application areas has grown to encompass medicine,
geosciences, meteorology and many others.
[3] National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center A DOE
Office of Science User Facility at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory.
[4] Alan M. MacEachren, Isaac Brewer and Erik Steiner,
Geovisualization to mediate collaborative work: Tools To Support
Different-Place Knowledge Construction and Decision-Making, ,
GeoVISTA Center, Department of Geography, Penn State
University, USA.
[5] P. Sakellaropoulos, L. Costaridou, G. Panayiotakis , Using
component technologies for web based wavelet enhanced
mammographic image visualization, Informatics for Health and
Social Care, 2000, Vol. 25, No. 3, Pages 171-181.
[6] Web-Based Visualization, Information Management Magazine,
June 2001.
[7] Philip C. Chen, Developing a Personal Computer-Based Data
Visualization SystemUsing Public Domain Software, SPIE's
Electronic Imaging '99, January 27, 1999, San Jose, California.
[8] Jason Wood, Collaborative Visualization, Ph. D. Thesis, the
University of Leeds, School of Computer Studies, February, 1998.
[9] Li., L. and Li, F. and Lau, R. (2006) 'A trajectory-preserving
synchronization method for collaborative visualization. IEEE
transactions on visualization and computer graphics. 12 (5),
pp.989-996.

V. CONCLUSION
The last decade has many notable advances in
algorithms for visualization. Visualization has expanded
into many fields of research, commerce and industry,
appearing as a common desktop tool for many people. The
idea behind World Wide Web is using collaborative
visualization as a tool for people to share and locate textual
information. The work discussed above covers some
aspects in collaborative visualization. The paper shows
only the work done by different people in this area. It never
claims the originality of any concepts explained here. The
idea here is to study different views in the area of
collaborative visualization.

REFERENCES
[1] Fourth International Conference on Information Visualization
(IV'00), Collaborative Visual Data Navigation on the Web,
London, England, July 19-July 21, ISBN: 0-7695-0743-3.
[2] Ying Zhu, Xiaoyuan Suo, G. Scott Owen, Complexity analysis for
information visualization design and evaluation, Department of
computer science, Georgia State University.