Interactive visualizations for critical infrastructure analysis

Critical infrastructure analysis often involves overwhelming volumes of complex, heterogeneous, interdependent information. Human judgment is essential to the analysis as insights and understandings are synthesized from information that is often complex, dynamic, incomplete, diverse, conflicting and even deceptive. Yet, our ability to collect information is increasing at rates far beyond our ability to analyze it. Visual analytics–the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces–can help analysts obtain better insights and understanding with greater efficiency. This paper discusses the research challenges involved in applying interactive visualization to critical infrastructure analysis. The research challenges are organized around three dimensions that are adapted from metrics proposed by Scholtz (2006) [8] for evaluating human information interaction systems. The challenges are illustrated using examples from the integrated modeling and simulation of critical infrastructures.