Personal Items for nocke

The analysis of data of various kind is an important field of research. Particularly the visualization of data allows to analyze it intuitively and to find out cohoerences. The desicion, which technique of visualization is especially suited to which data set, depends on the properties of the data set. This paper conceptualizes an universal spezification of so-called metadata, to support visualization decisions due to the properties of the data set. Therefore important metadata for visualisation will be defined. Furthermore a concept for extraction of these metadata will be designed, which integrates a suitable order and the inclusion of the user. In conjunction with these conceptual projects, an interactive programme, which integrates the user into the extraction of metadata, was developed. The intention of this programme is to support the user in dependency of his profile. Therefore automatic techniques of analysis and graphical representations are integrated to determine metadata of different types of data.

Abstract: Complex, heterogeneous environmental data sets are produced and stored in many scientific disciplines. For managing complex structured data, database and data warehouse technologies have been established, providing access via standardized interfaces. Nevertheless, there are some obstacles for researchers in applying the full functionality of sophisticated data management systems. Here, graphical user interfaces (GUI) are essential for bridging the gap between such systems and scientific users. However, designing / developing user interfaces for complex, environmental data sets is not trivial, facing user diversity and a variety of tasks. Consequently, for the example of climate impact research, this paper introduces an approach to support data retrieval. We propose tailored solutions for metadata navigation and filtering as well as for visualization and visualization design, and present three tools in combination with lessons learned for GUI design.

To bridge the gap between climate impact research on the one hand and decision makers and the public on the other hand, we introduce an new approach visualizing climate driving forces together with their possible impacts onto the biosphere. Therefore, an interactive tool synchronizing multiple-views has been designed and implemented, providing easy-to-use access to simulation results for several driving climate models, emission scenarios, vegetation variables / classifications and statistical derivations. It provides intuitive access to temporal and spatial regions of interest. Furthermore, to deploy this tool in different use cases, a mechanism for fast image pre-calculation in different image resolutions has been implemented.

Simulationsumgebungen gestatten in einem strukturierten Ansatz den Entwurf von und/oder das Experimentieren mit Simulationsmodellen. In der Klima- und Klimafolgenforschung sind dabei insbesondere die Möglichkeiten von Simulationsumgebungen für Entwurf, Ausführung und Analyse von Experimenten mit Modellen von Interesse. Wir diskutieren Anforderungen an solche Simulationsumgebungen unter besonderer Beachtung des Experimententwurfs und stellen diese den Ergebnissen einer Umfrage unter Klimafolgenforschern zur Nutzung entsprechender Techniken und Tools gegenüber. Mit SimEnv präsentieren wir eine Multi-Run Umgebung mit den Schwerpunkten Modellsensitivität, Modellunsicherheit und Szenarioanalyse und zeigen daraus Beispiele für die explorative und visuelle Analyse des Experimentoutputs.

Communicating scientific research on climate change to decision-makers, stakeholders and the general public in an easily comprehensible manner is a challenging task. Against this background, interactive applications that facilitate intuitive access to relevant knowledge can play a crucial role. Nevertheless, the design of such applications is hampered by the heterogeneity of the field of climate change and climate impact research and the gap between climate experts, IT experts and end users. Facing these obstacles, this paper discusses three applications supporting access to different facets of climate change research.

Knowledge about visualization tasks plays an important role in choosing or building suitable visual representations to pursue them. Yet, tasks are a multi-faceted concept and it is thus not surprising that the many existing task taxonomies and models all describe different aspects of tasks, depending on what these task descriptions aim to capture. This results in a clear need to bring these different aspects together under the common hood of a general design space of visualization tasks, which we propose in this paper. Our design space consists of five design dimensions that characterize the main aspects of tasks and that have so far been distributed across different task descriptions. We exemplify its concrete use by applying our design space in the domain of climate impact research. To this end, we propose interfaces to our design space for different user roles (developers, authors, and end users) that allow users of different levels of expertise to work with it.