Visualizing the Evolution of Compound Digraphs with TimeArcTrees

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Date
2009
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Abstract
Compound digraphs are a widely used model in computer science. In many application domains these models evolve over time. Only few approaches to visualize such dynamic compound digraphs exist and mostly use animation to show the dynamics. In this paper we present a new visualization tool called TimeArcTrees that visualizes weighted, dynamic compound digraphs by drawing a sequence of node-link diagrams in a single view. Compactness is achieved by aligning the nodes of a graph vertically. Edge crossings are reduced by drawing upward and downward edges separately as colored arcs. Horizontal alignment of the instances of the same node in different graphs facilitates comparison of the graphs in the sequence. Many interaction techniques allow to explore the given graphs. Smooth animation supports the user to better track the transitions between views and to preserve his or her mental map. We illustrate the usefulness of the tool by looking at the particular problem of how shortest paths evolve over time. To this end, we applied the system to an evolving graph representing the German Autobahn and its traffic jams.
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@article{
:10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01451.x
, journal = {Computer Graphics Forum}, title = {{
Visualizing the Evolution of Compound Digraphs with TimeArcTrees
}}, author = {
Greilich, Martin
and
Burch, Michael
and
Diehl, Stephan
}, year = {
2009
}, publisher = {
The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
}, ISSN = {
1467-8659
}, DOI = {
/10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01451.x
} }
Citation