Demo: Shield UI JavaScript Chart - A Flexible HTML5 Data Visualization Component

Shield UI’s advanced framework for creating rich charts and graphs is the first of a line of data visualization components, giving web developers the power for embedding rich graphics in their web projects with minimum effort. Built with HTML, CSS3 and packaged as a jQuery plugin, the library has full support for legacy and modern desktop web browsers, as well as the latest mobile devices.

A large-scale dynamic vector and raster data visualization geographic information system based on parallel map tiling

With the exponential increasing demands and uses of GIS data visualization system, such as urban planning, environment and climate change monitoring, weather simulation, hydrographic gauge and so forth, the geospatial vector and raster data visualization research, application and technology has become prevalent. However, we observe that current web GIS techniques are merely suitable for static vector and raster data where no dynamic overlaying layers. While it is desirable to enable visual explorations of large-scale dynamic vector and raster geospatial data in a web environment, improving the performance between backend datasets and the vector and raster applications remains a challenging technical issue. This dissertation is to implement these challenging and unimplemented areas: how to provide a large-scale dynamic vector and raster data visualization service with dynamic overlaying layers accessible from various client devices through a standard web browser, and how to make the large-scale dynamic vector and raster data visualization service as rapid as the static one. To accomplish these, a large-scale dynamic vector and raster data visualization geographic information system based on parallel map tiling and a comprehensive performance improvement solution are proposed, designed and implemented. They include: the quadtree-based indexing and parallel map tiling, the Legend String, the vector data visualization with dynamic layers overlaying, the vector data time series visualization, the algorithm of vector data rendering, the algorithm of raster data re-projection, the algorithm for elimination of superfluous level of detail, the algorithm for vector data gridding and re-grouping and the cluster servers side vector and raster data caching.

Multi-Scale Visualization and Interpretation of Geological Relationships

Visualization and interpretation of geological observations into a cohesive geological model are essential to Earth sciences and related fields. Various emerging technologies offer approaches to multi-scale visualization of heterogeneous data, providing new opportunities that facilitate model development and interpretation processes. These include increased accessibility to 3D scanning technology, global connectivity, and Web-based interactive platforms. The geological sciences and geological engineering disciplines are adopting these technologies as volumes of data and physical samples greatly increase. However, a standardized and universally agreed upon workflow and approach have yet to properly be developed. In this thesis, the 3D scanning workflow is presented as a foundation for a virtual geological database. This database provides augmented levels of tangibility to students and researchers who have little to no access to locations that are remote or inaccessible. A Web-GIS platform was utilized jointly with customized widgets developed throughout the course of this research to aid in visualizing hand-sized/meso-scale geological samples within a geologic and geospatial context. This context is provided as a macro-scale GIS interface, where geophysical and geodetic images and data are visualized. Specifically, an interactive interface is developed that allows for simultaneous visualization to improve the understanding of geological trends and relationships. These developed tools will allow for rapid data access and global sharing, and will facilitate comprehension of geological models using multi-scale heterogeneous observations.

IVIS: Search and visualization on heterogeneous information networks

We build a system to support search and visualization on heterogeneous information networks. We first build our system on a specialized heterogeneous information network: DBLP. The system aims to facilitate people, especially computer science researchers, toward a better understanding and user experience about academic information networks. Then we extend our system to the Web. Our results are much more intuitive and knowledgeable than the simple top-k blue links from traditional search engines, and bring more meaningful structural results with correlated entities. We also investigate the ranking algorithm, and we show that the personalized PageRank and proposed Hetero-personalized PageRank outperform the TF-IDF ranking or mixture of TF-IDF and authority ranking. Our work opens several directions for future research.