The workshop aims at bringing together researchers from relevant fields to address research issues of visual analytics and spatial decision support in the multidisciplinary context of GI Science. The participants will present and discuss the state-of-the-art and directions for future research. Extended papers (subject to formal review) will be included in a special issue of IJGIS reflecting the results of the discussion. Visual Analytics is defined as the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces (see http://nvac.pnl.gov/agenda.stm). People use visual analytics tools and techniques to synthesize information and derive insights from massive, dynamic, ambiguous, and often conflicting data; detect the expected and discover the unexpected; provide timely, defensible, and understandable assessments; and communicate assessment effectively for action. Spatial decision support means computerised assistance to people in the development, evaluation and selection of proper policies, plans, scenarios, projects or interventions where the problems have a geographic or spatial component. This refers to both long-term decision making (e.g. planning for sustainable places, mitigating hazards, and infrastructure planning) and short-term time-critical decisions such as emergency response and resource logistics. The spatial (and often spatio-temporal) character makes such decision problems challenging for people and demanding with respect to technologies and tools. The goal of the workshop is to bridge the several potential connection points between research initiatives in visual analytics with the complementary research on decision support in a spatial context. Spatial decision making faces various decision complexities such as
Visual analytics has a clear potential to help in handling these complexities. Ongoing research efforts focus on such questions as:
Respectively, the workshop will address various topics of visual analytics and spatial decision support, including:
The workshop will have a multidisciplinary character with participation by scientists working in the areas covered by the workshop. In addition, we expect participants from neighbouring and complementary disciplines (e.g. telecartography, geocomputation, HCI, AI, cognitive science, information visualization, decision sciences) to join the workshop for establishing dialog and future cooperation. People working in application areas (e.g. disaster management, business intelligence) will be encouraged to attend the workshop. The workshop will include two invited talks (to be given by Prof. Menno-Jan Kraak and Prof. Daniel Keim), 6-8 long presentations, 6-8 short presentations, and a panel discussion. Several slots will be reserved for contributions from young scientists and PhD students. To promote exchange of ideas, a dedicated discussant will be appointed for each working paper. This person will receive the text of the paper in advance, with the task to prepare comments and questions and moderate the discussion. The workshop is supported by:
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