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VAC Consortium Members-Only Workshop:

Paving the Path: Advancing the science and delivery of visual analytics through interoperability

Visual Analytics is maturing. As a community we are defining the science, developing new technologies, putting tools into practice, and generating new research challenges. As our community and capability grows, so grows the need for both end users and technology developers to leverage each other’s advances.

The purpose of this workshop is to begin exploring issues of interoperability and standards in visual analytics, as a means of rapidly advancing the state of the science and to facilitate the transfer of technology into operations.

Workshop Goals

  1. Measure community interest in the developing and fostering of shared practices, interoperability guidelines and standards.
  2. Gain a common understanding of the current state-of-the-art in analytical tool interoperability and data exchange standards. We will be looking to existing examples in other domains as a starting point for discussions.
  3. Create communities of interest around selected challenge topics in VA interoperability leading to white papers that develop candidate recommendations.

Initial Challenge Topics

Workshop Agenda

  1. Framing the problem: What is interoperability and do we need it?
    • Benefits to the end user
    • Benefits to the research community
  2. Interoperability in practice: What does it look like? A brief overview of some current interoperability efforts in other domains by selected speakers.
  3. Plenary discussion: The kinds of interoperability – What should be prioritized in visual analytics?
    • Information exchange standards
    • Standards for representing visual features (e.g., OGC Styled Layer Descriptors)
    • Representing analytic reasoning processes across tools
    • Compatibility with or adoption of existing standards
    • Policy issues and interoperability acceptance
  4. Breakout discussions:
    • Based on the interoperability areas identified in the plenary, small self-selected groups will refine descriptions of the key challenges, priorities and potential solutions in each area. These groups will produce candidate recommendations to share with the visual analytics community.

Breakout groups will be able to continue refining brief white papers outlining their recommendations after the consortium meeting, and space on this web site will be provided to post and comment on these recommendations.

Play a part

If you are interested in leading a workshop group and subsequent planning around an interoperability topic, please contact nvac@pnl.gov and we will be in touch.